Crazy Wez McCrodon

An artwork of my friend Merc Marten's rather nasty sea mink Character, Wesley 'Crazy Wez' 'The Bearfoot Bandit' McCrodon. (From the same fic series (Zootopia: The Fire Triangle) as my earlier Thylacine Boi Billy Mackenna.

Been fun doing this artwork, with the aim of pushing forward my skills and applying what I learnt from the two film studies into an original art. All while trying new things as usual, experimenting as I go.

First off, how do you draw a teenager? Actual question here because, if aging a character, newborn baby... easy. Baby. Easy. Young kid and older kid, easy. Adult. Easy. Old person. Easy.

But teenager? Adult or near adult size with that lanky awkwardness mixed with youth?

Most teen anthro arts I've seen tend to either use comparison characters (so young looking, but next to kids/ adults to get the size across) OR heavily rely on the clothing choice (case in point, Merc recently got a pic of a different teenage hooligan of his and the artist (Ziegelzeig) absolutely aced the teenageriness via the clothing choices and design... -From that I kind of now know that backward facing baseball caps and ripped jeans are almost cheating on this).

Alas, being a single mammal, and stuck in Juvie... Those options were precluded. (Though, remembering reading 'We need to talk about Kevin' I had the idea of having him with undersized clothes, based on Kevin's choices from that story, though I later went for very undersized shorts but a very oversized shirt that doesn't fit his form. -His prison's management company isn't spending a penny on well fitting clothes after all XD)

TBF the mink posture does help in the lankiness, and I put in whiskers and their paler bases to mimic acne. But I needed something big and, after looking at artists and running AI prompts failed to really suggest any secret sauce (though giving me some inspirations) I decided to put in one thing the writer probably NEVER imagined. -Yup, the broccoli cut.

Took a second go and new look to get the hair to look right, though the experience will have uses for both future curly hair/ fur and wool. So, lots of work and I learnt a few things.

And so, end of the month and I'm putting this out. Though I'd normally be proud of my work on this peace of work... I had been planning to try going into some real detail akin to my film scene studies of Nick and Dawn. Alas, this has been a crazy busy month and I ran out of time this weekend to put in this extra level of detail. Thus, to preserve my one art a month target I'll be releasing it now.

I really like how it is now, but I want to see it pushed to its absolute limit. I WILL return to this piece, believe me. Watch this space.