The Spunky Spark -- Cure Angora!

SO. WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT A MIRACLE?!

No, seriously. SERIOUSLY. There's a bit of backstory to it, so bear with me--I'll get to the character soon enough.

Okay, so I actually started this a few weeks ago after binge watching Smile Pretty Cure AND the English Dub Glitter Force(watching each ep side by side to look for differences), and made my own character! Not my first PC chara to be sure--but CERTAINLY the only one with this level of detail AND her own team! (AKA not attached to an existing series.) Anyway, so excited as I was, I started digitizing her right away, and almost had the lineart done by bedtime. I saved, went to bed and all was fine and dandy--until the morning. You see, the one thing I hate about my newest version of PS is that it allows you to CONTINUE WORKING while the file is saving--meaning that you can save, change something and not realize you haven't saved that version! Anyway, so I go downstairs in the morning(drawing while watching tv=me leaving computer in abnormal places), and nothing seems to be responding, so I exit everything and prepare to restart and photoshop asks me "Save before exiting?" Now. I was SURE I hadn't done anything since the previous night--but I thought it'd be best to save anyway. I was WRONG. DEAD WRONG. Photoshop crashed before the pic saved--and I DIDN'T REALIZE IT. So I restarted--and lost the file completely. TOTALLY. It came out as nothing but a black pic with a red bar at the top. I was positively despondent. Worst thing? There was nothing that could be done about it--I even asked a guy at Staples if there was even any point in trying to recover it. He said no--so I restarted. Now, here is NOT where the miracle comes in. No, the miracle comes in just three hours ago. So, I had finally managed to re-do all seven hours of lineart, and had even moved past it to colours shading--in fact, it probably looks to the untrained/non-perfectionist eye EXACTLY AS IT DOES NOW, all I had to do were some final touch ups and it was done and I saved, and AGAIN this "lets you work while saving" thing bit me. If you download this image, you're going to find that it's HUGE. Like, CRAZY big. So, saving and using the paint-bucket on the ENTIRE CANVAS was too much for it. (I was making the BG green so I could see where I missed with my colours.) IT CRASHED WHILE SAVING AGAIN.

CUE ONE INSTANT COMPLETELY PANICKED AND SHAKING FELINE. I just started praying like nobody's business--and I'm REALLY glad that the Holy Spirit probably intervened, because I was completely reduced to babble along the lines of "No, please, God, no, I can't--I-I-". I immediately started searching how to recover corrupted files using the .tmp file(something I had noticed the first time around when I was, again, trying desperately to recover it--but since I HADN'T restarted and the .tmp(temporary) file still existed, I figured I had a chance), and couldn't seem to find anything to work. I couldn't even bring myself to open the actual file because I was so scared that doing that would corrupt it permanently, but I was too panicked to go through it all logically or search the internet with any sort of order, so I finally just double clicked on the file, and went straight to the floor, buried my head in my hands and tried to bring myself to terms with what I would find before I had to see the carnage. I was reminded of one of my favourite worship songs lyric-wise, and started to sing to remind myself--only the bridge though, it was all I could remember, and all I really needed to hear.

You give and take away,
You give and take away,
My heart will choose to say,
LORD, blessed be Your Name!

Blessed be the Name of the Lord,
Blessed be Your Name,
Blessed be the Name of the Lord,
Blessed be Your glorious Name.

I think the hardest part was trying to remind myself that I couldn't just say the words. I had to mean them. Definitely started to cry and then I sat up, expecting and ready to see that horrid black screen with a red bar, or however else corrupted files look like. And then I couldn't help but cover my mouth in PURE SHOCK at the Lord's mercy. There it was. Perfectly intact, maybe from a save thirty seconds previous to the crashing save(I tend to save a lot the further into a piece I get). I couldn't believe it, even though it was staring me in the face. I immediate tried to save it again to ensure its continued survival, but then realized it wouldn't save because I hadn't done anything! <><'> So I did the two edits I could recall doing right before the crashed-saved, saved again while DOING NOTHING ELSE, then closed the computer and went upstairs to write the event on my list of things to be thankful for. I then returned downstairs, still partially shaking, and sat down to watch some tv. Definitely needed a bit of an art break after all that! So, as you can see, I've finished my last few edits now, but I didn't start on them until after dinner, and just.. PRAISE THE LORD THAT THIS THING EXISTS AT ALL, OKAY!? I'm so happy. So, so SO happy. And incredibly thankful. How could I not be?! ...So, on that note, in case you somehow got through all that without realizing, I'm a Christian, and believe wholeheartedly in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If you have any questions about my faith or God in general, I'm be MORE than happy to answer them to the best of my abilities!

Ahem. Anyway, MOVING ONTO THE ACTUAL PICTURE/CHARACTER NOW.

This is Katerina Driad, or "Kat" for short--a Canadian exchange student to the Shibuya district of Japan. She's not very proficient at Japanese yet(AKA she knows as much as I know and no more--otherwise I couldn't imagine her lines!) but is doing her very best. She's a Christian as well, and is definitely having a little bit of culture shock with her classmates and the adults in her host family treating Sunday as just another day of the week. She's stationed to be in Japan for a full year, and is constantly trying to improve her Japanese. As a result of not knowing much though, she's far quieter in class than suits her true nature, so she's been having a hard time making meaningful friendships. Certainly as the new girl she's been getting a lot of attention, and gets to cringe (a LOT) at everyone's accents during English class, but she's adjusting.

So, even though she was the first character I made for the story, she's actually the third Cure to be found--first was Cure Rose, then Cure Moth, and she'll be followed by Cure Cobra and finally, Cure Salamander. Together, they are the Life Pretty Cure! Each one is supposed to represent a different form of life. Rose is plant life, Moth is insect life, Angora is mammal life, Cobra is reptile life, and Salamander is fish/amphibian life. Angora does break the trend a little bit by not just being Cure Cat(Angora is a specific breed)--but well, her name, Katerina, is slightly difficult to pronounce properly in the Japanese language, so she encourages everyone to just call her "Kyatto" or "kat"--and well, she can't be "Cat" in both forms!

So, the way she discovers she's a cure is pretty standard, attacked by the mook-of-the-week, the other two come in to help save her(and ultimately fail) and even though she's powerless, she can't just stand by while others put their necks on the line for her. That's when the Mammalian Keybox appears! (Yeah, I decided on Keyboxes and keys for the transformation trinkets.) Anyway, the mascot TRIES to explain what to do to her--and it fails quite spectacularly because the language is too difficult--finally the mascot just says "Key wo Keybox ni haite, 'Keybox, unlock my heart' wo itte!" (Put the key in the keybox and say "Keybox, unlock my heart!) Fortunately, Katerina kinda is thinking she's hallucinating at this point and goes along--and transforms into: The Spunky Spark! Cure Angora! 

So, as you can probably guess, thanks to her tails, she has power over fire and lightning, and her attack is the Angora Strike, where she uses both of her tails to send a powerful blast of electric fire at her opponents. Also--even though her tails are supposed to be wires, she can control them instinctually, and then purposefully as she gets used to them.

Now, this is where things get interesting, and how so depends on your perspective. After the bad guy has been defeated, Angora realizes something REALLY interesting. EVERYONE HAS STARTED TO SPEAK IN PERFECT ENGLISH. Very confused, she mentions this--and Moth and Rose immediate shoot back that they're not speaking English at all--she's speaking fluent Japanese! Cue rather confused everyone until the mascot notices Angora's headphones--turns out that they aren't just decorative! In addition to the two ear-shaped mics at the top acting exactly like cat ears(complete with emotion based movements--the purple parts conceal gears that allow it to move) for noise amplification, it also acts as a translation device--translating every language into English for her! Likewise, her necklace takes cues from her headphones and intercepts the signals from Angora's mind to her vocal cords/mouth and causes her to speak fluently in whatever language it is she's hearing. Of course, SHE still thinks she's speaking English when this happens. (That bell can also act as a speaker in case she loses her voice or ability to talk for some reason.) After some appropriate freaking out, Angora figures out how to detransform--and discovers her keybox's gift. You see, each keybox gives their Cure a special gift that allows them to use one of their powers in their civilian form. Moth has a backpack that sprouts wings and lets her fly for limited periods of time, Rose can grow plants/vines to aid her, Cobra gets a vile of antidote to any poison, and Salamander gets a mask that allows her to breath underwater for limited periods of time. What's Kat's gift? Take a guess. YEP! One bell necklace and a pair of matching cat-head earrings--the basic form of her headphones and bell! The only differences are, no hearing amplification, and the bell has a small on/off switch on it--meaning that Kat can turn the insta translation off! (She can't do this in her Cure form without removing the headphones).

Anyway, Kat is pretty relieved to find the off switch, as she's not too big of a fan of her body being taken over without permission, even in such a small sense, and you know, she actually wants to continue to learn Japanese! She can't do that if she hears everyone speaking in English all the time! So, she quickly designates the "gift" as an emergency/Has to talk to her Cure Comrades about things she doesn't have vocab for -typed thing, which does drive her Japanese friends up a wall a little bit(that she'd intentionally place a language barrier between them), but eventually learn that she just hates doing things "the easy way". Which is good, because being a Pretty Cure is NEVER easy.

So yeah, that's about all I have on her so far, I think. About the actual picture itself, the hardest part was deciding on the EXACT colours--I knew as being based off an ANGORA cat, the most typical of which is a White cat with Blue eyes, white and blue were going to have to be big, but I was probably influenced by Axium wear(RL CAT EAR HEADPHONES I WANT--although they can't translate anything) into knowing her headphones were black and purple--and black cats with yellow eyes work, and then of course, white cat= pink pads and--yeah. I knew all the base colours I wanted, but deciding on the specific ones was difficult and required some tweaking--EXCEPT for one piece of her--HER HAIR. Now, I've never been too big a fan of the whole "unnatural hair colour" thing, as you've probably guessed from the fact the majority of my characters and art have natural colours, so designing a Pretty Cure was hard in that aspect. I was tempted to go with brown hair, which her civilian form definitely still has, but it didn't really seem to work with the design. Neither did any form of off-white(including those taken directly from pics of Angora cats), blue or green--I was actually really surprised to discover Pink worked! I mean, usually pink's reserved for the Cure Leader(but not always), but hey! If it works it works! That being said though, somehow I almost feel like it's actually the red shading that really brings the piece together. I just adore it! <^^> Purrr~

Finally, I love her tails--and I think the whole "wire" thing worked out well for them. The hardest part was the fire on her right tail(leftmost in the pic) as I had already successfully created it in the first attempt that I completely lost, and well, when I lose something, I then become REALLY perfectionist about its replacement, or else I'm going to constantly think the first attempt was better, and never get over losing it. Extreme? Very. Valid emotion? Yes. Logical? NOPE. Oh welll~ Anyway, I'm just glad I got something to work out--partially because I finally remembered part of what had made me like it so much in the first place. Instead of just doing a fire--I had styled it to appear(to me anyway) like it was from an electronic stove burner! You see, she may get two powers, but that's because Angora is the bolt of lightning that starts a fire, which is why she's the Spunky Spark! So yeah.

Well, I'm sure you're all tired of listening to me ramble, and if you made it this far please let me know so I can applaud you personally! Until next time guys!

-feline, out!


EDIT: Wow. It took me this long to realize that I misspelled "Cure" キャア instead of the proper キュア! FIXED as of Sept 16th 2016~!