Pickle 2014

*deep breath*

Well, this is quite a dramatic change, isn’t it. Or at least, it might appear that way to others, but in my own mind, not so much.

My ‘inner animal’ is and will always be a lemur. But for my fursona as a character, it never really worked for me. I re-invented the lemur design several times and admittedly never really had a particularly fun time drawing her, which is exactly why there’s hardly any artwork of her in my gallery. You know there’s a big problem when you can’t even enjoy imagining your fursona, let alone drawing it.

That changed when I scribbled this design down one evening while at a convention.  Suddenly I could see Pickle very clearly in my mind, and even dreamed about her for the first time. Several more drawings followed soon after this one, flowing easily onto paper. I remembered that this fursona business was supposed to be fun, and my fun more than anyone else’s. I remembered that I actually didn’t care much for drawing bipedal humanoid furries, and wanted to go back to drawing weird feral creatures that don’t make sense.

It’s a design that I’d been dancing around for several years, but had resisted for fear of ridicule or accusations from over-protective sparkle/scene/gloom creators that ‘this looks like such and such’s fursona’. (But guys, let’s face it, when it comes to critters like this we all pluck our decorations from the same communal pot of ‘cool things’.) I’m a pretty big fan of sparkly animal characters and I don’t think there’s another fursona out there with the same combination of features and colours as Pickle. I certainly have no delusions of her being a unique and special snowflake, though. At this stage I’m just drawing what makes me happy.

So, what is Pickle now, exactly? Well, I’d been building up the back-story of her being the result of an animal splicing experiment for some time – now I’ve simply gone all the way with it. It may not look much like it here, but she’s still largely a lemur. Head shape, eyes, tail, dexterous limbs, and behaviour – all lemur. But now we’ve also got fox, bat, lizard and maned wolf mixed in there. Oh, and human intelligence and speech, naturally.

I’m still deciding how to define her ‘species’.  Though cobbled together from existing animals she is technically a new species rather than a cross-breed. Maybe ‘lemur-chimera’ or something. I’m open to suggestions.