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A Tribute to Some of My Influences
This is very loosely based on this inspiration meme that I saw
FriskyWoods do shortly after I came to FA.
Thinking back, I can remember some of the important bunnies I encountered in media and how they influenced me toward being the bunny I am today. What you're seeing here is me paying tribute to them by drawing Jennie in some semblance of their style. I have been using visual and pose references to draw these, yes, but you can probably tell that I didn't trace them, because the originals are much better done. I hope I don't get in trouble for this; these are meant as tributes, and I present them with respect to the authors and artists who inspired me. So, from left to right:
The Trix Rabbit. I always felt sorry for the poor guy. Come on, just let him eat some cereal! In 1976, to coincide with the US Presidential election, Trix had an "election" where kids could send in their "ballots" and vote for whether or not the Rabbit should get to eat Trix. I voted yes! I got a button to wear that said I voted yes. And I remember the vote being no, and again the poor Rabbit was denied his delicious sweet but vitamin-fortified breakfast. But Wikipedia and a lot of others claim that the vote went yes. I don't remember seeing the Rabbit get to eat Trix. Apparently they did the same election thing in 1980, but I don't remember that one. I found a commercial on YouTube that (judging from the art style) is probably from the 1980 election, showing the Rabbit winning and eating the cereal. Perhaps he won in 1980 but lost in 1976?
Miffy, by Dutch children's author Dick Bruna. This adorable little rabbit girl has a lot of colorful adventures that help teach children to read. Bruna has published over 100 books, and Miffy appears in nearly 30 of them. Miffy has had two animated television series, but the books are the best. I learned last year that Miffy's original Dutch name is Nijntje, which is short for "Konijntje," which means "Little Rabbit." My parents bought me several Dick Bruna books and read them to me over and over until I knew them by memory and could "read" them without knowing how to read the actual words. :)
When I was in college I discovered a wonderfully snarky and cynical comic strip called "Life in Hell" by alternative cartoonist Matt Groening (rhymes with "Complaining"). Then I found out that he was making some short animations for the Tracy Ullman Show, something about a family called the Simpsons ... Anyway, his crudely drawn cartoon rabbits taught me that I wasn't the only one who considered middle school/junior high school to be the deepest pit in Hell (although of course I was in college by the time I was reading this) and that it was quite normal to find many of the people I met to be horrible. :D (I am a much more positive person now than I was then.)
Back to childhood again -- Beatrix Potter's books, especially The Tale of Peter Rabbit, are beloved favorites of many, and I remember my parents reading Peter Rabbit to me over and over again when I was little. I remember The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (a frog) and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin too. Also The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (another squirrel). I had a board game based on several of the books. Also I remember having a set of dishes with Peter Rabbit on them -- if I ate all my food, I got to see Peter at the bottom of the bowl.
Pat the Bunny is a book for very young children by Dorothy Kunhardt. It had a lot of activities in it, like patting a picture of a bunny that was covered with soft (artificial) bunny fur. It was for teaching babies words. I wore out a copy of this book with all my touching and patting and poking and whatnot, and my younger brother got his own fresh copy.
Art is ©
, based on the works of Dick Bruna, Matt Groening, Beatrix Potter, Dorothy Kunhardt, and the legions of advertising graphic artists who have drawn the Trix Rabbit over the years.
FriskyWoods do shortly after I came to FA.Thinking back, I can remember some of the important bunnies I encountered in media and how they influenced me toward being the bunny I am today. What you're seeing here is me paying tribute to them by drawing Jennie in some semblance of their style. I have been using visual and pose references to draw these, yes, but you can probably tell that I didn't trace them, because the originals are much better done. I hope I don't get in trouble for this; these are meant as tributes, and I present them with respect to the authors and artists who inspired me. So, from left to right:
The Trix Rabbit. I always felt sorry for the poor guy. Come on, just let him eat some cereal! In 1976, to coincide with the US Presidential election, Trix had an "election" where kids could send in their "ballots" and vote for whether or not the Rabbit should get to eat Trix. I voted yes! I got a button to wear that said I voted yes. And I remember the vote being no, and again the poor Rabbit was denied his delicious sweet but vitamin-fortified breakfast. But Wikipedia and a lot of others claim that the vote went yes. I don't remember seeing the Rabbit get to eat Trix. Apparently they did the same election thing in 1980, but I don't remember that one. I found a commercial on YouTube that (judging from the art style) is probably from the 1980 election, showing the Rabbit winning and eating the cereal. Perhaps he won in 1980 but lost in 1976?
Miffy, by Dutch children's author Dick Bruna. This adorable little rabbit girl has a lot of colorful adventures that help teach children to read. Bruna has published over 100 books, and Miffy appears in nearly 30 of them. Miffy has had two animated television series, but the books are the best. I learned last year that Miffy's original Dutch name is Nijntje, which is short for "Konijntje," which means "Little Rabbit." My parents bought me several Dick Bruna books and read them to me over and over until I knew them by memory and could "read" them without knowing how to read the actual words. :)
When I was in college I discovered a wonderfully snarky and cynical comic strip called "Life in Hell" by alternative cartoonist Matt Groening (rhymes with "Complaining"). Then I found out that he was making some short animations for the Tracy Ullman Show, something about a family called the Simpsons ... Anyway, his crudely drawn cartoon rabbits taught me that I wasn't the only one who considered middle school/junior high school to be the deepest pit in Hell (although of course I was in college by the time I was reading this) and that it was quite normal to find many of the people I met to be horrible. :D (I am a much more positive person now than I was then.)
Back to childhood again -- Beatrix Potter's books, especially The Tale of Peter Rabbit, are beloved favorites of many, and I remember my parents reading Peter Rabbit to me over and over again when I was little. I remember The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (a frog) and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin too. Also The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (another squirrel). I had a board game based on several of the books. Also I remember having a set of dishes with Peter Rabbit on them -- if I ate all my food, I got to see Peter at the bottom of the bowl.
Pat the Bunny is a book for very young children by Dorothy Kunhardt. It had a lot of activities in it, like patting a picture of a bunny that was covered with soft (artificial) bunny fur. It was for teaching babies words. I wore out a copy of this book with all my touching and patting and poking and whatnot, and my younger brother got his own fresh copy.
Art is ©
, based on the works of Dick Bruna, Matt Groening, Beatrix Potter, Dorothy Kunhardt, and the legions of advertising graphic artists who have drawn the Trix Rabbit over the years.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Baby fur
Species Rabbit / Hare
Size 1280 x 382px
File Size 340.2 kB
Listed in Folders
That's because it's a tribute to Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons." :) Before that show existed, he had a comic strip called "Life in Hell." (He had just moved to Los Angeles when he thought it up.) He kept drawing the comic strip until last year, actually, when apparently he decided to stop doing it.
"It's OK to stare at my ear. I know you can't help it." :D Yay! I want to play with them and not Peter. He lost all his clothes in Mr. MacGregor's garden. Meanwhile the girls got to pick berries, and probably got to eat a lot of them too! Although Peter got to eat a lot of vegetables, he ate too much and got a tummyache.
Apparently, when I was little I insisted on having the Tale of Pigling Bland read to me as a bedtime story every night. I don't remember that, but I probably fell asleep before the end - it's a really long story! ^.^ The one I really loved was the Flopsy Bunnies, funnily enough. You'd think it would've been one of the ones with squirrels...
Oh, and here's the Trix Rabbit getting a big mouthful before the kids take it away from him! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPbbA6aeKFI Silly rabbit. ^.^
Oh, and here's the Trix Rabbit getting a big mouthful before the kids take it away from him! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPbbA6aeKFI Silly rabbit. ^.^
I haven't read Pigling Bland! I haven't read all of them, although I think we have a compilation of all of them here. I do have the DVD set of the animated Beatrix Potter stories that the BBC did in 1992, and Pigling Bland is one of them, but I haven't gotten to that one yet. I did see the Flopsy Bunnies though. They did such a good job of those!
Yes, you'd think that one of the squirrel ones would have been your favorite! But then again, maybe your squirrelness wasn't fully established yet. Or perhaps you already knew all about being a squirrel and wanted to know what sorts of stories happened to other types of animal. :)
Ooo, I don't remember that one! I do know there are a few where the Rabbit got to eat some Trix before the kids took it away from him. There's another one where he's a balloon vendor, which reminds me of Kenny. :) He gets some Trix in that one too, by trading some balloons for it, but when the kids find out he's the Rabbit, they take them away again, even though it was a fair trade!
Yes, you'd think that one of the squirrel ones would have been your favorite! But then again, maybe your squirrelness wasn't fully established yet. Or perhaps you already knew all about being a squirrel and wanted to know what sorts of stories happened to other types of animal. :)
Ooo, I don't remember that one! I do know there are a few where the Rabbit got to eat some Trix before the kids took it away from him. There's another one where he's a balloon vendor, which reminds me of Kenny. :) He gets some Trix in that one too, by trading some balloons for it, but when the kids find out he's the Rabbit, they take them away again, even though it was a fair trade!
*giggle* Everyone's really horrible to that poor rabbit! We've never had Trix in this country, as far as I know (plus I wasn't born until October 1976 anyway), so I can't help with the voting controversy, but I've been watching old commercials on YouTube since this picture put me in the mood for it... *hugs*
Y'know, I've been thinking. The Rabbit obviously has enough money (from his day job, perhaps) to pay for all these attempts. Why doesn't he just buy a box of Trix? Somehow it's not meaningful to him unless he gets the cereal from kids. There are a lot of nice kids who would happily share their Trix with the Rabbit, so the Rabbit keeps trying to get Trix from mean kids for some reason. But he's not trying to get them to just give the Trix to him either, so it's not some kind of test. It's like he's deliberately putting himself up as a target for the mean kids. He's a masochistic rabbit, that one. Maybe I'm overthinking it. :)
Yay! In the board game I had, you could play as Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Jeremy Fisher, or Jemima Puddle-duck, and there were little pieces shaped like them. I still have it, but I've lost one of the pieces. They are wonderful books, with great watercolor art, and the stories are delightful.
Yes, Dick Bruna has sued Sanrio in the past and believes Hello Kitty to be a knockoff of Miffy and his characters, which came first. Whether or not Sanrio ever saw Bruna's characters before creating theirs, I guess we'll never know, but Miffy herself is actually pretty popular in Japan now.
Yes, Dick Bruna has sued Sanrio in the past and believes Hello Kitty to be a knockoff of Miffy and his characters, which came first. Whether or not Sanrio ever saw Bruna's characters before creating theirs, I guess we'll never know, but Miffy herself is actually pretty popular in Japan now.
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