Back when I worked in retail, I split an order of burgers with a then-coworker's then-boyfriend who was also a furry artist and budding fursuit maker, and we hashed out a throwaway character design for a homemade suit based on the “Call Apogee, Say Aardwolf” easter egg from Wolfenstein 3D. Unfortunately, like most of my throwaway characters, I fell in love with this one.
Technically Apogee does have a ref sheet — MoreFurLess required I submit one when I was getting myself into their queue — but whenever possible I link artists to his Trello to paint a better picture of the character's whole vibe. His sketchbook, meant to resemble the notebook margin doodles of a skater fresh out of college, is the collaborative work of 40 different artists spanning from 2015-2020 (with more to come, eventually, hopefully), and I encourage artists at conventions to leaf through it as they're adding a page of their own.
Two minor shifts happened during Apogee's construction. The initial design we drafted over burgers put him in a maple leaf shirt with the word “CANADA” partly-obscured by his jacket. As I continued getting art of him, I threw a red “Home Taping Is Killing Music” shirt that I found from a Google image search into my reference folder; this was meant as an example of the sort of thing the character would wear, but it quickly became The Thing He Wears. Our key art also didn't specify a hair color, and most artists read it as dark brown or black; this continued until I had to give MFL a concrete answer for the mane they were building, which was when I split the middle on a warm dark grey.
