Heroes of Cuteness

Initial Context

It's been over six years since I've become a father and in that time my responsibilities have grown while my personal free time has dwindled. The time spent has been the best investment of my life so far and it continues to provide new opportunities as I watch my children grow.

The most recent example of time being well invested is what this post is about. My daughter is at an age where she's creating her own worlds, characters, and lore via art and it's amazing to watch. I'm doing my part to help facilitate that creativity by giving a guiding hand on some of her creations, including a team effort called The Heroes of Cuteness.

Who are the Heroes of Cuteness?

In the town of Cuteness comes the two latest citizens: Red Panda Kim & Axolotl Lee. Little do they know that Lord Vein & Lady Conceit have been keeping tabs on them and their abundance of cuteness which will quickly put the whole town at risk. Axolotl is ready for action while Red Panda eventually gets to her paws to help out her oldest friend and any new friends they've met in their new hometown.

Red Panda Kim

Red Panda isn't a coward persay, more so she's just lazy. If her friends are truly in danger she'll gladly eat some fruit snacks that give her the power to fly, but truth-be-told she'd rather just eat fruit snacks and watch cartoons all day.

Axolotl Lee

Axolotl is the braver of the two. She's a big fan of the outdoors, definitely swimming, and goes crazy for kim (laver) which gives her the powers of super strength. Certain flavors can also allow her to grow taller in stature to intimidate her enemies.

Lord Vein & Lady Conceit (Lord Lady)

The main villains of the story. Lord Vein originally was the cute one in the worlds biggest boy band and even to this day he's still adorable. Unfortunately his current level of cuteness isn't to his liking and he plans on stealing cuteness from all of the cuties in the world with the help of Lady Conceit.

Lady Conceit, or as my daughter named her Lord Lady, is the more level headed of the bunch. She has strong bonds to Lord Vein and is the only one in the world that can reign in some of his more out there ideas.

Town of Cuteness

All animals in the town's names are just the type of animal they are; for instance the mayor is just Mayor Fennec Fox. If there are more than one of the same animal, they still have the same name just as there could be multiple Johns in the same town.

Development

This was tough and took a week or so of playing around with drawings, watching a bunch of red panda videos on Instagram, and finally accepting that my daughter's intepretation was perfect. Initially I had planned on Red Panda being a taller, animorphic girl while Axolotl would be a shorter boy rocking swim trunks and goggles.

Looking at the outcome and I was digging Axolotl's looks a lot. Red Panda I wasn't sold on, even if that character would be adorable in overalls or sundresses. After more experimenting I decided to try and make it more like the actual animal:

Which now had a new problem, they were pretty much just drawings of chubby cats. Not by any means what I was looking for. At this point, I had to circle back to my daughter's original drawings and just keep experimenting:

Yes, this is a lot more what I was looking for. The cat-like qualities were gone and now we have this little cutie ready to take on the world. Well, maybe not take on the world as my daughter describes Red Panda as "lazy" and she'd rather just lay on the couch eating fruit snacks.

The dynamic of Red Panda being the tall one and Axolotl being short now swapped I think it adds even more to their potential stories. What those stories will involve are still a work in progress, yet I'm satisfied with their visual looks.

What next?

I've secured some web domains and I'm continuing to play around with alcohol markers on water color pads. The town of Cuteness needs some more citizens, the main bad guys need more lore, and I need to actually have some sort of story arc to work with.

Bonus

Red Panda had a red panda drawing competition with my daughter and lost:

Red Panda is cute but not always the best at things...

Greetings, I'm John Mullanaphy and currently creating stuff at Impact.com as a Senior Principal Software Engineer. When I'm not coding there then I'm usually found toying around on GitHub or creating comics at Boycott Paper.

Outside of the programming world you can probably find me on the mats rocking a purple belt at Marcelo Garcia Academy, streaming on Twitch, or playing some chess.

Feel free to message on Threads if you have any questions or requests. Please help yourself to my printable résumé as well!