Legacy LD5

Hi everyone, RipRoarRex here.

Introducing a brand new series to my gallery - Rexar & Mike: Snapshots.

For a while now, I've been planning on starting a new collection of images aimed at revealing more about the relationship between Rexar and Mike. I have shown them as a couple many times, but I've never really felt like I've been able to convey the way I imagine them together, or any of the back story I have developed between them in my mind over the years.

Obviously it doesn't help that I've spent so many years in the past drawing Rexar as a big growly rampaging monster, and many people probably don't see much beyond that. But in truth, I stopped thinking about Rex like that quite a few years ago now. Indeed, my infamous abandoned comic 'First Time' was going to be my attempt to show Rexar and Mike as I have come to think of them, but doing one continuous strip proved too big a task for me and it was bogged down by my old drawing style.

At the start of the year therefore, I decided I wanted to begin a new series of images capturing Rexar and Mike as a couple, only not as a comic this time. Instead, I decided to produce a number of individual pictures and accompanying short stories conveying individual moments in the history of their relationship - 'Snapshots', as it were. Hence, here is the first.

I should right away stress that Snapshots will not be a canonical story. It will not take any particular order or follow any chronological timeline within my concept of Rexar and Mike's relationship. It is instead intended to serve as a public development of the characters, randomly skipping without order from moment to moment, based simply on whatever I wish to convey. I feel it gives me much greater freedom and scope for exploration than the 'First Time' comic, as well as not being tied down to any particular era in my artwork.

Snapshots has been a work in progress for a while, and even though I present here a 'first' image, it is in fact the fifth picture I have drawn so far for this series. A couple of the others are visible in my Great Unfinished Collection Vol. 2 on FurAffinity, all of which I intend to finish and upload in due course.

I wanted to present this one first however because it captures something of Rexar and Mike's relationship before they got together. In my head, I like to imagine that Rexar is Mike's best friend, someone who has helped him through some very tough times. I also imagine that Mike has grown up a straight guy, but as Rexar helps him out of some particularly dark times in his life, he starts to look at Rex in a new light, imagining what it would be like to be closer to him...



As a piece of art, I wasn't entirely satisfied with this. The drawing wasn't too bad, minus the difficulties I had getting Rexar to sit properly in the lounger, and the fact that I'm not sure where the end of his tail is supposed to be. To make things a bit easier, I ended up drawing Rexar on one sheet of paper and Mike on another before putting them both together after scanning, though they remained on separate layers throughout. The colouring was relatively painless, and the texturing didn't take as long as I thought it would. My main disappointment however was how the background related to the subjects - the lighting just never worked how I wanted it to, and I didn't feel I could correct it without completely changing the look of the characters or the feel of the background, so I ended up leaving it as it is.

It has been a couple of months since I last submitted any artwork, and I have had quite a lot of people coming to me in that time asking me what I'm working on or when I'm uploading my next piece. I do have a lot of pieces in the pipeline (not just Snapshots), but my new job is proving very demanding on my free time - I work evening shifts and occasionally have been doing weekend shifts and work from home too, plus I have many other commitments outside of the fandom. However, I have been itching to get more work completed recently, so here's hoping there will be more pieces coming soon.




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MIKE:

There it was. That feeling again.

Why did I keep wanting to look at him? What was the matter with me? Rex had always been my friend, but I had never thought about him like this before. It was like that dream had shown me a completely different side of him, and now I couldn't stop wondering - would it really be like that?

I don't know why I was even thinking about it. It was just a dream. But it had felt so real. I could remember how safe I felt, how right it felt, how excited I felt. To be like that with him, to have him being that intimate with me, being that gentle with me. I just couldn't get that idea out of my head. The more I looked at him, the more I wanted to know whether he could be like that in real life... and the more I felt sure that he would.

He'd always been so great to me. He'd always helped me out, he'd always made me feel better about myself. And now he'd given me a safe and comfortable place to stay when I had nowhere else to go. Whenever he was around, I just felt like I didn't need to worry. Seeing him there, lying around in his back garden, just chilling out and reading his book - even though he wasn't even trying, he was like this presence of security, of support, of protection. No matter what might happen at that moment, even if I was really frightened, it would be okay as long as he was there. And I yearned for him to be closer.

But it wasn't just that. Looking at him now, it was as if he was no longer just my friend. It was like I was seeing him for the animal he was. Strong, powerful, athletic. I'd seen his body before, watching him playing football on TV, swapping shirts at the end of the match and showing off his physique. But it was so different seeing him in front of me like that, seeing the sheer size of his frame, the full depth of his curves and muscles. I was only just realising how incredible he looked.

And it made the feeling more intense. I felt like I had protection from someone so strong, so confident. And knowing that he was a dinosaur too - this species, so much more ancient than my own, that primal, prehistoric power still living on within him, feeling that he could still release it when he wished - it made him seem so much more impressive to me. The fact that he was male didn't seem to deter me anymore - in fact, there was something about his masculine strength that I found so reassuring.

I could feel the excitement surging inside me as my eyes traced his form. Everything about him was so perfect - his big arms, his powerful legs, his thick, strong chest rising and falling softly with the slow, relaxed rhythm of his lungs. The vibrant, warm colour of his skin, his smooth, moist scales glistening in the light, rippling gently over his finely toned muscles. Even the way he gently lifted his toes, tipping his sandal to let the air cool the soft orange skin of his feet. I just couldn't stop admiring him...

Suddenly I realised he wasn't looking at his book anymore. He was looking at me. I turned my head away quickly. How long had he been looking? Had he seen me gazing at him like that? Had he seen me turn away quickly like that? He must have noticed something...

"Hey - everything okay, pup?" he said. "You got something on your mind?"

Oh Rex. If only you knew.


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RRRex

Guilty as charged.

These are your characters, so you can thrust them into any role you darn well please. As their creator, you have full control over what qualifies as 'canon.' Will there be any in-universe connection between Macro-Rexar and Romance-Rexar? It's up to you! Naturally a shift in perspective (particularly one this drastic, even with so much advance notice) could lead to a shift in audience... but as you've stated before, you draw for yourself.

By painstakingly bringing the visions of your mind's eye to a digital medium, hemming and hawing, erasing and redrawing for maximum accuracy, you are essentially turning fantasy into reality. That takes a great deal of discipline, and courage on top of that to share it!

Nicely done, RRR - that's a lovely situation very well drawn AND described! You also did a damn fine job on Rexar's torso too, despite the tricky angle. Much kudos for that.

I, for one, love seeing a Rexar in a relaxed setting like this...I'd be dreaming of his feet just like Mike!

Thanks, Sprotchymon! I've no particular intentions on bringing the 'two Rexars' together at any stage. To me, they're not two physical entities, nor are they one character with multiple personalities. They are simply two different visualisations of a fantasy, and I can flick back and forth between one and the other based on my own desires (which I suppose is what seems confusing to other people). Admittedly though, I now consider the kind Rexar to be the 'true' conception of him.




It's always nice to hear from other artists who can appreciate when an angle is difficult to draw. It's often quite deceptive, as in this case - it looks like a profile view, but it isn't quite. And it's always that 'quite' that makes it surprisingly difficult.

Thanks, Diablo!




Heh - I think Mike's dreaming of a bit of everything! Sexy feet are even better when they're part of a whole sexy package, which is how I like to think of Rexar - a loving, good looking dino who just happens to have awesome feet as well.



Thanks Dino!