Five rats

[soc_puppet]

Rat time, yay!


Intimidated, Rushed


Cynical, Curious, Weird


Intimidated and rushed are, naturally, a pair 😉 My major goal with these two was, "They should not be mistaken for Tom and Jerry." Cynical, meanwhile, is a match with Optimistic; it took a while, but I ultimately decided that this image was a better fit for Cynical, and for Pessimistic, I'll have that same rat laying down by a tipped-over glass and some spilled pink juice(?).

The calico cat took me a long time to both draw and color on the computer, but I think I'm happy with the results. Oh, and if cat paws don't usually have five claws in front, we're just going to assume that this one is polydactyl and you couldn't see it properly in Intimidated.

Speaking of moods that took a long time, you may have guessed that Weird is inspired by voice actor and creative mind "Weird Al" Yankovic! I honestly think a rex rat (that is, a rat with curly-textured fur) would have been a better match for Weird Al's signature hairstyle, but I'm not really drawing any rex rats for this mood theme. I mean, I guess you could count Shocked? But I intended that as "hair standing on end" rather than "naturally crinkled hair". Too difficult to communicate in 100x100 pixels, IMO.

Relatedly, some of the detail in Weird got a little lost in the transition from 200x200 pixel WIP to 100x100 pixel final product, which is why I made sure to save a large version! I also have a large version of Cheerful, if anyone wants to see the pom-poms in more detail 😉 (There's a large version of Silly stored in the Rat Mood Theme file on my computer, but I haven't uploaded it here.)


As with the previous batch, these images will be matched with their assigned moods at a slightly later time. In this case, after I sleep 😛

Edit: Blocking link list is updated!

Comments

[vriddy]

Curious makes me want to dive into the box, too!! I love Weird's antennas, it really sells the rest of the look :D

[soc_puppet]

Curious is 0.5 seconds away from an accidental Solid Snake impression.

With Weird, I tried drawing the hair, but it just didn't look quite right! But Weird Rat was still missing something without it, and the antennae just seemed Right 😜

[chanter1944]

Is it wrong to want to scritch rats? Do they like scritches? I don't know! But I find myself wanting to scritch all the rats in your mood themes, because the alt text is making me go aww squee! :)

Also, polydactyl calico cat! Hi kitty! Don't eat the rats, please.

[soc_puppet]

Rats do like scritches! They also like to grab your fingers and lick them ♥

No worries on that front! What we have in these images are two very talented actors 👍 In real life, cats are actually quite unlikely to chase rats, because rats are so big in comparison to cats' normal prey. Rats are about the same size as your standard squirrel, and are prepared to put up a fight if caught! I recruited these two as mood models because most people do probably assume that cats will chase rats, and likely wouldn't recognize what was going on if their more likely domestic hunter, a dog, was featured. (Only now do I think of owls as a possibility!) After this shoot, the models were separated, given pats and scritches, and treat rewards (dried fish and catnip for the one, banana chips and dried peas for the other).

[pikkugen]

(Cats do have five claws in their front feet, and most have only four in their back feet, except the polydactyl ones! A friend's cat had six toes in front, so real murder mittens.)

[soc_puppet]

(Yay, I got a thing right! \o/)