- [desperately attempts to suppress a tired yawn] How's it 4am again, oops.
Thanks everyone for the compliments on Mitch! It really means a lot to me, as I was very nervous about him growing up^^
Here's also a shoutout to everyone who participated in the guessing games, you all made this a lot of fun for me!
Lil' Mitch is indeed inspired by a Major Mitchell's Cockatoo.
I say inspired, because in the real bird, the crest is the only part of their plumage to sport the vibrant red and peach colours that I liked so much about the palette.
I originally intended to make a Salmon-crested cockatoo, y'know, just for the joke. But when we settled on our palette, I decided to go with this one instead.
I know that this outcome is definitely not going to live up to everybody's expectations.
I'll confess: I oftentimes find myself disliking the heavily edited staff litter outcomes. I appreciate nicely executed edits, but more often than not the extreme edits aren't my cup of tea.
I did not add wings to this cat for the simple reason that I don't care for wing edits. There are a few pets on this site (bar actual birds/dragons) where I do like 'em: pets like last Christmas' dove dogs, Chia's 2013 staff dog, or the 2011 gryffin store dogs.
But yeah, I'm just personally kind of tired of wing edits and did not want them on my cat.
Mitch is not supposed to be a bird, he's really just a feathered cat^^
I did try to add feathers or fluffy edits to the tail. I had several sketches with completely edited tails. They all looked way too crowded to me, I didn't enjoy them. So I settled for colouring the tail a bit, and it immediately made me happier.
(Seriously, at one point I ended up loudly cursing at the tail, it just wouldn't look nice to me.)
I'm really happy that so many of you do enjoy the final design, and I'm sorry for those who I'll inevitably let down. There are lots of cute birdy pets out there, though <3