owlinmypocket asked: What inspired you to make hipster animals?
This blog started in April 2011. I had been drawing for the TV show Mad Men for about three years and was very burnt out. I wanted to do a project that was far away from white guys in 60s suits as possible.
As research for Mad Men Illustrated I was looking at a lot of 50s-60s advertising and then children’s book illustration for style cues. I rediscovered Richard Scarry (Best Word Book Ever, What Do People Do All Day), who I loved as a kid. His “Busytown” resembles the ideal hipster neighborhood in a lot of ways — pedestrian friendly, small niche businesses — so the impulse was to create the sort of animal gentrifiers who’d move into Busytown after Mr & Mrs Cat fled to the suburbs because Busytown collapsed into a nightmarish hellscape in the 70s. One assumes too many worms in Tyrollean hats moved in and brought the property values down.
