Here's my latest snapshot:
For unknown reasons, my user profiles aren't working since I reuploaded my site, so I guess I'll be reformatting them, probably from scratch. >w>;
The family tree and genetics is still working out great, though!
I recently switched over from merging images in PHP with the GD Library to using HTML5 Canvas to merge and tint images from a single Atlas file while referencing a JSON file unique to each pet so everything gets layered correctly. I'm also going to convert these canvas-generated images to base64 and save them so users can link directly to them. Plus side to canvas - I will be able to animate these guys! Down side to canvas - I actually need WebGL canvases to use Atlas textures and tinting, and apparently, a browser can only open 16 WebGL canvases at a time before deleting the context from older ones. Which isn't a huge deal, it just limits the max number of pets I can display per page. If I want more than that, at least I'm also saving static images.
tl;dr - Less images, more programmatically generated pets. Atlas files look like this (just one per species):
And that's the only image I need to make as many unique pets as I want:
The transition in how I'm displaying my pets has taken up a lot of my time, but in the meanwhile, my art has improved. :'3
Buuuuuuut my secrets are still largely my own.