Hello hello! Now that some of these are fully grown I can confirm a few things you all pretty much picked up on anyhow XD


Just like you thought, these are African Wild Dogs! It's been a bit since we've had any regular pets themed that way, and I thought it would be fun to paint! The foal and its mid growths are themed after the pups, who generally start out dark colored, and their white spots tend to grow in first before anything else!
The lighter color is a leucistic AWD! Leucism is reduced pigmentation, kind of like albinism but it doesn't affect everything. When I saw there were some documented, I immediately wanted to capture this awesome color variation in an animal we all know and love!



You guys picked up really fast that these are Acrylic charms! Shaker charms, to be exact. The little bits inside can move around in shaker charms and some irl even have liquid inside to make a glitter and floaty effect! XD I'm a little obsessed with those kind of charms and I've been wanting to start a collection for a long time, but since I missed any of the ones I wanted at the convention I went to not too long ago, I thought... why not make some CS dogs themed after them?
I wanted to make these feel very classic Chickensmoothie, so the rarity stars were a must. The idea for the UR fruit only came to me after I made the smoothie charm to go inside the green dog. I've always wanted some preserved fruit, just like most of you guys! So I chose the ones that felt most likely to be included in a smoothie (banana, my beloved), and depicted them at their most joyful XD The PPS mid-growth is based off the rainbow anodized effects that are sometimes made in stickers and other things too! I chose a lot of things for puppy in that one, like the tennis balls, the food dish, and the bone XD Classic dog. (The heart is for our eternal love for puppies! If you like dogs anyhow XD)
The star dog charm is, admittedly, just me and stuff I like XD I like space, what can I say? But so do most of you, so win/win!
and obviously, the blanket pup, I thought it would be a shame to lose it so I had to make it a PPS! The hearts inside all represent one of the growths. Purple for the blanket pup. Light blue for the anodized PPS, dark blue for space charm, green for smoothie, and red for the rarity stars rainbow! One of the effects for this one is that the blanket is supposed to be screenprinted onto the charm so the little hearts can vanish under the blanket and are only visible if you shake the charm to get them to show up on the dog XD it's a hard effect to show on a static image but I did my best!
If it isn't obvious by now, I REALLY love transparency effects XD Thank you all for the kind words and for the support over the time I've been making these! You guys inspire me more than anything else, I mean it. And thank you for reading if you have!