After attempting to redesign Connor ("Ten Cents") Laodegan for the better part of the past year and a bit, I was stuck. On the one hand, I wanted to nix at least half of his colours (his previous form had 13 shades of browns and tans, and he was an expensive fursuit!) and on the other, I was getting nowhere and just wanted to wipe his design clean and start fresh.

The trouble was...how to redesign a design you were inspired to create from an existing childhood character in the first place and then translate it successfully to a fursuit? For some people, that comes easy. For me...eh, not so much ^^;

Rather than make like a jenga tower and yank the foundations out from underneath this character, I instead wanted to keep his backstory set in stone: as such, he is the sometimes-companion to my main fursona and they have a friendly rivalry-type of relationship as siblings, as well as being the resident Caitian for my previous Star Trek fursuiting LARP's.

Having had his (now-retired) fursuit partially destroyed by a third party of whom I am still deeply angered by (long story short, $500+ USD in headpiece structural damages and no apologies/reimbursement has ever been made; I'll never get one either - lesson learned!), I'd pretty much come to the point of barely acknowledging the character's existance. And that bothered me terribly; VJ and Connor have been a part of me since I was seven years old, one can't properly exist without the other. They have deep personal meaning to me, and to simply stop and cut Connor out of the picture just didn't feel anyways right considering how long they've been together in arts and storylines.

And then I found this gorgeous design by Blushmutt on FA a couple nights ago...and fell in love so hard I had to have it for Connor's redesign <3

I've adapted Connor into this pelt design and I utterly adore how it not only suits him far better than his previous design, but actually fits in with his very first originating basis as VJ's friendly rival/younger sibling. I gave him a bandana (neckerchief) in these sketches so as to make him fairly uniform with VJ's overall sense of style as they are design-linked by this particular accessory. In these sketches, I'm getting a feel for his overall updated look...and antics as he gets used to his new look (and I as his artist have fun with putting him through heck LOL)

It's early days still...but he is in planning stages for a 3/4ths lower torso fursuit which I hope to have built by 2019, at the very latest AnthroCon 2020 which my husband and I plan to attend =)

Many thanks to Blushmutt for their wonderful adopts. Thank you so very much for allowing me to adopt, and then adapt, this beautiful kitty into one of my own longstanding fursonas <3 <3 <3

Original pelt design/character by Blushmutt
Connor Laodegan belongs to Victoria S. Rodda, 1991 - 2017