By that time, the Mayan calendar will end and so shall the world! J/k.. well Purg, your drawings are verreh good. You don't need to hear that from me though.. I see em every day.

I really like it because it breaks established molds while keeping enough of the Maren design to be recognized as such. I basically love: ears, eyes (especially that little line on either side, uniquifies that anime style) and the hair. Now I know so many fan maren have the basic set appearance, but in my eyes it shouldn't be limited to a nazi specific set.

Criticism now: The design appears rather busy to me. Multitudes of patterns and appendages and motifs make him look quite interesting, but leaving two or three of them could look even better, balanced as well as creative.

Note. These are all my own opinions not for argument, just notation.

It's easy for a 'how to make a fanmaren' guide to become 'how to make a mary sue' in that, while you can easily make up a list, a lot of it will end up as cliches. Then others will take these cliches and blurr them further! A creation is best as it comes to you naturally Of course, I have noticed a group of these said cliches and some of em aren't bad.

Wild design/clothing- subtitled
(another way to distinguish my chara from NiGHTS.) Fanmaren tend to have crazy costume design that may or may not include odd body structure.

Maren version of YOU- (MaRY Sue) This is not my favorite trend. On a side note, I did name my creature Lore, an abbreviated version of Loren, so I plead the fifth there. When it comes to personality traits and content though, it's more creative to invent or dream a fully dimensional chara with its own soul.

Take NiGHTS and add paint-- Tride and true recolours. You find them in Sonic and NiGHTS with equal frequency. Honestly, I wonder what the point is here. There's a thousand ways to vary even the usual set of round face no nose, so that's no excuse. It's even more confusing in Sonic, where one can create any unique creature.

Take Jackle, Reala, Puffy and add paint (see above)

Elaborate and symbolic name- Not all maren have these, unless one considers Puffy or Clawz poetic. It's all the rage with fan maren though.

ALL CAPS EXCEPT FOR THE i: Hm, well, NiGHTS has this configuration, but the other maren don't. I kinda like playing with lower case vowels and upper consonants, but this is real common.

Humaren configuration: Most fan marens resemble the Jackle-NiGHTS-Reala form (that is, humanoidish body shape and round head.) Nothing wrong with this.

No nose- Purgy aside most of em seem to lack a nose. I don't think it's a necessary design to a fan maren, but again it's common and does distinguish your critter.

I would suggest reading all about these trends and then tossing them when creating your own chara. S'what I think anyways

I still love them both. What's wrong with 90's anime and games, exactly? That aside, the Game Informer crew tends to slant hard on the RPGs and less so with the Gears and Call of Duty. That said, this is just a preview, and a little one at that. Don't expect a sterling review from Game Informer when this sucker drops. Not unless they give NiGHTS a gun (though it didn't work for Shadow) and a football. These are the suckers who gave the Ps3 drop games 9 and 8 out of ten. They'll be way too busy playing Halo 3 to worry about NiGHTS much.

All the time! I refer to them as minidreams. If I startle awake right after entering sleep, I can even remember patches of these 'dreams,' which are really just random sounds and images. Usually they have nothing to do with my thoughts before I go to sleep. Though, this happens to me whenever I'm dropping into sleep, not when I'm attempting to control the dream.

I don't have a particular dreamscape. Mine are rather varied for one setting, but I do see repetive setting themes. Forests are one, especially when it's difficult to exit the forest. Basements, though more common during my childhood, basic evil or ruined settings pop up a lot. Oceans, unfortunately, as that's always a treacherous and unpredictable dreamscape. My favorite one is a library that has access to all realms and all things. If I could keep one and repeat it more often, it would be that one.

Puffy scares the carp out of me @_@ so I guess I vote for her. She'll squish you, with opera! The others are all okay, I guess, though I am extremely partial to Jackle. *hides from Puffy* <.<