A few people have asked me why I have been drawing bears so much in the last two years, it all started out innocently enough. I drew a not-very-good picture of a doofy looking teddy-bear creature on a post-it-note, and put the caption “Socially Awkward Bear” on it.
This led to me drawing a bunch of different post-it-bears, culminating with a marathon “Request-a-bear” session, where I drew the bears people asked for. It was also the point where my bears actually got more…bear like.
At some point I actually started to like bears. I don’t know when it was exactly, but bears are really cool creatures to draw. First, they’ve got tons of big rolly folds. They’ve got lots of textures, and there is a TON of reference. Last year I picked up a book called “Animal Character Design: Grizzly Bears“, and it taught me a lot about the anatomy etc of Grizzly’s.
Let me be perfectly clear here…I think pictures of bears are cool. I have no interest in interacting with a bear. Not even the remotest inkling of an interest.
Okay, so I like bears. I especially like Grizzly and Polar bears, and my kind of style on them is that I like to draw them with Mike Kunkel – style huge noses.
So the other question is…why do I hate Panda Bears so much? Simple. Real bears are awesome. They are these massive beasts that lumber and look awkward 95% of the time, but watch a Polar bear grab a seal, or see a Grizzly snatch a massive salmon out of the water, their massive size belies there incredible speed and skill as hunters.
Pandas though? Pandas are the low-functioning pot-heads of the animal kingdom. They consume Bamboo, a food that is pretty much nutritionally bankrupt, and which requires them to consume 12-38kg of it PER DAY just to survive. Pandas are dumb, and they eat your tiki furniture. Ergo, I hate pandas.