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About Kaputt

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From a den built into a cliff wall emerges a bori. Her eyes are half-lidded, and she gives a mighty yawn. Blinking, she glances about. Upon spotting you, she beckons you closer. "Greetings. The name's Kaputt; nice t' meet you. You may not realize it, but I was one of the original bori found wandering about Neopia. I consider myself a level-headed bori, and I don't look half bad. Another quality of mine (good or bad, depending on how you look at it) is that I am incredibly lazy. I literally laze about all day long, many times only moving to get something to fill up my stomach. If you're wondering on how I keep my weight down, I blame my quick metabolism. Though, occasionally, I do take it upon myself to roam about Neopia and find something interesting to do. One of my favourite things to do is tell stories. In fact, since I'm not feeling too lazy at the moment, I think I'll tell you a little story about my past."

Once, long ago, I lived with quite a large group of bori on a mountain. Life changed by the season- spring and summer were carefree days of running and playing on the mountainside. Fall was a hectic term, all of us scuttling around to find provisions for the daunting winter spell. Winter itself was a formidable time. With less and less food readily available, predators came to bori dwellings in search of a meal. The resilient armour on our backs aided us, but it's not indestructible. Each year, there were many casualties."

Predators weren't the only threat during the winter. Many times, there would be harsh winter storms that stranded wandering bori from their homes for days. There was also the dangerous snow-filled pits; many young bori who didn't yet know the terrain well, as well as the elderly forgetful bori, often misstepped onto what seemed to be any ordinary patch of snow and fell, oftentimes severely injuring themselves. The blankets of snow also made it easy for hunters to lay down traps and retreat unnoticed, the falling snow covering up their tracks and scent."

This year, a tragedy happened. The dreaded winter came months early, catching every animal on the mountain unprepared. The first snow was harsh, coating the entire mountain in mere hours. That storm raged on for days. Luckily, very few bori were caught outside for the entire duration of the storm. As soon as the white-filled skies cleared and the chilled wind stopped screaming, everyone flooded out of their caves to begin searching for their loved ones. Of course, I stayed in the cave that I shared with my parents and sister. It was built into the middle of a steep slope, so crawling out when there was the rest of the bori population to help seemed pointless. Not to mention that it would have been too much effort."

Then it happened. A young bori tumbled into one of the snow-filled pits, screaming as loud as her little lungs could. Rumbling filled the skies. Apparently, too much snow had built up on the mountain's peak from the storm and had become disturbed at the small bori's scream. It came crashing down the mountain, swallowing everything in its path, be it tree or animal, and grew in size with each passing moment. The tidal wave of snow flew over the slope my cave was built into, fortunately sparing me. Unfortunately, all the bori outside of their caves were swept away."

As the avalanche settled, I flew out of my cave. My entire family was likely buried underneath the mass of fallen snow, and even I wouldn't sit back and watch them suffocate or freeze to death. I sniffed around, catching wind of someone under the snow. I frantically started digging, uncovering an unfamiliar face. Wordlessly, they joined in my rescue mission. Each bori we uncovered also aided us. Not a word passed between any of us, as our minds were too frantic to think of anything but digging."

It seems like hours passed, and we hadn't gotten anywhere at all. Our rescue team consisted of only twenty-three bori, which was just a fraction of the population of my species. Several hours later found us with a much larger number of bori, but we were still missing about a fourth of the rest who lived on that mountain. My paws, raw and bleeding from flinging the snow out of my way, worked frantically to dig out the latest bori my nose had found. I struck something solid, and so began to carefully move the rest of snow from the body. I stopped dead when my mind registered what I saw."

Lying before me was a bori, completely frozen in ice. My mouth hung open in awe, and I gingerly ran my battered paw across the smooth surface. Imagine my surprise when that bori stirred, opening their eyes and blinking at me. Not long after, confused shouts arose from all over the mountain. Apparently, they were also finding the iced-over bori, being utterly confused as so how they were still living. The bori I'd just uncovered looked down at them self, a look of complete panic in their eyes. I tried to shove my paw over their mouth, but they screamed first."

The rumbling started again. I looked wildly around for my cave, but found that in my desire to help the buried bori I had traveled very far down the mountain. Panic struck as I realized that being this far down the mountain, the avalanche could grow to incredible proportions by the time it reached me. So I did the only thing I could think of: I ran down the mountain. My aching paws complained with each stride I took, leaving red imprints on the pure snow. Needless to say, the cascading snow was much faster than I. It took a while for it to catch me, but I'd made plenty of progress in getting down to the base of the mountain."

I braced myself, curling up and letting the snow attack my armour. I knew that I didn't have long to go; the avalanche would soon stop as it ran out of snow to further fuel its destruction. Not that the initial impact didn't hurt mind you; I liken it to being hit by a large truck. I don't know how much time passed before I stopped moving, though it felt as though the crushing snow would never end. When all was still, I attempted to dig myself out, only to find that my body wouldn't move. Compressed on all sides by the snow, I wouldn't have been able to tell the right way to dig anyways."

Eternity seemed to pass. I couldn't see or hear anything, and I wasted none of the air trapped around me by yelling. I eventually became aware of the sound of snow being sifted away, and knew that someone was uncovering me. Soon enough, two warm hands grasped me on either side, lifting me up and holding me close to their body. I snuggled into the heat, lulled into dozing off. This was how I met my caretaker, Kichi."

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Friends / Family

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coming soon...

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Art

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Anthro Kaputt - Age 18

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Mini Art FAQ

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This section is just a small reference for people wondering exactly what my process for drawing is. I do the majority of my art directly on the computer, meaning that I usually don't use a pencil and paper and scan it in to draw. That's how I used to draw, however, and there's nothing wrong with that method. This is just showing how I personally go about drawing.

As far as tools go, I use a Wacom Intuos 3 graphics tablet. A tablet is like a digital sketchpad, allowing you to draw directly in a computer program with a pen-like mouse. For more information on tablets, please visit wacom.com. The image program I use is Photoshop 7.0.

The image below shows the different steps I take when drawing an image. It will continuously cycle through my eight steps for your viewing pleasure. :D

Step 1: The basic sketch. Here I just plan out the pose and get a general idea of where the limbs will be.

Step 2: I start a new layer and sketch a more detailed outline with a darker colour. I start a new layer so that if I make a mistake with the darker colour, I can erase the darker colour only and not worry about damaging my base sketch.

Step 3: A new layer and an even darker colour for planning out the clothing.

Step 4: I make a new layer and trace over the lines I want to keep in black. The outline layer! :D Then I delete the sketch layers.

Step 5: I make a new layer under the outline so I don't colour over top of my lines. I shade in an area with a flat colour, and then I lock the transparency of the layer. Locking the transparency prevents me from colouring outside of the block of blue you see in this step.

Step 6: I shade in five colours that all relate to the base colour. I generally use two darker shades and two lighter shades. Notice how the colours aren't all smoothed over? I worry about that later.

Step 7: This is when I smooth out the colours in my image with the smudge tool. That's what gives my pictures the soft-shaded look.

Step 8: I repeat steps 5-7 for every part of my picture that needs shading. Using titles for your layers is a great idea! The titles of the layers in this picture were "furblue", "furwhite", "nose/belt", "ear insides", "teeth", "shirt", "shorts", "metal", "ipod", "headphones", "outline", and "writing". This makes it very easy to go back and edit a specific layer, because I know what each layer is! :D

So for anyone interested in my art, I hope that was useful. n_x