A bunch of parents would probably be going to jail for this these days.
May Day! May Day! It looks like I’m heading straight into my second month of answering your prompts you left for me! Not that I mind… I’m having a blast so far, and there are still quite a few great suggestions to get to! But there’s always room for more! I gained only one new Friday prompt suggestion over the past week, giving me fourteen in total. That doesn’t even get me past my Big 4-0 coming up in July. Come on, we can do better than that! Everyone gets to send me one prompt! If you haven’t entered an idea yet, go directly to this post and submit one in the contact form. We’ll now take a five minute potty break while we wait for you all to do your duty…
Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
Today I am choosing what I admit is one of my most intriguing suggestions I’ve received so far. It comes from JackieP who publishes the To Breathe Is To Write blog. She’s used April’s A-Z challenge to present a rather fascinating short story of murder, intrigue and fedoras. You should go check it out… after you read this post, that is. There will be no more potty breaks.
Jackie submitted this prompt:
What about when your creations were little? Like baby squirrels. How did they get to be like they are now?
Too much underaged drinking.
If you were around back in the days when Saturday mornings meant cartoons, you probably are aware that seemingly every animated series eventually spawned a spinoff featuring the characters as little ones. These shows were pretty wretched, being as they got by solely on the age regression gimmick, which (ironically) got old pretty quickly. But they did provide a glimpse into the established characters’ youthful pasts, like who they dated in high school or how their parents used their psychic powers to pick their fucked up names.
Let’s call him Jokey, dear! He looks like a future prankster.
I decided however, to add another element to this challenge… an effort to try and expand my artistic experience. I have long been fascinated by the pure, sugary cuteness of chibi style anime art. Chibi (not to be confused with chileh) can make just about anything look squishably cute, from a possum to a shit sandwich. If you aren’t familiar with chibi style, here is a good example of a chibi squirrel someone with actual artistic talent drew:
Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!
Chibi is exemplified by the oversized head and facial features (meant to accentuate the cuteness) in contrast to the rest of the body, which is often drawn small and very simplistic. Chibi works better than Oil of Olay on making any subject look younger, and in fact, the artistic method is most often used to render overly cute anime children.
So you may see where I’m going now… I decided to render a handful of my characters as chibis to use as a visual aid in addressing Jackie’s question about their younger days. I used the same program all of my art starts out in, MS Paint, which isn’t really a good template for what I was trying to accomplish, but oh well. Some of these drawings I am quite pleased with… and some of them leave a little to be desired. But after nearly 800 posts, you can tell by now I have no pride, so I am going to show them all off for you today, starting with the critter this blog’s named after, of course!
I can haz nut?
Awww, ES was even cute as a little squirrel scampering around the forest scooping up acorns from the bigger squirrels who would kick his ass. When it started getting too dangerous for him to venture outside, he’d stay in the nest and work on his drawing skills. Along with his warped sense of humor he gained from falling out of the tree several times, he would use his talent to start up a blog to make people laugh. If only he knew they were laughing at him….
I don’t think that mirror’s big enough to see past your nostrils.
Even as a little squirrel, MBRS was always obsessed with her crimson good looks. One day, she asked the mirror who the most beautiful critter of them all was. The mirror never answered her, because mirrors don’t talk.
The last thing Angel would ever suck on.
Always naive, innocent and insecure, Angel would lag behind the other kids in her ability to adapt to the real world. While her mother always thought she looked adorable when she would grab her Rainbow Donkey plushie and suck her thumb, her high school guidance counselor thought otherwise and had her sent to special classes to sit with the stoners.
It’s easy to kick when your legs weigh four ounces.
Hooly’s youthful exuberance and perkitude made her the most popular skunkette at school in her glory days. She was captain of the cheerleading squad, president of the student council, and had enough smart friends do her homework for her so she could join the National Honor Society. As chief editor of yearbook, she ensured that she won the vote for Most Likely To Get Called Skunkbitch.
So, how’s your day been going, Odyssey?
Odyssey’s days of protests and rabblerousing began long before she was even old enough to not vote. While most kids occasionally think life is unfair, Odyssey was constantly finding something that offended her delicate sensibilities. The way grades seemed to be given out based on only schoolwork, the fact that dangerous cootie inoculations were state mandated, and even by the school mascot Billy the Bison, who she saw as an insult to indigenous critters.
I’d smile too if I was just abruptly uprooted from my life source.
As in her adulthood, Hottie was always a prozac bottle full of happiness, regardless of how much life poopooed on her. While all of her friends were holed up in their dens playing classic NES games, Hottie was out enjoying nature and making new friends. “Hello, Mr. Disheveled Looking Creature With The Windowless Van! Is that candy bar for me?”
Chibis need to be careful with how those big heads affect their center of gravity.
Life was tough growing up for Rainbow Donkey, being a freak and all. But he didn’t let the name-calling and the bullies stop him from his dream of learning how to fly. Every day, RD would trot on up to the edge of the cliff, ready to fulfill his destiny as a flying unicorn. And every day, before he could make that leap of faith, the critters in the white coats would drag him back off the edge after someone called the suicide prevention line on him.
Have horse, will travel.
It was hard for Skanki to truly live up to her promiscuous name back int he day… you know, having not gone through puberty yet. But she tried… oh, did she ever try.
Two chibis in one!
Sully and Blaze are already kids in my comic, so their present is their future past. But I wanted to give them a try in this drawing style anyway…
Someone’s gonna get poked with that itty bitty spear! How cute!
And Wiki as well. He’s a cute little chibi warrior, isn’t he? Shooting out the walls of heartache, bang bang!
You’re never gonna grow up like that, kid!
And finally, there’s poor Buster… who somehow made it into his adult years despite constantly choking on small toys, getting tangled up in the cords hanging off the blinds, and riding his tricycle without a helmet in front of buses. Let there be no doubt that even in death, there is adorable cuteness to be found.
That’s all for this week’s prompt! I’d like to thank Jackie for this extremely fun suggestion that also taught me I can’t do kawaii for shit. I’ll return Friday with another suggestion from another blogger… but before you go, make sure to give my little friend a hug.
❤ Chibi Pigladillo!!!! ❤
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
that was a super idea…many thanks to Jackie!!!! I feel so sorry for the pigladillo who needs a hug… (omg it’s a drawing and I have tears in my eyes…)
Hugging a pigladillo will bring a smile to anyone’s face. You can always worry about the leprosy later… 😉
Diabetic coma in 3, 2, 1…
I’ll have an emergency supply of insulin standing by if anyone needs it…
You’re such a planner. 😉
Squeals – babies – just love them… 🙂 XOXO – Bacon
They’re so cute…. until they tinkle on you when you pick them up!
This is true. What am I saying? Piggy blushes. I think all of us anipals here have done that once or more to mom. Snorts. XOXO – Bacon
What a bunch of super-cuties 🙂
I can only imagine what they’d look like if someone who knew what they were doing rendered them chibi!
It has been suggested — not by me, Heaven forbid — that the reason baby animals are so super-cute is so we will not kill them. Ditto baby humans. I have always found baby furry things — cartoon or otherwise — noticeably cuter than human young’uns, but I lack the “Awwww” gene. But you did it again. You make me laugh. You even (don’t repeat this, it’s not for The Record) — you made me (shh) think.
I believe that was the theory mentioned in the video in my past cuteness post I linked to. VSauce did a good two part series on cute vs. creepy, and why we deem things as such. I agree with you on the animal babies being cuter than human babies… but I’m (don’t tell anyone!) not a real fan of human babies to begin with….
Too much under aged drinking 😂
The sad truth is I’ve never even done any overaged drinking. I don’t know where all these fucked up ideas come from…
They’re all so cute as chibis. I hated the baby-spin-off shows when I was a kid but I would read the Evil Squirrel Chibi comics! 🙂
I can just picture dying from a severe case of diaper rash now…
1. Pika, Pika…Pika CHU!
2. Chibi Nature’s Acrobat is a cutie, but no Lil, WTF?
3. I always thought it was shooting AT the walls of heartache. The more you know….
4. I hope that one new prompt you got this week was mine….
4a. Chibi ES better watch out for that Mario cloud before it starts shooting green fireballs at him! 1up, 1up, 1up, 1up, 1up
It looks like a Mario cloud drawn by a drunk programmer. I seem to recall the cloud (in its appearance as an item you could use to skip stages) had an actual name in the SMB3 booklet, but I can’t recall what it was now…
You used the warp whistle to skip stages, you got extra 1ups if you could tease the cloud into spitting green fireballs and hit them with a turtle. Not that I wasted my misspent youth playing Mario 3 incessantly or anything…
The warp whistle was for skipping whole levels. There was a cloud item (That looked just like the smiling clouds in the game) that you got in a few of the princess’ letters after beating a mini Koopa. You could use it to skip a stage on the world map. I just looked it up, and it was called Jugem’s Cloud… I thought Jugem went with the boot, but I guess it was the cloud:
http://www.mariowiki.com/Lakitu%27s_Cloud
I admit, I either don’t know or totally forgot about the green fireballs of which you speak…
Oh, that cloud! You get it as a power up like the warp whistle but instead of skipping lands you just skip a crappy part of one, now I remember.
I think I was getting that confused because I think it was a sun not a cloud (which means the same thing, just coloured yellow). It’s where the sun is chasing you down the hills. Go far enough to get the sun’s attention, then go backward Stop to pick up a turtle and then go back to where there’s a sheltered brick to hop on. Let the turtle shell go and have it ricochet between the bricks on each side and the cloud/sun will start spitting green fireballs at you. When the turtle hits them you get points and eventually unlimited 1ups. Eventually the sun/cloud will figure out how to angle under the awning and hit you, so it’s not infinite.
1. I choose YOU!
2. I did ponder doing one of her, but after drawing 12 of these in one night, I needed to rest the mouse hand.
3. It might be. I didn’t look up the lyrics, and I don’t know if Esto reads my blog or not to correct me.
4. Yes it was.
Hey! My suggestion went pretty good all things considered! 😉 I love cute little critters. Real human babies scare the crap out of me. I can handled ES as a kid. Even Pigladillo more than a real baby. Does that make me weird? LOL
I really liked your idea… and I was going to save it for later in the series, but when the chibi idea came to me the other day, I decided to take action now! I don’t think it makes you weird at all… a lot of people are creeped out by babies!
I think you did great with my idea! Babies have always creeped me out, probably another reason I never had any. 😉
Awww! The Kawaii edition! My favorite! They all look so squeeee! Especially Wiki. (and a little inebriated) LOL! 😀
I had to get them all a little tipsy to agree to draw them like this!
Ah yes, you dont need a litigation on your paws!
Wonderful. All those critters look so childlike and real. In a most unreal, but cute, way.
I think that entitles me to display the Unreal Real Seal…
Yes!!!
Awwwwww. That was soooooo cute. Fun stuff.
My characters may demand to be drawn this way from now on….
Oh so cute!!
Aren’t they?
Are we going to see more of this style? Or is going all “Muppet Babies” going to be too much like hard for work?
As cute as it is, it’s not really my style and I definitely do not do it justice. I’ll be sticking to what I know I can do… though that doesn’t mean I might not play around with different artistic styles from time to time.
You could if you tried with it, but I know what you mean about sticking within your comfort zone and with what you know works!