Check out this chilled out groove of some of our favorite tracks from Star Fox Adventures, remixed by Metal Fortress. Tracks are:

1. Krystal is captured
2. Thorntail Hollow (Night)
3. Ancient Well
4. Cape Claw
5. Thorntail Shop
6. Ocean Force Point Temple
7. Krazoa Palace

Metal Fortress has done a couple other Star Fox songs, which I will post later. Though the medley itself doesn't appear to be available for download, the MIDI of "Krystal is Captured" is available for download on his site.

If you've been wondering where I've been or what I've been doing for the last two weeks, here's your answer! I've been spending all my spare time (and some of my sleep schedule) working on the extremely complex embossing pattern for the staff. Just to give you a taste of it, here's what I had to do to generate the image above:

1. Take my existing staff texture SVG and remake it with single curves.
2. Import the SVG into Blender.
3. Manually create geometry for the surface of the curve (which involved several false starts and issues). This manual process was done using the very complex and detail-focused vertical-only polygon method, since the structure would need to be wrapped around a tube.
4. Manually extrude the geometry and bevel it by hand (because the built-in tools couldn't handle it for some reason).
5. Made sure dimensions were correct.
6. Added subdivision detail.
7. Wrapped the model around a tube.
8. And finally scaled it appropriately to the real size of the tube.

All this had to be done before I could begin chopping the pieces up for 3D printing. Fortunately, that process was much faster. Over the last three days or so, I've been able to print one copy of ALL the parts. I wrapped some tape around a tube, sticky side out, to allow me to position the 3D prints where they would normally be glued on. As you can see below, it worked beautifully.

The inclusion of these embossed parts makes the prop feel quite special in the hand. It's very "alien", if you will, and very exciting to have something so intricate to show off.

The next steps will involve gluing these pieces together, followed by smoothing and prepping their surfaces. Once I have one good copy of all the pieces, I will make a silicon mold of them (something I've never done before), so that I can make colored resin copies, perfectly duplicating them. Each shaft will take about 3 sets of these pieces in a repeating pattern. With the three copies, I will be able to start gluing them to the shaft (covered in blue window tint). When everything is attached, I will probably apply some kind of clear lacquer to the outer surface to ensure that the glued pieces stay in place by basically covering the entire surface with a thin layer of plastic. This will also protect the coloring of the embossed parts.

Here's what the SVG pattern ended up looking like:

So still a lot of work to do, but it's now really starting to look like Krystal's Staff!

PS - Is anyone interested in the 3D files I made? I can make the SVG pattern, the 3D embossed files, and the 3D printable embossed parts available if anyone is interested. Perhaps to make your own highly accurate in-game model.

With sorrow, I report what you probably already have heard: Rick May, the iconic voice of Peppy Hare and Andross from Star Fox 64, as well as numerous other characters, has passed away today. He was 79, living in Sweden after a lifetime of acting and performance. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and close friends.

Corneria City, Corneria - Despite weeks of advance warnings and social distancing advisories, the capital city of planet Corneria has detected its first few cases of Katina-virus.

In response, General Pepper has ordered that all public gatherings be limited to no more than 10 people and has closed the planet's outer space borders. Similar rules have been instituted on other planets, notably Katina, the apparent origin planet of the new virus. No one is quite certain of the economic damages these restrictions will have on bustling cities like Corneria City, with the calm weather of this time of year normally enticing citizens to visit outdoor markets and restaurants.

Gatherings like this are now banned until further notice.

In a press conference, General Pepper spoke about his options. "Normally, I would call on Team Star Fox to handle this situation, as they have been my go-to solution for cleaning up the Lylat System's messes. However, this disease appears to have come from space bats, not monkeys, robot bugs, or fish, so their expertise in this area is limited."

Critics were harsh, countering that General Pepper has never actually saved anyone from anything, and at least Star Fox might do something that mattered. As tensions continue to rise and with no cure in the near future, few clear solutions present themselves beyond basic disease prevention protocols.

General Pepper also asked that stores begin limiting bulk purchases of essential items to only the amount a person or household might reasonably need. This was in response to criticism of national hero and Star Fox team mechanic Slippy Toad posting photos of himself online, smugly showing off piles of toilet paper. The hashtag #PaperCaper has been used to tag similar showcases of excess.

In a tone-deaf move, Slippy Toad single-handedly inspired the #PaperCaper hashtag.

It's not all bad news, however. Evil Scientist Dr. Andross has shifted all doomsday weapon production capacity to produce face masks and hand sanitizer. Insiders claim that he has pushed back his own invasion plans until he can be sure that all of his troops will not get sick before they can enslave the Lylat System. The Planet Venom itself has not yet had any reported cases of Katina-virus due to its existing travel restrictions as a military restricted zone for the past 4 years.

Photo credits: 1, 2, 3

Source Video

NYALICE has been making quick progress on the Krystal cosplay first discussed a few days ago. Since then, I was able to get into contact and found out some details about the project:

• It will be a full fursuit, not a partial suit.
• It is not a commission, but being made as a hobby for NYALICE.
• The build process is trial and error, but NYALICE estimates the head and body will be complete within a month!
• All the accessories, including outfits, staff, and sandals are planned.
• The head is so large that it requires two blue wigs to create the hair.

You can see progress in order:

• Eyes Added
• Irises Added
• Hair Started
• Styling Hair and Prepping for Cut

It's the classic Anime Music Video formula: Music + Anime. Jah Monkey created this synthwave music video with scenes from Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins, an absolutely under-appreciated anime short if there ever was one. The song is called Lockout, made by Jah Monkey himself.

This is some of the funniest stuff I've seen all week.

Wrestling games are famous for their character customization features, and this is no exception. It appears that YouTube user RainAllen14 has created a Krystal (and Fox) custom character in the 2D wrestling game, Fire Pro Wrestling World. No word on if he plans to demonstrate how he made the character or provide a way to download her.

The first match is a cage match, followed up by a normal ring match.

And then there's this tag-team match with Fox McCloud.

And the Krystal news keeps on rolling! Sky64 sent me a twitter message a day or two ago to show off his new low poly Krystal model he made in Blender. It's goal was to be as accurate to the in-game Dinosaur Planet model as possible. This model makes Krystal seem more like her Adventures age to my eyes, not that that's a bad thing! Anyway, go check out the full rotation video and more images at his Twitter account. Maybe he plans to release the model soon? (Hint! Hint!)

Now this is heartwarming. Kagekitsoon, who recently started a new anthro-focused 3D printing company, commissioned a detailed and dynamic Krystal bust, which he subsequently printed out using one of those very fancy resin printers like the one that was used to make the Krystal figure I recently received. Anyway, he had planned to sell 3D prints of the bust and keep the model to himself, but in light of the global isolation thing going on, he has generously allowed everyone to get the model for printing. You can download it and print it yourself for free! Thank you, Kagekitsoon!

For some background, the bust model, and the accompaning stand, were both digitally sculpted and prepped for 3D printing by v747, a prolific My Little Pony 3D sculpter.

If you're feeling similarly generous, try tossing a few bucks to Kagekitsoon who commissioned her and/or support the artist v747. Additionally, I suspect that Kagekitsoon would still be willing to make you a high quality 3D print of this Krystal model if you wanted to support him that way. You'll have to contact him yourself about that, however.

I have already downloaded the model to see how it looks in my 3D printing software. I can confirm it's a very high quality model with no apparent issues preventing a clean print, except for the fact that her face is very complex and has a lot of overhangs (something that is difficult for the typical FDM printers to handle well). Still, with some reorientation, I think I can get a very clean print out of it, we'll see.

Thanks to CommanderD for the heads up!

Thanks to Dane Solar, I discovered that Japanese costume-maker NyarolMyarroll ( NYALICE（にゃりす） ) is in the process of making a Krystal costume. At this time, all I've seen are the photos listed in this post. No idea if this is going to be a full suit or a partial suit. However, the shape and fur work on the head is very good. It will be interesting to see what Nyalice does with the eyes. I think they will have to be see-through, or use the tear-duct technique. I'll be following up with this one to find out what the costume will be and if it is being made for a commissioner or for Nyalice.

The posts about the costume are here, here, and here (I think).