I can't tell if the hamster in the bg looks subtley menacing or if it's like "Poor guy I'll show him the ropes." Both ideas are funny in my head XD

hamsters are known to eat each other so i would be worried for him

Oh no I didn't know they did that! Run Maurice!!

I came here to make a dated pop-culture/music reference and say "despite all my rage, I am still just Maurice in a cage" but then I saw your PSA and I'm sad that if I ever were in a position where I could have a hamster, I shouldn't make an exciting Hamster World by connecting cages with tunnels...
(The tubes also apparently don't work well for Russian Dwarfs because of the fur on their paws, they can't grip the plastic.)

Please tell me he tames that hamster and rides it into battle... and since this is a cartoon it's fine for the hamster to go through the tube but Maurice doesn't think to duck first and gets knocked off when the hamster goes through the tube.

Those hamster balls are ALSO horrid. But that doesn't mean I wont put my vampire in one. He's already dead, it's fiiiiiiine.

Haha he might! I've been thinking of drawing a follow up to th is picture!

Why are all the seemingly fun toys for pets actually the worst things imaginable?! The balls I knew about though, it's the same issue as when the wheel is too small (the wheel is a MUST for rodents but it has to be big enough or else it's bad for their backs), plus the possibility for traumatic injury if the ball goes down a flight of stairs or somebody kicks it or something...

Vampire's dead though so he doesn't have to worry about that. Especially for non-canon shenanigans.

Yes do the follow up. I know you are thinking about commissions as well but you need to draw for fun or else the burnout will get to you pretty quick. That's advice from someone that's fucked around and found out...

You know what you are right. I've been very focused on producing examples of things folks might not know I was keen to draw but I DO need to take time to be self indulgent!

I might treat myself to actually creating a whole OC that's tiny so I can do worldbuilding for them.

Ooh, when you say tiny, do you mean a creature that's meant to be small, or someone that's small because of external circumstances?

You have that hamster looming behind Maurice. Perhaps it's time for Nugget Adventures. Unless hamster is still too small, in which case I recommend pygmy jerboas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baluc.....n_pygmy_jerboa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnn-wMPU9w

I mean like the Borrowers or The Littles. The cartoon was NOT that good, but The Littles take first place in my brain because they had tails. They were childrens books before they were a cartoon. The Borrowers books are good too! And the ghibli film, The Secret World of Arietty which is based on The Borrowers.

I realized I botched the wording in my comment, I mixed "unless hamster is still too big" and "unless hamster isn't small enough" into "unless hamster is still too small" yet you still knew what I was trying to convey. Thanks!

I think the pygmy jerboas look like little old men, or gnomes, or goblins or something, it's their faces I think. If you don't want tiny jerboa people, I'll do it myself. That sort of thing could actually be interesting world-building if there's just this species of sapient but very small people inhabiting some planet and they somehow avoid detection until an exploratory party of more conventionally sized beings arrives. Lilliput *and* kaiju movie vibes.

OK SO I DIDN'T JUST IMAGINE THAT MOVIE. There *was* a The Borrowers movie in the late 1990s and it *did* have John Goodman in it, I didn't just make that up in my brain. It is an interesting concept and you should 100% design some miniature people. Especially when you mention tails, my brain thinks you are implying tiny demihuman/kemonomimi hybrid animal/human people and I love that shit when it's not the typical anime waifu stuff!

I've seen those guys! They're so little and squinty!

I actually have a book that's just titled Gnomes and it's full of these gorgeous watercolor and guache paintings. Every page has presented-as-fact worldbuilding about the gnomes cultures and how they make and use tools and homes and how they interact with wild animals.

Here's some pictures from it:
https://thecavenderdiary.files.word.....nome-house.jpg
https://thecavenderdiary.files.word.....ith-a-boar.jpg
https://thecavenderdiary.files.word.....gnome-diet.jpg

And yes, you're right about the tiny kemonomimi characters! I'd want them to have tails and a few more animal-like features. I drew JW as one and he had some buck teeth similar to The Littles who had the tails, pointed ears, and mouse-like teeth.

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/40217171/

I started doodling jerboa man faces after I posted that comment, had to include the bushy eyebrows. Looks extremely grumpy despite the fact it's pretty much the creature's resting expression, RBF Galactic Champion 2023.

I also like the idea of a group of my jerboa-like alien dudes encountering a pygmy jerboa. Like, it just appears and bounces through their camp or whatever, and everybody starts screaming and flipping tables and trying to shoot it with their blasters while swearing and throwing things yet being completely unable to land a single shot on the bouncy little mouse. For them, it would be like if you were at a party or something and suddenly a goblin just decided to go streaking right through the room I guess.

HOW SMALL ARE GNOMES? I always thought they were the size of the garden sculptures, but those are like gnomes FOR gnomes! They're keeping mice as pets and morels are as big as they are!
I love when these books about fictional creatures have this aesthetic, like a field guide or field notes.

Bro looks so creepy as a mouse man, yet it suits him perfectly! His lanky features really add to the "creep" factor, mice are usually kinda round and stout and squishy, I think I'd be filled with the exact horror, rage, and strength needed to kill God himself if I saw a mouse that looked like JW lmao.