Snowball
11 September 2016
Date of Creation
Base Info
Gender: Female
Height:
8.6 inches (22 cm)
Weight:
850g (1.9 lbs)
Personality
Snowball is a gentle soul, and extraordinarily forgiving of others. She accepts people she meets as who they are regardless of their appearance and does everything in her power to make those surrounding her as happy as can be. This may be why she gets along with mei so well. This kindness can be her weak-fall however as she can easily be lured into a trust trap and be easily taken advantage of.
Design traits
Snowball is another of my own races known as a "Chikaki". They have adapted to live in very cold climates, and as a result, about 30% of their body size is made up of just fur with a comparative thick layer of fat underneath.
The chikaki design was created as a closed species, which is still available today. Chikakis where my first ever species that I was hoping people could have for themselves, It hasn't quite worked out that way however aha.
Their tassles are not only capable of detecting outside temperatures but they can also be used to concentrate super-chilled air into a beam which they use to blast at attacking predators. The sudden temperature drop combined with the flash of the beam is normally enough to stun the predator enough for these little guys to fly on their way, if this fails however they can use their long tails as some kind of mace.
Chikaki's are able to fly using special organs located just above their feet, these organs generate a small magnetic field which interact with the magnetic forces generated from the planet. As these creatures weigh a kilogram or less its enough to get them airborne. There have been reports from nearby explorers that state that their compasses dont work correctly when these little guys are nearby.
These little guys are capable of flying up to 70 mph and taking hairpin turns around trees and branches at these stupendous speeds.
Their eyes are normally reversed (White pupils and black eyeballs). Their pupils are white from the hardened flesh that naturally forms over them, it makes the Chikas less likely to be phased about something getting in their eyes while they are flying. They have a secondary function of reflecting external heat sources.
Snowball however is an albeno Chikaki so she features red pupils, This is due to her hardened pupil layer forming thinly, she is especially sensitive to the elements while flying, it also affects her eyesight a little bit.
Despite chikakis being obsurrdley fast and agile while they are airborne, they are the complete opposite on the ground, they do not have any legs and cannot run or even walk very well. They mostly just float to places they want to go.
Despite being adapted by nature for the cold, Snowball often wears a red scarf. Nobody is sure why, aside from the reason perhaps that she just likes wearing it.
History and inspiration
As mentioned previously, Chikakis where created as a closed species. There was no specific inspiration for these little guys, but they started out as a sketch in my mathsbook on the 13th of September 2016, as an example to one of the teaching assistants how to construct a character and some artistic principles that I follow. As it turned out I fell head over heels for the design and just had to make a digital recreation of it.
What resulted was the first ever Chikaki who would eventually become snowball. I decided to make a chikaki for myself and a grey and red one (that would become tosho) for a raffle prize.
However as nobody had taken interest in the raffle, I found myself swapping the two round, so that I had tosho and the white chika with the scarf would be the raffle prize.
So yes, Snowballs design was adapted from a Chikaki raffle prize that no-one claimed, so I decided to keep both Chikaki's for myself and it eventually they transformed into snowball and tosho, with Tosho getting a redesign later on as I made more variants.
