Why do Leogui ears exist?

[Gelid__]

When you create and constantly tweak your character's designs on FH, you're bound to get familiarized with what height and weight ratios look best or where your preferred markings or ear selections are located.

Like Leogui ears! One of the few interesting lion ear types I can name off the top of my head, they're a pleasant medium between dragon and goblin ears and I use them for a few of my characters because of how perfectly spiky they are.

Still, as cool as they are, why are they in the game?

If this old forum post is anything to go by, apparently Leoguis were a custom species with some lore-heavy history. But that doesn't explain why Leogui ears exist ingame unless the species was created with the ears serving as name inspiration, which might be looking into as the Leogui creator was one of FH's old moderators and made the post not too long after FH's release to the public(?).

Possible evidence that the species came before the ears is that having 'Leogui' style ears was not necessary in the species guidelines:

--Ears: your choice.

Evidence against that being the case was that if the ears were made for the species, wouldn't the species creator have acknowledged them and updated the Leogui post? I can't really check for the former as I don't know how to filter through 30 pages of their posts to find what i'm looking for.

The creator isn't active anymore so I can't ask them, and I don't have any way of time-traveling back to that era of FH to find out for myself. Not that it matters, though, because none of that helps me figure out what exactly a real 'Leogui' would be.


My guess is that a 'Leogui' is either:

1.) Pretty-sounding gibberish

OR

2.) Some kind of animal. Other available ears for feline builds include 'Neko', 'Ghoul', and ears named after other real and mythological creatures, and since I've never heard of an animal called Leogui it wouldn't be a stretch to assume it's based off of the latter.

Either way, it's not like i'm losing sleep over this— I just thought it'd be neat if someone could clear things up or even share a theory of their own.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Thanks for reading!

[Kastilla]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My guess is, since felines have the most customization options as far as ears and markings go, Kov decided to take lots of ideas under his wing. We all know what Kov's favorite animal was...lions. Delay never really went into depth about her species, now did she? That's upsetting. For one, I never even knew she posted about the species! And two, I always wondered about the species of hers. Delay was here at the beginning, and perhaps you can ask Tigg. ^_^ She may wander here on her own, so it'd be best to wait that part out. She was here at the VERY beginning, so she could definitely solve the mystery.

I have lost sleep over this, that and it gets bundled in with why Kov left us in the first place. By today's standard, Kov is an old fart! He could be anywhere in the world, whether that be sippin' pina coladas on a beach with a bunch Lion King babes or locked in someone's basement is beyond me.

With a prefix such as "Leo" I'd automatically assume it has to do with lions. Perhaps it's a mutated lion? A subspecies? An evolution of sorts? Or, it's just to make felines look cool. -cough-Nynx-cough- c;  I haven't found anything related to this species on Delay's deviantART page, so I think she either forgot about it eventually or simply threw it away. Seeing as she has left the game indefinitely, I don't think we could get an answer out of her. Unless, one of us would kindly nudge her about it, but again she may not remember.

Perhaps it can be edited out with another mesh of ear, canine ears or whatever else kind of ear. FeralHeart needs some TLC, especially in areas where it's only dust and fossils. R.I.P Leogui.

Very good subject to fall on my own oldie ears. I crave discussion about the olden FeralHeart days.

[Vilivikhorith]

You're correct in that they were for a custom species made by Delay. I think Leogui were supposed to be some cross between lions and dragons or something. She created the species back in Impressive Title, so it came before the meshes. I think Delay also did some texturing for FH back in the day, not sure about the models. My memory is fuzzy.

[WolfQueen]

i assumed it was a replacement to the long furry ears impressive title had, i think head 2?
leogui sounds like a combination of the word leo and... something else. leo is lion in latin, but dragon in latin is draco. i can't it figure out.

there was also something called the hellion, which also came from IT, that got it's own marking.

[wolfdog01]

Hey, as long as they keep the ears, I'm happy lol. Never really knew there was supposedly a species with the ears, I just thought they were cool. Plus if you set ear perk as 1 and ear droop as 2, you can mash them back and fourth really fast to make it look like your ears are trying to fly away lol. I hope they keep them, I'm not sure if the source code is needed for any of that but my fursona of 6 years has always had those ears. I also hope they don't change some of their markings again, had to redo some ref sheets!