What happened was about a year ago it occurred to me that what my publishing company, Heliopause Productions, really needed was a mascot. Someone cute and approachable with a good sense of humor, who represented the best of what my art and stories were like. I was on a plane coming home from AnthroCon 2018 when it hit me that here I was, a professional furry artist, and I had not made a fursona for my company. After a few moments clutching my metaphorical pearls I got to work doodling creatures and characters. I briefly considered a dragon, but decided that Heliopause was too quirky to be represented by anything other than something completely original. Then an odd creature, both like and unlike anything I had ever seen before, came trotting down the stairs and across the floor of my mind.
This creature had everything I liked best to draw: a horse’s face and graceful body, a lion’s paws, good little hind hoofers, a magnificent tail, and a single antler rising from her forehead. She had such a defined form that I had to check on kirins to make sure I hadn’t subconsciously copied anything. And while you can perhaps see the influence, I don’t think you’d ever get the two mixed up.
A lot of conceptual work followed, refining the elements so that her design would work both as an iconic figure and in my more realistic style. Through all this I struggled to find a name for her (Hippi, Pippi, and the inevitable Heliopaws were all considered) until just a few weeks ago when I needed art for a new table runner and sat down to do the piece above. Then I truly needed a name, and so spent twenty-four restless hours writing down every possibility that came to mind.
I wanted a name that reflected her astrological nature. I wanted a name that was both impressive and funny. I wanted a name that matched my Kimaerhaic naming convention of having an R following by an H, and (since she was female) ending in i.
I came up with a lot of good names this way, some of which will probably turn up later attached to other characters. But none of them were the right name for her—until I got to Astrhopi.
Astrhopi is mostly equine, with lionlike paws and a flowing peacock tail. Maybe she’s a little unicorn—though her horn is technically a metaphysical antler which gives her powers of flight. I like to think of her as an adjunct to my Rhondi character. Where Rhondi is the erupting, creating, visionary force, Astrhopi is the broadcasting, messaging, preserving (publishing haha) force.
(This implies that there is a third force; a consuming, devouring, destroying force—but we’ll talk about Dagrhi later.)
So that’s Astrhopi! Expect to see her taking over Heliopause branding art in the near future. For now, I’ll have some prints of the brush pen illustration above at my table at AnthroCon, and probably the original in the art show (for a very large number of dollars indeed).
This post was made available first to my generous supporters on Patreon.