On mascots, sonas, and other animaloids

2024-07-15

Today I must've slept almost three times as long as I usually do, with a good portion of the day (11pm till 3pm the next day) stuck on deep sleep and strange dreams. Do you ever have dreams that are just so real, that on waking you can't help but wonder which one was more real? It was those kinds of dreams that plagued me this morning, three in a row, even, all equally as complex and involved as the last.

Well, regardless, today I wanted to talk a little bit about... mascots! (And here's a note to self, wouldn't it be cool to make any italics go pink? something to think about.) Now when I say mascots, I personally usually mean the kinds of mascots you'd see in a magical girl anime

Now I have always been absolutely obsessed with mascots. If I had it on hand, I would share some of my earliest surviving artworks (that made any sense), all of which were these big, bug-eyed, sparkly animals, which I had obviously designed based off LPS toys, which were at the time, of course, my 8 maybe 9 year old self's holy grail. It's worth mentioning, that by the time I'd fallen in love with them, it was early enough that the littlest pet shop was not even a concept in my birth country, an unnattainable goldmine to be sure, and my earliest true inspiration for what it meant to be... Good at Art.

When I say my contemporaries were not very impressed by this obsession with big googly anime eyes and bobble headed cats, I truly mean it. But still I perservered, and for the longest time, I really did struggle with drawing anything else... or more specifically, nothing else felt like it could hold a candle to that ideal! Even as my tastes grew, I still struggled to feel on par with the current trends. I was kind of stuck in that mascot purgatory, to what end??

[Shown above: Art from all stages of my life, where the mascot-iness thrives.]

"Okay Cali," you may be thinking, "you like cute animals, so what?? What's the big point?" To which I have this to say: sometimes there is no point! I just wanted to point out how much I like them, and maybe in the future, I'll visit specific examples and really go into them.

Although, well, if we really need to specify something as specific as a point, I guess the point is probably something along the lines of... having a fursona is hard? For me, who loves these little mascots with all my being, the idea of a half-human half-animal creature doesn't give me the most joy in the world. Instead, I find myself drawn more to the half-animal half-magical-blob-thing side of things. Does that make me a furry? I mean I think so, but it might shock some of you to find out that up until I was 17, even my family didn't realize it!

It's in that vein that I realized very recently that I kind of do want another 'sona' so to speak, or more specifically, another mascot! With that in mind, I took my username 'neomints', cut it neatly in half, and made this thing:

I didn't really think twice about it, but I guess something in it must've really resonated with people, since quite a few have shown a real interest in it! Which is funny, since I've never had such fanfare for what I consider to be my, ah, true? sona?

but well, in itself that's not too surprising! I mean look at that thing, it really radiates all the dorkiness a comic artist's sona should, and I'm quite fond of it :)! Of course I never planned on replacing the darn thing, but when everyone and their mother has one of those new fangled alt-sonas, well lets say I felt it about time to have one too!!

Anyway, I've rambled on and on about absolutely nothing today, so I'll leave you with this, and call it a night!

Currently listening to: