Rat Mood Dump

[soc_puppet]

A whopping twelve rat moods!

I'm also planning to make a pinned post with both A) All of the image links for anyone who needs to block them, and B) All of the images themselves, so I can look at them to cheer myself up. "Look at how cute they are!" I will say to myself. "Look at these cute things I made to make myself happy, and other people also like them! What a good thing doing art is."

Anyway, on to the rats!

These are a bit jumbled; I took six weeks' worth of moods from around Part Four of moodthemeinayear's schedule to work ahead on, since those are the moods that will roughly overlap with summerofthe69. I still have some left to go, especially since I discovered an oopsie from that time period, but once those are done, I'll probably move onto the next part that overlaps with Sot69.

Here's what I have finished from Part Four(ish) so far:

Complacent, Hopeful, High


Mellow, Indifferent, Loved


Grateful, Full, Relieved


Good, Recumbent, Jubilant


I've got thoughts on most of these, so feel free to point one out and I'll share!

Comments

[vriddy]

Crying in my hands because this is so cute and adorable 💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

[soc_puppet]

Thank yoooouuuu 🥰 I'm loving how they're turning out, and I'm so happy that other people also like them and that I can share that with them!

[bigcatsmallcat]

hello, i am obsessed with your cute little rats!! i'm tearing up just looking at them!! your "What a good thing doing art is" comment also made me smile because you're right!! i'm so grateful i got to see them :')
i love love love mellow and grateful and would love to hear more about them :'') but i'm also open to hearing any thoughts on any of them, because they're just sooo cute!! thank you so much for making them exist :')

[soc_puppet]

Thank you 😊 Honestly, I credit following the exemplary drchucktingle on Tumblr for inspiring me to write that; he posts a lot about the nature of art and creativity, and both how wonderful and how important it is to do and to share. I was definitely channeling a bit of his energy there.

Mellow: Blaze rattie! I don't think that the blaze coloration was available when I was first researching and getting rats, but it's one I absolutely love. In retrospect and considering the name, I probably should've given the High rat a blaze pattern 😂 But I didn't think of that until just now. Rats loooooove hammocks, and chilling out in hammocks, so I thought it would be the perfect setup for a very mellow, chill rat. As much as I love rat colors in general, I also like having opportunities to include other colors, get some variety in there and brighten things up.

Grateful: A seal-point rattie with a whole stick of celery! If I were a rat and got something delicious that was almost the size of me, I would definitely be grateful. And then haul it off to a hidey-hole to eat some now and save the rest for later 😂 Siamese rats were definitely available when I had pet rats, but I also never got any of those. I, uh, mostly stuck to pet store rats 😓 Not ideal ethically, but, well. This one is also a personal reference to some of the first rat art I did, of my first pair of rats; I drew one of them with his own stalk of celery and looking quite pleased about it, and thought it would be a nice homage. Looking at it now, I am a bit worried that the Grateful rat's tail will be confused with one of its forelegs, but oh well! Maybe I'll re-do that in the future, or maybe not. As with Mellow, I like the extra pop of color the celery gave me an excuse for.

Speaking of color, I've done my best to keep close to web-safe colors as much as I can, but sometimes it just doesn't quite work out. That said, I am trying to get as many accurate-ish rat colors as I can into this mood theme, and cinnamon, the color from Full and Good, is one I had forgotten about until this most recent set! Picking which colors to use for which rats can be a little difficult, since I don't want to over-do any one color, so having figured out another that it's safe to use is a real boon.

Thank you for the opportunity to share!

[bigcatsmallcat]

i absolutely love all the colors you decided to include, it makes them feel so different and alive :'') and knowing that each color is such a well-thought choice makes it even better!
cinnamon is such a pretty color!! and looking at it again, i love the little almost heart-shaped spot on Good's chest :'') so cute!!

i did not expect the celery stick to have such an interesting backstory!! that is so cool! thank you for sharing :) and if it helps, i did not confuse Grateful's tail and leg, but i did study them pretty closely from excitement hehe

thank you so much for sharing all of that, i love these little guys so so much!!

[redsixwing]

They're so CUUUUUUUUUTE.

I really like "Hopeful" and "Recumbent." The stars in the one, and the speckles in the other! Also the Recumbent rat looks extremely relaxed.

[soc_puppet]

Thank you~ ♥♥♥

Hopeful: This took me a while to come up with! How exactly do you conceptualize hope for a rat, and in 100x100 pixels at that? But I like where I ended up. To be completely biologically accurate, the rat probably can't actually see the shooting star, but I'm going to make up for it by being completely biologically inaccurate and say that she can probably smell and/or hear it instead 😉 I also really like the extra spot on her butt! I like making sure that the rat color patterns are as irregular in the art as they tend to be in real life.

Recumbent: Tiny gripe with... honestly, probably Mark from when LJ was getting started, but how is Recumbent a mood? Still, it gave me an excuse to draw this little fellow, which I am grateful (heh) for. This pattern is called variegated like the yarn, and he closely resembles one of my second pair of rats. It's a very pretty pattern overall, IMO, like an attempt at a binary color gradient. It's a little tough to find exactly the right pose to show off the variegated color variation, but having a rat pose that's entirely in profile fit the bill. And you're spot-on about it looking very relaxed! Like a lot of other animals, and especially prey animals, rats show their tummies like this to people they trust.

[redsixwing]

She knows that star is up there <3 What else is the essence of hope!

Awwwww, it's so cool that rat is close to one of yours.

...and now I have to go scratch my cat right this minute.

[soc_puppet]

Well put 🐭💗

The same rat ended up partly inspiring the upcoming image for Optimistic! That was a hard one to come up with, let me tell you 😂 I'll have to see if I can dig up a photo of the behavior it's based on. (Once the mood is finished, of course.)

I approve of the cat skritching plan 👍 Please give extra skritches for me!

[redsixwing]

Cat scritched!