It all started on June 19, 2017….
I had been doing this year-long “cute art project”, dubbed #Kawaii365
Basically, every day between July 10, 2016 – 2017, I challenged myself to make some art – any kind – as long as it had a “kawaii” (Japanese word which means innocent and cute) element to it. I’ll admit that some days it was hard to get motivated. And other days, the ideas flowed like a river…. thankfully, the first 3 Zoo’d Animal Hybrid Friends were the latter ^_^
With less than a month to go, one morning I just suddenly felt motivated to start creating characters that are cute animals, but with something odd and unique about them…. they’re each a cross between 2 creatures:
Unicat is obvious… and no she is not based on “UniKitty” from the Lego movie, so don’t ask ;P
Dogosaur is specifically part Golden Retriever and part Stegosaurus. He was originally drawn with a sort of light brown/”golden” color and graduated in later artwork, to a lime green color.
And my personal favorite of the 3… the shy Rabbird, who is a cross between an Angora Rabbit and a Dove. For some reason, the very first time I drew her, I was inspired by potatoes…. haha. Likely because I think that pug dogs look like potatoes too. Later on I gave her some adorable little “limbs”
Anyway, it wasn’t long before the next 9 characters were created…. my creative juices were flowing and I was feeling really motivated to keep coming up with some interesting ideas, while also trying to stay original. In order to stay original, I stayed away from more commonly used animals such as:
- Monkeys
- Lions/Tigers
- Horses
- Bears
- Giraffes
- Sheep/Lambs
- Pigs… and Pugs ;P
The above is my artists’ journal from 2016/17, and you can see that after some creative thinking/planning and experimenting, all 12 Zoo’d Animal Hybrid Friends were born!
Names:
The remaining 9 are: Octomouse, Parrofly, Pandaroo, Froogle, Beever, Penguana, Zebat, Elefox and Slowan! (See the “Characters” tab to learn more about each one).
Believe it or not, when they were new, I really wanted to call them “Oddimals”, but alas when I researched the name first, it turns out they already existed…. like since the 90s.
Why 12?
Well, I’m pretty into astrology, so I thought it would be kind of cool to make a character that can be equated with each sign of the Zodiac! For example, Dogosaur is an Aries and Octomouse is a Pisces… (to see more about astrology, see “Horoscopes” under the “Fun Stuff” tab).
Where do they live?
Well, since they’re so odd, I realized it would be pretty difficult to give them a life on Earth when I make their web comic, especially since I have already designed their homes for them in places like Brown Sugar Beach. So instead of trying to figure out how they were going to live on Earth, I created a kawaii-cute planet for them, which has a purple sky and warm weather. To name this planet, I made an anagram from some of their first initials…. to learn more about Zurbpod, click it’s picture under the “About Zoo’d” tab above ^_^
Copyright
So, after a couple of years putting them onto RedBubble products, in my Etsy shop, on Patreon and doing some cutesy YouTube videos for them, I wanted to update my skills as an artist and learn more about the cartooning trade… in 2018 I took the Art of Cartooning course at Red Deer College (Alberta, Canada), taught by the one and only Gerry Rasmussen of Betty©
After a very enjoyable and informative course, I tinkered away at these hybrid animals a bit more, and then got them copyrighted in June 2019! This was one of the most exciting times in my life!!
Thank you for taking the time to read! Xoxo, Daryl J. and “the animals”
