That is the question. Yesterday I felt like doing yet another color job, and I came across this sketch by Kazerad as a commission for Rick2Tails. I didn’t ask Rick if I could color it, but I feel like I know him well enough to know he’d be fine with it – and Kaz is certainly fine with it.
Now first, let me go off on a rant about coloring scanned sketches. Don’t. That’s my rant. I’m not ragging on Kaz here at all, but dammit it’s hard to get rid of all those extra lines! On the good side, you get so MANY lines to choose from – it’s kinda of a Roll-Your-Own sketch. Don’t like the curve of her thigh? Choose a different line! I mean, look at those intertwined tails! Quill magically has two different end-tails! 🙂 But that’s my problem. If I really wanna color a pencil sketch, there’s an hours worth of cleanup work to even get started!
But I really like this one because I honestly think it’s the only Kazerad drawing of a HAPPY Quill-Weave in existence. And, let’s face it, there’s some pretty seriously implied shipping going on here between Quill and Katia. Granted they’re about to go down on the Titanic but still…
Okay, but here’s the real question. A while back I did that sunbathing Quill and put lots of shiny highlighting on her. I liked it. A lot. So then even when I did the Pilgrim one I kept the shiny highlilghts.
Now, I’m afraid I’ve probably taken it too far. And that’s the Q. I know from past experience that my Tumblr readers don’t talk back much. That’s okay. I’ll post this elsewhere too. But I’m honestly wondering if I’m taking the shiny too far. (And breast emphasis – I already know that. But that’s something I’ll just have to live with.)
So, here it is – without the shiny. This is not finished – I made sure to keep all clothing colors change-able as I’m not convinced I like those either. And the water is horrible. But BESIDES that, is this better without shiny highlights:
Or with the shiny bits:
Of course, I’m leaning towards ‘with’ but that may well be just me. If I’m overdoing it, I would actually like to know!
After the fanfic readings Friday night from Kaz, I’m dying to write more. Maybe I’ll even improve my grammar and spelling. But what to write, what to write? Well, I’ve got an idea for that. Since I have SO many followers (50% of which are actually likely not porn-bots), ask the readers! So, have a survey!
If I set it up right, it should be completely anonymous. Using Google Forms because those other ones kinda suck visually and I always like putting images in things.
So… what do you want to see more of on the fanfic side? Don’t worry, there’s ideas for totally new stuff there too as well as a write-in area.
It’s my current obsession now. I’ve got the whole story pretty well worked out now. Up to ‘chapter 7′ up now at http://bdfanfic.tumblr.com and I’ve also got a new artist doing my images. Anscer. I posted some of her work to the Prequel fanart booru, but I might as well post them here too. First, this is her first drawings of Porcupine-Dodger she drew as a practice to see if she could do it. She’s more an anime artist than furry/prequel.
And then this is the one she did for Dodger: Continuation (5). She’s going to do one for Continuation (7) as well, but it will have to be added later. (I’ve already written (8)!
I’m working on coloring it too, but I put it up in the story as-is till I get the coloring done. She’s got her own style, but I’d say it works pretty well!
Oh… did I mention Anscer’s my daughter? Don’t worry, she’s an adult. (No, don’t ask me how old I am. Old enough I should know better probably.)
Author’s note: I’ve decided to continue my fanfiction on a different blog. bdfanfic.tumblr.com. I’ll reblog to here from there for a while, but eventually I’ll stop putting fanfictions there at all and reserve it for other oddities. So, if you want to follow my fanfic stuff, be sure to add bdfanfic.tumblr.com blog to your… whatever it is. Here’s part 3 of Dodger: Continuation.
They resumed their journey in the bustling street. Eventually they came to a district full of what appeared to be graves. Yellow-Eyes stepped off the path and grabbed a small stone, setting it gingerly onto an otherwise unremarkable headstone.
“What’s that for?” Dodger asked, not able to resist the question.
“Never you mind. Let’s go.”
They returned the way they’d come and passed through to an area where she read “Elven Garden” above the gateway. Dodger was nearly ready to ask Yellow-Eyes where she might stop to use a bathroom when instead he stepped up to a building with a sign overhead that read “Luther Broad’s Boarding House”. Within, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. Yellow-eyes was already speaking with a man she could only assume was Luther Broad in quiet tones. The man nodded and handed him a key.
“Come Dodger. We have a place to stay for the night.”
“Where’s the restroom?” she asked, and Yellow-Eyes gestured to a door to their right.
Once inside, she wished she had done her business outdoors. The stench was powerful, and there were two men there pissing into the same hole while another was just finishing up. As disgusting as the place was, she had to admit that she’d discovered a new fact about human anatomy she’d not known before. Her books had been quite unclear as to certain details. Looking at the stinking hole, she was at least gratified to see the other two were finishing up, and they left her in peace while she did her best to complete the task as sanitarily as she could manage while not gagging.
She saw Yellow-Eyes waiting for her by the stairs as she tried to adopt a non-nonchalant attitude.
“Sure, I piss in stinking shitholes all the time with other humans around,” she thought to herself. “No big deal, right?”
But as they entered their room, she let loose.
“Oh my god! Yellow-Eyes, that place was awful! How do you stand it? I’m going outside next time!”
“You’ll get used to it,” he said, laying down on the bed.
Dodger crossed to the meager window and tried to look out. “I doubt that very much.”
“Dodger, don’t piss outside unless you go all the way out of the city. It’s a crime and you could get put in jail. This place is full of laws you mustn’t cross.”
Dodger scratched at the window, hoping to clean through the dirt. She finally managed to get a bit of a view, but her window just looked out onto the next building so she turned back to Yellow-Eyes.
“Only one bed?”
“Dodger, I’m penniless. My friend will help us out, but I don’t want to push it. You can have the bed, just let me take a quick nap. I know the owner though, and he knows I’m good for the rent. And he knows you’re with me. Why don’t you go down and get us some food?”
“Good idea!” she nodded, suddenly feeling the emptiness of her belly.
As she stepped to the door, Yellow-Eyes caught her attention and tossed her the key.
“Lock it.”
“Nice place you’ve brought me to,” she said, catching the key.
“I brought you nowhere, young one. You came here of your own free will.”
“Good point. Okay, I’ll be back shortly.”
“When you come back, knock three times, then once before you open the door,” the Argonian said, closing his eyes.
“Jeeze,” she thought as she stepped out into the hall. “Is he paranoid or what?”
Suddenly she had a thought and looked around the hall. No one there, but she should start checking. Maybe he wasn’t paranoid.
“So, you’re with Kem?” the man she figured was Luther asked as she sat at the bar. It was still afternoon and there weren’t many patrons around.
“Kem?”
“Well, that’s what he calls himself here anyway. Why, what do you call him?”
“Mostly Sir.”
“A good girl, you. Sure, I’ll get you some food. Want anything while you wait?”
“A drink would be nice. Maybe some ale?”
“Ale huh? How old are you kid?”
“Seventeen,” she admitted.
“Yeah. About what I figured. Have some Root Beer.”
Dodger took a sip as Luther walked into a back room. “Not bad, really,” she thought. Somehow she had figured it would taste like the bathroom smelled. But mostly the public room smelled of humans, smoke and stale beer. She saw a couple of men looking at her, but decided it would be best to ignore them as much as she could. That worked for a minute, but then she saw them approaching from the corner of her eye.
“What’s a scaly girl like you doing in a place like this?” one of them asked. She was actually please to notice he didn’t slur his words.
“I’m traveling with a friend. Name’s Dodger. What’s your name?” she asked, standing up from the stool and holding out her hand in greeting.
“Oh! You speak the language well. Glad to meet you Dodger. I’m Falric and this is my brother Elric.”
Dodger was pleased to see her insight was right. Give a stranger your name and they’re not a stranger anymore. And hopefully they’ll be kind. She shook Elric’s hand.
“Are you travelers too?”
“Traveler? Oh no. We live here in the city,” Falric replied, resting his hand on her shoulder.
Suddenly she felt uncomfortable. Customs vary widely, but what she had learned of human custom indicated that physical touch is not normal among strangers. This man was getting a little too personal. She decided the direct approach might be best. She took his hand and pulled it away from her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Falric. I’m still not familiar with human customs well, but where I’m from we don’t touch like that. Really, I apologize. It’s just not comfortable for me.”
The man’s reaction was a relief.
“Oh. I see. Well I meant no offense. So where are you headed?” he continued.
She felt a rustle behind her and spun around to face Elric, catching his hand deftly.
“I don’t have any money. Sorry Elric,” she said, baring her teeth in what could have been a sweet smile, or could have been something more.
“Oh. Um… sorry Dodger. My brother… sticky fingers you know.” Falric said.
Dodger released the Elric’s hand, making sure he scraped his wrist on her talons first.
“Oh, I know all right.”
“Listen, Dodger. You seem like a girl with her head on straight. If you ever need a job…”
“If I need a job pick-pocketing travelers, I’ll look out for you two. Or I’ll just freelance.”
“Oh, you don’t want to do that, Missy,” Elric said, rubbing his wrist. “There’s a Guild you know. You’ll lose your hand or worse if you don’t join the Guild.”
“A Guild huh? Tell me about it Elric,” she said, putting her arm around his back and lead the two brothers back to a table nearby. “I’m very interested…”
A few minutes later the bartender returned with two covered plates. He stepped up to the table where the three were talking.
“Hey, what’s this? Dodger, you don’t want to hang around with these two!”
“Oh, it’s fine Mr. Broad. My friends here were just telling me all about a Guild I might be interested in joining.”
The owner’s eyes opened wide. “Oh? You?”
“You never know.”
“Best ask your friend Kem about that,” Mr. Broad warned, setting the plates down.
At that, the other two men’s eyes followed the same path. “Kem? Is he here? You’re with Kem?” Falric said, suddenly pulling back away from her.
“I… suppose so. Yeah. I’m with Kem. Why?”
The two stood up with alarm. “Listen, tell Kem we didn’t many anything by it. We were just… well, you know. Business!”
“Yeah, business!” said Elric as they walked as quickly as reasonably possible to the door. "Gotta go now. Nice to meet you Dodger!“
“Nice to meet…” Dodger was saying as the door closed behind them. “…you too.”
First, I’m up to 92 watchers. Wow! I should do something special when I hit 100 I guess! Someone suggested I should stream my coloring jobs. I dunno, I don’t think I’m being falsely modest when I say I’m really not that good. I mean, really – have you SEEN what some people can do? But hey, I’m also enough of an egotist to maybe give it a shot.
I watched a couple FurNut streams a while back and he’s got the cutest cat using FaceRig ever. Great idea. They’ve got a dragon too, but it’s not a CUTE dragon. Still, I might have to give that a shot.
Here’s my dilemma. I got a bunch of sketches from Kaz when I was up there, but I’ve already done all the ones I’m really interested in. Here’s what I’ve got. (I’d clean up the scans a lot before coloring though. No idea why they have that green tint, but I’d turn them to black-and-white first anyway)
Kaz can’t draw anything without them being cute. But meh… Neither inspire me much.
KInda a little intrigued by the pizza one. But… eh…
Now Evil Quill Weave is ALWAYS going to be near the top of my list. The only negative with this one is, I don’t know what the context is! If I do any of them, this is the most likely.
Or this one. I do like doing Quill I must admit.
Wow. That’s a REALLY bad pun Kaz! Like… hopelessly bad. (There’s a guy on the streams that goes by Robbyn I think that’s what this is referencing.)
This is the only one that’s an actual commission! I recall I was trying to be as non-lewd as possible and asked for Katia with a nice butterfly. A good take on it as only Kaz can do! But again, it doesn’t really inspire me much, and it’s such a pain to clean up scans and color I really gotta be inspired. I think I’ve colored every one of the actual commissions I’ve ever gotten, but…
Anyway, not really asking for suggestions here. More I just like putting every chicken-scratch Kaz does online because they’re always fun to look at anyway even if I don’t color them.
I’m on realbboy’s discord that’s prequel-focused and I’d talked realbboy into creating a separate fanfic channel. It’s been too quiet so I promised to write one. I took inspiration from this – a commission from Enheldor by Kazerad:
And this time, Kaz can read it if he wants. He has my permission. I had to do some archive-searching to figure out exactly when this might have happened and pegged the time as just after Katia took a bath but before she left in the next panel. And of course all mention of it has been expunged from the record.
Without further ado – A Fine Apple.
“Well, that was… weird,” Quill thought as she closed the door behind her. She stood outside the door for a minute, listening to see if the crazy Khajiit inside her house would get up to anything stupid. She heard nothing until suddenly she heard the distinct sound of pawpads running towards the door from the inside.
“Holy shit! She’s coming! I can’t let her catch me spying on her!” Quill Weave thought quickly and leaped atop the nearest hiding place she could find, which turned out to be the neighbor’s patio roof. To call it a roof was, perhaps, a little generous. It might keep rainwater from falling to the floor underneath well enough, but her first touch proved it would not hold a fully grown Argonian from doing the same. In a panic, she leaped from one support beam to the next, barely avoiding collapsing the whole structure before she managed to jump onto a branch and swing back to the ground.
She glanced back and saw the cat standing in her doorway, looking straight at her. She bounded away over a fence and out of sight before stopping to catch her breath.
“Damn it! Pull yourself together girl! She’s just a cat and a scraggly one at that. You don’t even like Khajiits. Do you?” the Argonian asked herself.
Still, she did use her Gaydar at the bar the other day, she realized. Was she disappointed with the result? If not, why do it in the first place? Of course, it’s not every day you see a naked Khajiit hanging from the roof at the bar. There’s some real talent there…
“I’m gonna need a drink,” she decided. “Just as soon as I get done at the castle!”
**************
It took no time to drop in and ask about bringing her ‘friend’ to dinner of course, so rather than head back to encounter that cat again, she opened the door to her second home. Fortunately the bartender was being friendly today and didn’t give her a hard time.
“That was quite a night last night, eh Quill?” he asked as he handed her the third bottle.
Quill spent a millisecond considering if she should tell him about her discovery that the cat had trashed her house and was still there. Some things just needn’t be public knowledge. Instead she downed half the bottle before replying, “Yeah, quite a performance.”
“You going to pay me back for that pineapple? Those things aren’t easy to get around here you know.”
Quill sighed. “Oh, I guess. Here. Will that cover it?”
The bartender appraised the coins she’d plunked down. “Quill, that will buy the pineapple AND another case!”
“Well then bring it man!”
An hour later, the room was swimming. But that was alright, Quill Weave liked swimming. Sitting on a bar stool without falling off, however, was getting more challenging.
“Look MISHTER,” she was saying to where the bartender had been a moment ago, “Jush because I looked at her doesn’t mean I was interesting in her or anyth.”
“Oh, are you still talking about that Khajiit?” said his voice from behind her as he was mopping up some liquor that had missed her mouth somehow.
“STHAY IN ONE PLACE DAMMIT! Sop sneaking around behind me. What kinda barthender are you anyway?”
“Well I was just saying, you don’t use that on everybody. You’ve never used it on me!”
“Yer not my thype, baldy.”
“So, she is your type then?”
“She’s a slutcat. Parading around nekked like that. If I wanned to be a slut, I’d be the best slut this town has ever seen. I’d hang upthide down bettern she ever did.”
“I’m sure you would… say, don’t you think you’ve had enough? It’s still afternoon and you’re sloshed, Quill.”
“I’m juss saying. You like me donchoo? You doen wanna see me nekked on the ceiling do you?”
“No Quill. I don’t want to see you naked.”
“I bet I cood do that thing with the pineapple too. Probably better’n her. Wimpy little cat. And I could do it without splatting the whole thing all over too! Hey! I see another pineabble back there! Gimme that.”
“Quill, you don’t need that pineapple.”
Quill pondered that for a minute. “Do I need a pineabble?”
“No, you don’t. You need to go home. You can go take a nap and sleep this off. You were saying you have a dinner to go to at the castle tonight Quill. You need to go home.”
“I do, don’t I? Do you know where my house is?”
******************
As she staggered home, somewhere in the back of her addled brain she realized it was best she take the back way home. She paused to relieve herself of some excess drink and looked curiously at the clear liquid she’d brought back up for a while, not quite understanding what it was she was looking at. Then she looked at the little ball with a string tied to it and the orange that the bartender had given her. He was right, she decided. She’d have to work up to the pineapple. She took off her clothes and started to practice.
When finally she floated to the door in front of her house, she stared at it for a little while. “Why are you on the wrong side?” she asked the door. “You should be the other way around.” She knocked at her own door. “Hello? Who’s there?” she answered herself. Nobody answered, so she opened the door.
The cat was standing there with a beard of suds, looking at her dumbfounded. “Quill Weave?”
“Oh! I’m thorry. I thought thith was my houth. Thorry misther.”
“Quill, are you drunk?” the Khajiit asked, wiping the suds-beard off her chin.
“Oh! Hi Katia. Did you see that old man? You’re looking fine. Did you take a bath? Mmm. You smell clean,” Quill drawled, staggering into the Khajiit.
“QUILL! Stop that!”
“You’re one fine-looking cat you know. Hey! Wanna see me do a trick? I’ve been practith. Praktish.. Dammit, I’ve been P R A C T I C I N G! Now where is that ball and orange? Katia, do you see a ball or an orange on me anywhere?”
“I see a lot of you Quill, but sorry, no ball or orange.”
“Oh! Here’s that ball!” Quill said, finding the toy where Katia hadn’t looked.
“OH MY GOD! QUILL!”
“You know, if you were a toy, you’d be whoa-yo!”
“Quill! Be careful, the bath-tub is right there.”
“…and if you were a fruit, you’d be a FINE-apple!”
And with that, she fell butt-first into the tub.
********************
Katia was smiling, but made the oath anyway. “Never. I promise.”
“I mean it. Just forget that ever happened,” Quill said. “Thanks for getting me sober again, but really REALLY forget it. It didn’t happen.”
“Of course not. Don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Quill looked at the cat. That was a shit-eating grin if ever she’d seen one.
So last post I was talking about not having done any commissions from Kaz for a while but that I just hadn’t gotten inspired. Plus he’s been doing streams like every night for days now. Well I got one coming now that I’m looking forward to. He did the Quill Weave playing RPG with a little imagining of her PC. A dashing archer. So it will be good to get that and do my color thing on it.
I actually commissioned FurNut a few days back for a followup to the Katia/Trashpanda Noodle thing. Basically I was looking through the booru during a stream to try and get inspiration when I ran across that and realized I really like the style.
I don’t think it would be trash-talking FurNut to say he’s a bit over the line into cubby sort of things sometimes. Okay, well and truly over any line you care to draw. But he’s got the cutest style ever. (Well, actually even when it IS over the line it’s still cute.) Seems like his characters are always so… I don’t know… HAPPY looking. I really became enamored of his style with this:
That’s just adorable work there. So after Kaz did his take on Trashpanda and Katia sharing a noodle with a sexy nude Katia on a plate with noodles, I noticed one glaring flaw. It wasn’t colored! Oh the shame! Well, it JUST SO HAPPENS, FN, that I have been working on learning to color… so I asked him if I could color it. I won’t post it here again, if you’re following me you probably already know the one.
So I thought I’d commission FurNut directly and ask for a followup. I’d requested something like “Katia and Trashpanda playing in the noodles”. I had something roughly like this in mind:
I fell asleep before FN could get to mine though so he held off till I was able to watch a stream. (He’s got a cool animated facial-motion-tracking avatar thing that I think we’ve officially named Dapperkitty. It’s the coolest thing ever and perfect for a stream. I want to get one. I noticed they have a Dragon so… that might happen if ever I did anything stream-worthy.)
A couple nights ago the stars were aligned and i watched him draw my commission on his stream. Before he started, he said he had an idea but it might be too NSFW for the Prequel booru.
Now look. I’m a guy, and in most cases that means I’m a pig for that stuff. I’m not going to sugar coat it. I don’t think I’m particularly INTO furry porn, but I definitely appreciate the well done ones. And it’s been my experience that if an artist has an idea, let them run with it! It’s better than anything you could dream up. That’s why I commissioned this from Kaz:
I had no idea what it was going to be, but Kaz said he had an idea for an Adine picture and I was more than happy to pay $10 to get it realized. Because Kaz ideas are pretty often best ideas. Best $10 I ever spent? Probably not, but it’s up there!
So I told FurNut to go ahead with his idea. And yea – it was IMHO a good one. A very good one. Also his method is VERY amenable to coloring. His lines are clean and uniform. Believe me, after coloring scanned paper drawings, it’s like heaven!
Here’s the thing. I can’t post it directly here. I really do want to keep this tumblr SFW – at least marginally. Here’s a cropped version anyway:
But I can link to it, with the VERY clear admonition that it’s NSFW. Depending on your definition, it’s porn. Not sex, but… well, if you don’t fear clicking the link, you can be the judge…
But it’s so CUTE! And I was very proud of my coloring job on it too. I honestly think it was 2:00am last night when I finished it. (I get obsessed easily). So I made a version with no nipples and no… well… camel toe? that I thought might just squeak by the Booru rules as questionable.
Kaz still had his stream up so I popped in and asked him if it would be acceptable.
He laughed and basically said. “No. No no no.”
I’ll be honest, I felt bad. Embarrassed. I felt like I should have KNOWN that based on his reaction. Why could I not see that it was so over-the-line that it shouldn’t have even been a question? Still do kinda. I guess I’ve just gotten so desensitized to such things that when I see something so cute, I don’t really “see” the sexual part of it as much. I dunno.
Well there’s plenty of other places to post it. Other than FurNut’s booru I’ve upped it to e621, FA and Sofurry now. That’s enough. And I’ll get over my embarrassment quickly. By the time I finish coloring QW’s PC, this will all be a vague bad memory. And I’m aware I’m overly sensitive to such things – esp. considering some of the other side-works I do.
Got a couple new commissions from Kaz recently (and I still honestly haven’t send my $ to him for these, so I am PROMISING myself to go get that in the mail as soon as I finish this!
I do like coloring scans. It’s just fun for me if I like what I’m coloring. But it’s been a while. So I was happy to see a bar-stream recently (as homestreams aren’t physical commissions). The first one was just a doodle-thing Kaz did that I asked if I could have. The intent was no deeper than Kaz asking if people could see the stream. But perhaps it has some deeper existential meaning. I didn’t spend much time on it – it’s just a doodle after all…
Playing with hard shading mostly. I also commissioned a couple at a homestream – might as well put those up here, though they’re 100% Kaz – I had no hand in them but for the commission. I was on a Weedum-Ja kick that night so I got Weedum-Ja topless bikini. (it’s really okay. Argonians are canon nip-less as here):
And I commissioned one of Katia working on the update. The topless part I didn’t even ask for!
Then somewhere along the line during the barstream I got onto an Adine kick – (aka Goggles from Angels with Scaly Wings). He drew me one physically which I’ll finish this post out with. The other I THOUGHT I wanted physically too but he talked me out of it to await him going home and doing it there. The commission was “Katia washing Adine in the shower”. (There’s a shower scene in Angels with Scaly Wings.) Little did I know Kaz had a plan for that involving a .gif animation:
Yeah, he was right. That needed to be a .gif. However, I found out quickly that there are some quite-serious fans of Goggles (Spencerish just one!). Well, I hope to quell any hard feelings with this next one. However, since it doesn’t contain any Prequel characters, I can’t put it up on the Booru there. Here’s the commission before I got my claws on it:
And I just finished coloring it, revising the text to be more readable etc:
Even my wife got that joke and she has no clue who Goggles is. (Though she did ask why she’s talking into her tail like a phone. Part of Angels with Scaly Wings reference there.)
And then, I just had to include this one to finish up, even though it’s not mine:
I think it was at Kaz’ most recent barstream (he’s been doing homestreams mostly lately) I actually joined early and he had drawn this:
Of course I had to at least ask for it! I have coloring and shading practice to do at the very least, and having a concerned QW looking out for my mental health seemed an awfully good way to start, even if she’s far too late. I posted a version of it on the booru last night but realized this morning I got her tongue totally wrong. So here’s the flatcolor version with a basic green background.
And of course my standard soft shading (with cleavage! I couldn’t very well leave that out even if I’m keeping it minor this time.)
But I think it was Pronin who was suggesting I use more hard edged shading, so I gave it a shot. I’m just not confident in it’s use to use it alone yet. In fact, it was this fan art from Heresy! that made me want to try it:
I’d gotten an early linedrawing of it from /trash/ and did my own coloring – I didn’t realize it was Heresy! himself that had posted it. I thought it was some old, dead linework. I even did my own color job of it, (which is embarrassingly bad compared to his and will never see the light of day!) But this seems like a good example of both soft and hard shading used effectively.
I figured the best background would be a shot of my Discord screen itself, and thus the final version:
Oddly enough, there were more comments about my desktop on the booru than the actual artwork! Well, that and the whole subject of Discords. Honestly, I don’t mind them at all. But I’m already lost. I just liked the picture! So don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t even agree!
As for that start button – I’m using Classic Shell and you can customize the start button. In fact, it has 3 different images for 3 different states – default, hover and click states. That’s Zorryn’s more-than-a-little-awesome-if-not-legendary “Nearly Finished” from https://www.furaffinity.net/view/10898361/ :
in it’s default state. Hover and click states are… let’s just say more of the same but zoomed in to varying degrees. 🙂
bdprequel 