E-I-E-I-O

I am doing a set of illustrations of the animals in the Chinese zodiac, as I might’ve mentioned, or not, I dunno. Can’t put ’em up ’til the game is published, in any event, so the art itself is somewhat moot to this post.

However.

In the last week, I have done a great many sketches of Rooster, Pig, and Ox. I have painted paintings of Rooster and I’m working on Ox, and Pig is on the horizon, and I just started the sketches for Rabbit, and Dog and Sheep will probably be forthcoming here shortly.

Combined with the recent Transcendant Pig updates, my brain has become a muddle of barnyard animals. Now, I like barnyard animals just fine, I can and do derive just as much pleasure from painting Rooster as I can from Dragon. They’re both brilliantly colored and vaguely reptilian around the eyes, and the crests of dragons have nothin’ on the combs of roosters.

Nevertheless, I can feel my fingernail grip on sanity starting to slip. My Little Piggy was only the first warning sign. (The pigs are the worst. Pigs are beginning to haunt my dreams.) I am starting to have visions of piggogryphs, noble chicken/swine hybrids bred for their deliciously bacon-flavored eggs. And how many nipples would a pigtaur have, anyway? (I don’t know, and I don’t WANT to know…) If a warrior rooster rides a boar into battle, does he have stirrups or a perch?

It’s probably just as well that I’m working on an uber-tight deadline and have to get the whole zodiac done by the end of the month, and thus have no time for realizing such visions just yet.

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