December 18th on the Mistigris Advent Calendar 2025
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This mighty incarnation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a night and day difference from 2023's "Lighting the Way", was not only the first piece I drew for the Calendar, but the first screen drawn for the Calendar by anyone. I decided from the get-go I was going to go all-in on furry art for the 2025 calendar, and so I had Rudolph hit the gym. Around the same time, I heard about a newly-publicized editor, teXt.0w.nz, that was designed to be used on touch devices. It was not yet ready to use with my phone, as the years-developed Pixquare was when I drew Alex Graham and their portrait, and so I took on the unique challenge of drawing in teXt.0w.nz with my recently-purchased Steam Deck, a handheld gaming device that happens to be a Linux computer, without a mouse or keyboard attached.

Despite its primary purpose of enabling you to play the Steam library on the go, the Steam Deck includes a Desktop Mode with its own unique control scheme, and that was what I made this screen with. I drew the shape of the figure with the built-in touchscreen, and from there, I primarily used the right trackpad to draw details and refinements due to it being more precise than the right analog stick for controlling the mouse. Once I finished the figure, I chose to draw the background with shade characters for contrast, starting with the snow-covered ground... but due to peculiarities in teXt.0w.nz's Shading brush at the time, where you could shade in one direction but not the other, I found myself having to do this shading by hand! Once I had my snow, I drew inspiration for the sky coloring from LDA's "Mountainscape" from the 2024 calendar, and my work was done.

When choosing the date, I placed this piece after Cthulu's ANSI translation of Rob Liefeld's Santa the Barbarian. Thus, my realistically muscular deer man drawn with thought and care serves as a direct contrast to the comically muscular Santa that Liefeld blatantly dashed off for a Wizard Magazine trading card. Late in development, LDA offered the suggestion of making Rudolph's red nose blink, and I found a way to work it into the piece in my style, with the result coming out quite well.

Drawn November 4-6, 2025!