Our first Community Newsletter of the year is a short one!

The purpose of these newsletters is to keep our community informed about site updates, upcoming events, official artist commission openings, new user guides, highlight different bits and pieces of our species, and build on community engagement. The content of these newsletters will vary by month.

To sign up for a Faunids account, message a moderator for an invite code. Once you have that, you can register on the sign-up page.

View the Faunids Policy Handbook

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Official Artist Commission Openings 

Two of our official artists, Necrologia and pebb, are open for commissions.

Necrologia is open for customs, age-ups, and re-references, with single-view commissions being preferred. 
[View prices and examples here!]

pebb is open for any type of commission from headshot/sketch to scenes/painted illustrations. 
[View prices and examples here!]

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character appreciation

This month, we've called in a very special little wet beast to ask him some questions. 

Eeekel, our newest NPC, is on the loose and owned by nobody. He's just too slippery. 

1. Tell us a little about yourself, Eekel! 
Eekeel loves trinkets and doodads and whatzits and hoozies and doohickeys and gizmos and wants to look at them all with both eyeballs one at a time. Eekel gets bored very fast but not because he doesn't like the cool stuff but there's always gonna be new stuff to find you know I bet you could find new stuff every day if you looked I do it every day! Eeekel's not good at talking but he is good at looking at things if you have any. 

2. Where did you grow up? 
Big blue ocean. Eeekel lives in the big kind of ocean that's so big and so far away from rocks and sand but a little while ago the big ocean got too big and too weird scary for Eeekel. There's good scary and there's weird scary and it was that one which is bad and Eekel didn't like it so he got closer to the not-big ocean. 

3. Where does your name come from? 
Eekel can't remember not being Eekel. (Eekel's name comes from "ekel", the German word for disgust, with an eel-like extra e.)

4. What do you do for a living? 
Oh mostly swim around. Eekel doesn't have a 'job' Eekel lives by eating soggy soaked stuff that's usually green and sometimes Eekel swims around with fish until they get too fast or too shy and don't like Eekel anymore or they just get tired. Eeekel likes collecting but what Eekel likes more is talking to see what other collectors have in their collections that Eekel can see and maybe touch if it's a lucky day for Eekel. He just lives to live because living is the coolest thing to do as a thing that lives and is alive. 

5. Are you spontaneous or do you always need to have a plan? 
What's spontaneous? 

Spontaneous means that you don't plan what you do, it just happens. 
Yeah that one. Eekel doesn't plan at all. 

6. What in the WORLD is up with that meteor? 
The big rock? That's what made things weird scary. It got hard to move around and made the water feel wrong and too heavy and all the fish and other beasts got lost and didn't know where to go. Eekel got lots of headaches and there was a big storm and now the bottom of the ocean isn't happy and a lot of us had to leave. It kicked up so much sand and other stuff Eekel's never seen before.

7. What kind of stuff? 
Like rocks that are smaller than big and new stuff under the sand. Eeekel even got a piece of the big rock! 

8. You touched the meteor? 
Well at first nothing could get close to it but Eekel heard about it and had to see with both eyeballs one at a time. Eekel got a little piece of it when it broke all over the place. 

9. Do you still have it? Can we see it? 
Nooo, sorry, Eekel got something else to look at that's waaaaay more cool.

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Site Updates

Thank you as always to our coders for making all of this possible! 

1. Added a new "Bases" page. Added all approved site bases to page with download links [HERE].

2. Updated Barter Shop Coupons to be a 'box' that has all choices for use within it. No need to contact a Moderator to get your items. 

3. Theme Selection exists for users now (though please keep in mind that these themes may not be as up-to-date as the main theme for now). 

4. Users can now use basic HTML to make descriptions for their characters. 

5. Notes are updated so that there is now an option to indicate whether a Faunid has a Trading Clause (such as with Fawning). Users cannot edit their own notes (though they can put a note in the character description), as our moderator team uses this section to document important updates and changes as well. However, all Fawns this coming year will have any relevant trading/sale clauses added to the character when they are uploaded.

6. Some dropdown tabs have been updated to be easier to get to certain pages. Clicking 'Browse', then 'Guides' leads you to a page containing quick access to many different pages. Some of these are empty at the moment as we continue work on getting Atalav ported over, but many of them are accurate. You can view all Lore pages here, as well as species-specific information and FAQs/User Guides. 

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Self Age-ups/Re-references

We are keeping the price of self age-ups $20 for streamlined submissions. A new option, mentored, will be the original $30. Mentored submissions allow us to get more in-depth earlier in the process, providing guidance as early as the initial sketch phase that includes more detailed redlines, resources, drawn visuals, etc.
Other than the price, Streamlined submissions remain the same as they always have been, including critiques on anatomy, layout, and design translation. 

Submissions have been taking our team quite some time to work through and we have been putting our heads together internally to figure out how to conduct them best. In the past, submissions were not handled as a team and, unless an artist made a design, they were not included whatsoever in the threads. Everyone on our team has different strengths and we do these submissions collaboratively. 

At our most recent meeting, we decided to focus on these things related to submissions: 
- Creating a checklist to guide users to check their submissions for common errors. 
- Creating pre-threads amongst the artist team so that we can come to a consensus on all critiques we want to give, so they all come at the same time. 
- Reworking the Age-Up Guides page with updated wording, and including more directed supportive guides on that page to help with trait presentation and more clear guidelines overall. We have had to prioritize many other things these past few months, but this does need to be more of a priority ASAP. 

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Upcoming lore development

Our next update has been a lot of work behind the scenes. Cameo vouchers won by users during the Winter Gala were used to add community Faunids to a comic you can expect to drop at the end of January. In total, it is nearly 30 pages long! 

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Springtide event

Our yearly Springtide event will start early February this year! While it may not always occur in February, our timeline worked best to have it a bit early this year. 
The event hub page is nearly done, only needing some text changes to reflect updated information. You can also view past Springtide adopts on this page [HERE]! 

This year's theme is: Strange and Unusual Plants. 

Important changes and updates this Springtide: 

• You can expect Springtide to start early February. 
• Companion previews for all adopts will be viewable at the start of the event, similarly to the Nostalgia and Advent gachas. 
• Adopts will be rolled daily. There will be no alternating days where tokens are won. Instead, you can expect a new wheel later into the event. 
• No custom or on-base companions for the event this year. We plan to roll out a new site feature as part of the Summer Camp event related to this.

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Fawning Event 

We hope to have the Fawning Event page fully up-to-date by February 1st. At minimum, the Public Helper List will be viewable on that date. 

While you cannot view the spreadsheet yet, you may start submitting your helpers now with the [GOOGLE FORM].
Having an early backlog should help us make sure we can get through the bulk of them before the hub even opens! 

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Art Challenge

This month's Art Challenge is still open for another week:

Let's warm up this winter and bring the energy we want to see in this new year!

For this Art Challenge, you'll need a 30-minute timer. Your task is to draw a Faunid as silly and loose as you'd like, while making as much progress as you can within that time. If you need to step away, pause the timer and come back to it. No matter how unfinished it looks, stop at that 30-minute mark! 

Due to the nature of this challenge, there are no color, clean-line, or amount of the body requirements. However, use this as a chance to get outside your comfort zone. Try not to spend time correcting mistakes. Draw over them, play with them, and see what you can do.

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Monthly Question