How to get an AER cameo character
It's not as fun as How to Train Your Dragon but probably a bit easier (for you anyway ;D).
What's this all about then?
The idea stemmed from aeons ago, as I thought it might be fun to slot in some friends as cameos either floating around in the background or as friends/associates of the main characters.
Then I thought well I have to build background characters anyway, may as well expand it out as making characters for people is much more fun than generating randoms, so I made it a Patreon tier. Then I quit Patreon.
Nobody cares, how do we get a character?
If you interact with me regularly on hive and/or associated Discords (linked at the bottom of my hive posts) or here (where "interacting" means a lot of happy comments back and forth not "hi" every once in a blue moon) then all you have to do is ask. Leave a comment on a post or ping me on Discord (in a channel is best as I think we need to be friends for messages and I don't accept friend requests from people I haven't spoken to extensively) or send me a message, I'm easy.
Alternately you can buy me a ko-fi or throw something in the Paypal.
Cool, what kind of characters can we have?
Many and varied! Has to be either self-insert or your own characters though, no fanstuff as I'll probably get in trouble 
Following are the 3d bases I sculpt from plus examples of characters in that classification (both canon and cameo).
Base
Nice, easy, plain old human.
Evolved
Usually has features from other animals (most notably ears, tails and fur), though some may look exactly like a Base and seem to have a superpower (such as eyesight and/or hearing that's well above average) or just have something slightly unusual about them (like elfin ears, slightly larger eyes, slightly longer digits etc). On a pure technicality all the non-Base are Evolved but "Evolved" ended up being the catchall for anyone not Flier or Mer.
Merfolk
Selkie
Usually (but don't always) have legs and can traipse about on land. They don't do very well in hot/dry climates unless they can be kept at least cool. Exceptionally good swimmers that can hold their breath for ridiculously long periods of time and see really well in the water, pretty much like dolphins and whales (incidentally they can detect and hit the frequencies of dolphin and whale song so can learn to communicate with them).
Nereid
Have gills and can't breathe air. Have fish or eel tails or octopus/squid tentacles. We're also probably highly unlikely to see many if any in the near future as my current story blocks are all terrestrial. If I ever manage to get rich and develop this thing full time, there are some prehistory stories that feature them.
Fliers
Avian
Bird people with feathered wings and tails. They also have two decorative head feathers and a crest that may be comprised of finer feathers that somewhat resemble the hair or very definite feathers.
Dragonkin
People with bat wings that have a terrifying thumb claw, ridiculously long prehensile tails with a thing on the end that can usually but not always bludgeon, slice or stab, and horns growing out of a horn crest in which is embedded a "gem" of polished keratin (which is a highly sensitive area so they're quite paranoid about getting hit in the head in the same manner guys protect their groins). The horn crest is a major defining feature as all Dragonkin have it and other Evolved with horns don't.
Hybrids
You can absolutely have any kind of hybrid character you like.
A note on Tribe
A substantial number of Fliers and a much smaller set of non-Fliers (usually children of Fliers, but also ones that married/got adopted in) belong to "Tribe" which is made up of a bunch of smaller Tribes scattered over the world. Most of them are titled Tribe [whatever a traditional name of the place was] though Europe uses "House" and Scotland and Ireland and possibly Wales use "Clan". Tribe Fliers are generally easy to pick as they get tattooed on their 25th birthday with one tattoo from each parent (originally it was supposed to be matrilineal and patrilineal from each parent and while some still do that, generally by the time my current block rolled around they'll just pick their favourite tattoo off each parent). Additionally if they have a lifemate they'll usually get marriage tattoos (which is just something symbolic to them so no losing wedding trinkets). Clearest examples are higher up in the post but here they are again so you don't have to scroll:
Ae'nur and Tsa'run have the same tattoo on their right arm (it's a matrilineal one, and inconveniently not very clear because I wasn't focused specifically on tattoos in either pic), the clouds on Ae'nur's left arm are from her father, and the one on her neck is a marriage tattoo. Tsa'run has a fleur-de-lis on his left shoulder from his father.
Some non-Tribe people have culturally appropriated this like Zara's little adoptive family did (she and Dak have Juan's tattoos).
Obviously characters can have whatever ink but if you'd like your character to be in Tribe there is a convention :)
Another convention is Tribers tend to keep their hair long, having it cut short means you've done something dishonourable.
It's also possible I may just end up chucking you in there if not given a lot of information and it seems like a good idea at the time which happened to Boomy (I asked him if he wanted Braveheart facepaint and he said yes and then I got carried away).
Pets/other animals
Totally doable as well though I don't have any other animal bases so the 3d will take a while til I develop some. I've only got a vague idea of what kind of plant and animal life has developed in this head-universe so go nuts.
Sweet! How many can I have?
As many as you like.
How does the queue work?
I should probably resurrect the todo list. Things are added to the queue as they get requested. They get done in the order I get them. Ko-fi and crypto bribes get bumped to the top. If I get multiple requests from one person the first request will go in whenever I got it, and the subsequent ones will slot in after everyone else who hasn't had one yet/for a while (unless they're all paid for).
Wait what's the catch?
No catch. Your characters are your characters, you're just letting me use them. I'll even send you a blend file of the rigged character when I'm done and you can do whatever with it.
I've got some cool vehicle/fashion/architectural/other/etc designs!
Sweet, I'm open to ideas if you want to share. And definitely not very good at that kind of thing. Same deal as the characters, your stuff is your stuff that you're letting me use and I'll send you blend files when I've made them.
First Patreon Goal Reached!
Thanks to the support of my generous patreons, I managed to hit my first goal! 
The goal was $10/mth with the intent of spreading the love a bit. So currently 5 creators I've been following for a while but didn't really have the funds to support are getting $1/mth each and hopefully I can up that a little at some point in the future and perhaps support other interesting looking projects.
The creators I'm currently supporting (in the order they're listed on my Patreon list because that was convenient) are:
I originally started following JWiesner for pokemon fanart and a webcomic/graphic novel called Luminahi. I love the characters he comes up with, the awesome way he does expressions and the crazy spiky way he does hair/fur.
I can't remember what in particular I started following UndyingNephalim for, I just recall being impressed by his game models and his prodigious output. The Hyrule mod is really, really impressive, I personally am most interested in the Sigma project even though I don't have time to game anymore -_-
I didn't find baerdric, he found me on G+, possibly off a mutual friend's posts. I'm not sure why he started following me but his posts seemed interesting so I started following him back. And good thing too or I never would have read Enmity. Reading his writing is kind of like getting thrown into a VR game (or watching a movie if you imagine things just in your head and not with your entire body). He's been working on this stuff longer than I've been alive and what's there is some great reading. There's some samples on the Patreon to see if it's the kind of stuff you like reading, and another way to support him is by following and upvoting on steemit.
Author of the famous Lackadaisy webcomic. I started following her because I was blown away by the amazingly rendered first page I saw (can't remember which one it was now) and went back and read the whole lot in one sitting. There don't appear to be much in the way of minor characters, all of them seem to have pretty intrigueing backstories.
Of Zen Pencils fame. Again I can't remember when I started following his blog, it was possibly off someone else's reshare. Initially got interested as he was a local person with adorable comics, and kept being interested at how he illustrates famous quotes. The comic images are very long (just the images, the comics are very short) and I didn't want to slice them up so haven't included any here but definitely go and take a look!
Please stop by and check out their Patreon pages and various other websites and possibly chip a dollar their way
As for me, onwards and upwards towards the next goal!
Journal thing
Comment and I'll:
(1) Tell you something I learned about you by looking at your DA page.
(2) Tell you a color you remind me of.
(3) Tell you what element I believe you belong to (e.g. water, fire, air, etc.).
(4) Tell you which one of your OC's (or art pieces) is my favorite.
(5) Ask you a question, and you must answer.
(6) Tell you something I like about you or your art.
(7) Give you a nickname.
(8) Tell you what am I doing right now.
(9) Tell you what food/ flavor/smell you remind me of.
(10) Tell you to do this in your journal too, if you haven't already
What, indeed, could possibly go wrong?
So after figuring out maths (not really my strong suite) and getting a bit faster at the 2d stuff, I have adjusted my Patreon reward tiers down and am much happier with them now (the $1 and $10 ones stayed the same, the rest of them came down). The new tiers are as follows:
- $1 gets you in on the SUPER SECRET PATREON FEED and a sketch of one of the AER characters (either a random one or one that I know or think you like if you're familiar with my characters)
- $2 gets you sketchies
- $5 gets you 2d coloured pieces
- $10 lets you design background characters and outfits for me to 3d up (you get the blend files too!)
- $20 gets you 3d pieces
All tiers stack so if you grab one of the higher ones you get everything that comes before too. The reward tiers are explained in a lot more detail on the actual Patreon page.
Additionally, motivated by having had to expand my backup server again, I'm trying to push harder to get closer to my second Patreon goal which will give me enough per month to cover the backup server (for now XD). So from now through to January 15 AWST all new Patreons who sign up for the $1 or $2 tiers will get a sketch request, which is a bonus sketch that doesn't count as a subsequent for the $2 tier. Sketches are a bit random stylistically, my current favourite is a relatively quick soft/mix shading:
I can also do slapdash colouring:
Not sure what this would be called, some kind of silhouette?
And the fastest of the lot that I unimaginatively call "liney":
If you have any particular style preference let me know when we're sorting out the details
I'd also appreciate reshares!
And now's probably a good time to say I recently (as in earlier today) got a Picarto account, so if you like you'll get to watch me working on stuff too
After painting, from the paint room go to Textures > Texture Baking Tool
Fill in the stuff on the dialogue box as appropriate (I have no idea how correct my settings are, I tend to take a best guess with anything I don't know )
Export the model as a .dae, import into Blender. It seems to import as many Ptex materials as layers you used in the 3d Coat's paint room. I used two layers for the vaporeon model (one for colour, one for displacement). Set the materials up to use nodes and add their files (which will be named to go with each layer, e.g. anything with PtexPlane0 in the name in my case corresponds to PtexMtl0 in the material list).
I also ended up with normal maps but couldn't figure out where and how to plug them in, and the result I had with just the colour (to go on the diffuse shader), gloss and displacement maps seemed to do the job all right anyway.
