Welcome to Gaia! ::

I built this off of the remains of the previous avatar, since I thought biohazard would mix really well with Bugberry. I realized after submitting that oops I was supposed to ghost him, but no one seems to have minded.

The challenge itself was pretty straight forward but what made it interesting was the budget which is...not something I have to consider. However, with some creative and cheap hair, nose, and make-up use, I was able to use more expensive items for the rest of the outfit. Alley-chan's default base is not the same as Hekiko's, so when building the avatar I also used Pale Humaniki to check the make-up with the lighter skin-tone. This actually made it so I used the Hop of My Carrot Eyeshadow as opposed to the Radiant Nights makeup I had originally equipped.

My second entry for this contest with the primary scheme focus being CMYK with just a bit of sherbert accents. I think this one works better with Alley-chan's default base as opposed to the first entry, which I like better on Hekiko's. I used the same cheap makeup tricks, and included the astra musical notes to spice up the background. A subtle detal I like is the Puri Kura dress layered underneath so the paler ruffles can distinguish between the leg mods and the dress.

Hair is officially my least favorite part of making avatars. I feel like I got the look of Gyaru, but I'm not sure I got the essence of Gyaru. It's more....Hekiko tried Gyaru, but it was probably never her scene.

Coocoon is a very pretty item that is nonetheless very difficult to blend. I used one of the belts as a skirt/continuation of the corset she's wearing. The moths were kind of a nice touch to call back to the theme of the item.

I wanted to try a different take on the item, by creating a scenic with one of the masks at the center of it. I spent a lot of time building up the layers of background to give the effect of some end of the world/alternate dimension location where this disembodied moth will give you the item or clue the heroes will need to trigger the final battle and save the world.

My third and final entry here. This one I went back to my contest basics, a small highly-detailed person. Painted hare is one of those items that I loved when it came out, and it still has that same spark here. I utilized the skirt, and chose the darker colorway since the previous entries used the green and white ones respectively.

There's not a lot if items on the wishlist that I'm super attached to. Mostly, I have it to keep track of items I'm interested in, in case they're ever listed. However Fiyo is both adorable, and something that would be rather aspirational even if she were listed regularly. In retrospect I would have swapped out the hair for something closer to the blue in Fiyo's feathers. Here is the final ghost.

Flavor Text: Fire-themed mid-boss beefcake. Originally there was going to be a bit of plot with him and the token old guy (35 years old) being best friends prior to an inevitable and *dramatic* betrayal, but due to budget constraints and executive meddling, those cutscenes are now lost and he's just a random dude helping to make the world burn, one hero at a time.

Real Deal: So the past seven days have been....harsh heat wise, upto and including some record breaking temps and indoor temperatures going above 90. So I pivoted from the "I want to make the supposed ally who temporarily joins the party and then betrays the PCs at the wrong moment" to "******** it, fire/heat themed boss." He's got a bit of Jecht vibes though, so like whatever.