Fuzzbutts: Mum Benny and Brucie (Patreon)
Content
sorry for the art slowdown, i'm out of town atm and have only just set up my laptop and tablet. Have a quickie concept doodle!
I got asked whether extinct animals would feature in Fuzzbutts and at first I thought of course not, they're all dead. Buuuut I got to thinking, and well.....why not? Sure, humans can declare a species extinct, but can we ever be truly, 100% sure that each and every individual is long gone? Scientists were pretty surprised when it turned out the coelacanth was still apparently alive and well, despite having assumed to have died out 66 million years ago. So who's to say I can't have a little wiggle room? >:3
(I just really wanted a tasmanian tiger character y'all)
This is concept art for a new character, Benjamina Laoonana. She's a Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), and although she'd whack you with her walking stick before she revealed her age, she's more than a hundred years old. She was contentedly living out in the brush, alone, save for her many, many plants, when one day she is discovered by a very small, very chatty, very annoying little wallaby joey. Can little Brucie worm his way into Mum Benny's tired, asocial, withered old heart? ....Probably not. Mum tells him to get lost, or she'll toss him into her soup pot and cook him into a tasty stew. When Bruce points out Mum hardly has any teeth- and starts up a barrage of endless questions- what kinda animal she is, why she has so many plants, why she lives all alone, if she'll make him a sandwich- Mum wonders if she could get away with ditching him in dingo country.
For Bruce, however, Mum Benny is gonna become the closest thing he has to a mentor/competent parental figure. It's from her he gains his wonder and adoration for the natural world. He still loves her very much as an adult, though he'd never admit it. Neither would Mum Benny- but curiously, she still allows him into her shack for the occasional spot of tea and conversation- she definitely doesn't keep up with his life or care about him, hmmph.