Curiosity

[OtherMoons]

Okay so, this is a very small question and it's a bit odd but I'm super curious about it.

The "Nick" pet designs. People get SUPER excited about them. But they're so wildly different in style than all the other pets on the site-- like there are at least three other artists as far as I can tell who've contributed pets but they all seem to stick, if not always to the same scale as one another, at least similar in vibe and line weight and such.

There's not really an FAQ for "common site knowledge if you've been around long enough" or any of that. Is... is Nick the child of someone on staff? Is Nick a pro artist who did some drawings in a mock-crayon style as part of I don't know, a joke or something and everybody went nuts? Is Nick a robot from the future and that is just post-post-post-modern art?

Just, in all serious, can somebody PLEASE explain it to me because I KNOW it's bound to be an amazing story and I'm dying to know...

[Burrito Bunny]

Nick is one of the original site admins. While Tess (the other founder) is known for the art, moderation of the site, and some of the original layouts, Nick, her brother, has become known as the coder and developer for the site. However, he was not known for the artistic aspects of the site or pet design. He hadn't even drawn pets on the normal lines haha.

So, having the Nick pets, which are a much different style, was a bit of a joke. Having someone so highly technical draw these lil odd balls is a funny concept indeed. The pets had their own charms though and became rather popular with some users, and thus continue to reappear every so often!

Hopes this helps!

[Celozon]

Just wanted to add on, I wasn't around when they were first released so someone else may be able to confirm this, but considering they were released in April, and this news post, they were probably an April Fools joke as well when first released.

[nickjr]

More information that you didn't ask for:

He "officially" became an artist on April 1, 2009. IIRC we did not have a site-wide joke for April Fool's Day in 2009; we just had additional pets, including our first ever Nick pets. (He did make some more pets the following month!)

Then on April 1, 2010, Nick took over CS. It was fabulous. For example, the board theme images were replaced with Nick's versions.

(of course it was a prank lol)

As you can tell from the archive results when you filter for pets made by Nick, he didn't make pets for many years... and then he surprised everyone in early 2017 with Nick chickens, which we had never gotten before. The Nickens came back for a few events in 2017, but those were the only Nick pets we got after 2011.

So a lot of us are super hyped for the Nick dogs, which we haven't seen since 2010, and what we suspect will be a Nick horse (that hatches from an egg with chicken footprints, yes, it was like that in 2009 too ), which we haven't seen grow since 2009 and haven't seen at all since 2011.

(Some of us are kinda sad that we didn't get any Nick rats, though, but oh well--WE GOT NICK PETS WHOOP WHOOP)

Also check here (Nick's section on the "Our team" page, which you can get to from the bottom of any CS page, next to the copyright)

[OtherMoons]

Yes, this pleases my sense of the ridiculous. *tents fingers* Thanks everyone for explaining!