# Mosfet Design Note

2025-01-01

It's been four months since I designed my first fursona Mosfet. The only
textual documentation I have of him is the
[interview](mosfet-an-interview.md), but it explains very little of his
design choices. Therefore, I will do it in this blogpost.

## Name

Why is he named Mosfet? I took [EECS 311](../umich/w24_311.md), a course
on analog electronics, where we spent the last few weeks studying MOSFETs.
I like how they simplify calculations compared to BJTs, but they make
worse amplifiers in general. Anyway, it sounds cool, so I yoinked the
name.

A retrofitted reason for the name is, as I randomly discovered in
November, that "Mosfet" sounds a lot like "Misfit", an apt description for
me and my fursona in general.

To distinguish between the two in ambiguous contexts, my fursona is Mosfet
(title case) and the transistor is MOSFET (all caps). It is acceptable to
use all caps or lower case when the context is clear, for aesthetic
purposes, or when a certain style is required (e.g. variable name).

I found that most furry names are one or two syllables. Mine is two.

## Pixel art

The first piece of art I created of Mosfet is a 64×64 pixel art
(upscaled).

![Black-and-white pixel art of
Mosfet](img/mosfet-design-note/mosfet64rev1-256.png)

If each bit is a pixel, a 64×64 black-and-white bitmap could fit in 512
bytes — the size of a boot sector, though I'm sure there's someone out
there who did the same.

Only one day later, I colored him and made a pfp.

![Pixel art of Mosfet, now in
color](img/mosfet-design-note/mosfet64rev2pfp-360.png)

The stripes on his pants are inspired by the ZX Spectrum.

![The ZX Spectrum, featuring a four-color rainbow on an otherwise black
keyboard](img/mosfet-design-note/zx-spectrum.jpg)

Credit: [Bill
Bertram](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZXSpectrum48k.jpg)

## Refsheet

I began drawing his refsheet on a club meeting, 2024-09-15. This is what
I made that day:

![Lineart of Mosfet, next to the pixel art pfp captioned "His ass grew
up"](img/mosfet-design-note/mosfet-ref-rev0.1.png)

He had, as a fellow furry pointed out, "boykisser-ahh vibes".

The background is the schematics template in KiCad, my favorite EDA,
though the art was actually done in Krita. Anyway, the point is that KiCad
is the best.

It took me precisely a month to finalize the design. On 2024-10-14, I made
revision 1.0, then the next day I published rev 1.1.

![Comparison between 1.0 and 1.1. 1.1 has blue-gray eyelashes, 1.0 does
not](img/mosfet-design-note/ref-1.0-vs-1.1.png)

▲ Rev 1.0 (left) and 1.1 (right)

The challenge of being a black cat (midnight blue if y'all pedantic) is
not systematic oppression — that is a byproduct of American imperialism
— it is lineart being invisible. I added eyelashes to accentuate the
outline of his eyes. It is now a mandatory feature. The blush strokes are
required as well.

A perk of having dark fur is that I hardly ever have to shade. It just
ends up black. In high-quality artwork I imagine a form of reverse
shading, i.e. patches of fur being lighter in color due to light
reflection, like raytracing. But all the art I've made is of shitpost
quality, so I'll leave the challenge for the artists I commission.

Did I mention I love KiCad?

## Colors

His fur color is `#19202b`, the background color of my blog in dark mode.
I chose that color in 2020, but forgot why. It has become my signature
color of sorts, so why not reuse it for my sona?

![How other furries design their sona: Furry with Bob Ross' hair painting
their refsheet on canvas, holding a giant palette. How I design my sona:
cat dumping black ink on self with the MSPaint bucket fill
tool](img/mosfet-design-note/sona-design.png)

▲ I almost forgot his tail for the 2147483647th time

His eyebrows and eyelashes are a different shade of blue, `#556783`, which
is just `#19202b` shifted up in value.

His eye color — `#3535c0` and `#202080` — I forgot how I came up with
these. It reminds me of the lyric "Hands in mine, into your icy blues" (My
Chemical Romance, "Demolition Lover").

The rest of the colors? Heavens knows where I picked them.

I once bought a magenta shirt and tried to spray dye the logo. It bled
a little but overall it's recognizable:

![Me wearing a shirt with a generic MOSFET
logo](img/mosfet-design-note/shirt.jpg)

## Preferences

In the interview article I mentioned what Mosfet likes and dislikes.
They're mostly representative of myself.

- Likes salmon: The deficit of fish in the UMich dining halls made me
  crave fish
- Likes heavy metal: It's not my #1 genre (probs #3) but I thought it'd be
  funny if a seemingly innocuous kitten listens to SOAD
- Likes cuddles: Self-explanatory
- Dislikes sparkling water: Soda wannabe made of water, somehow worse than
  both
- Dislikes roller coasters: I actually don't _hate_ them, but my nose
  bleeds every time I take one
- Dislikes gym class: I hate being sweaty for no reason

## Conclusion

Meow.