beardycarrot

[beardycarrot]

My toxic trait: I’m always prepared to never speak to a person again

[beardycarrot]

[beardycarrot]

I just got another one of those phishing emails where it pretends to be a confirmation of a subscription you never signed up for and tries to trick you into providing personally identifying information for "confirmation purposes" when you attempt to cancel, but:

a. this one is for a weekly grocery delivery service, of all things; and

b. the fake shopping list contains nothing but ham.

I have been fraudulently subscribed to ham.

[beardycarrot]

[beardycarrot]

former governor of new jersey chris christie trolling for thick bitches in the middle of fucking nowhere paldea

[beardycarrot]

THE MEOWTRIX 🐱

[beardycarrot]

[beardycarrot]

know the difference!

[beardycarrot]

Oops. I was working on a custom earring set, and my first batch came out too small. 😅

Here's a size comparison and then then finished product.

#gasp

[beardycarrot]

Shoutout to whoever it was who informed me a few weeks ago that some types of Zofran have stevia in them because I got to tell my doctor about it today, and he literally made this face behind his mask because he had no idea, and he is also stevia intolerant:

[beardycarrot]

"ummm you know the writer only included that because they have a FETISH right?" is always so funny to me as a disparaging comment, because imagine if people spoke that way about nonsexual interests. "the lord of the rings? didnt the author only write that because he was interested in linguistics? thanks, i'll pass" "yeah, i used to love spongebob as a kid, but i can never see it the same after finding out stephen hillenburg is a marine biologist :/"

[beardycarrot]

thought this was a dril tweet for a second but no this is just reality now

[beardycarrot]

[beardycarrot]

Neil Gaiman is a treasure.

[beardycarrot]

[beardycarrot]

A man in Stockholm really took that last bit to heart.

[beardycarrot]

Oh gosh, if you're taking questions I have like, a bajillion. The neopets "style" has been pretty loose over the years but... What sort of guidelines did you have to follow? Were there any hard "no"s? Was there a style guide or bible? In terms of design, what were you most proud of? Anything that was rejected that was disappointing to not see come to fruition?? Pardon my excitement!

From my recollection there was no official style guide, which I'm sure is pretty apparent from the art on the site—we'd run things by our art director Anthony/Tigercatcher for feedback, or by Adam or Donna to get their stamp of approval, but otherwise it was relatively lawless. It is fun to be able to look back at the old art and immediately tell who drew it, though!

A couple memorable anecdotes:

There was this brief phase in the early years where we had anthropomorphized neopets, but we hadn't really standardized how we drew them. They eventually got fingers and fully rendered eyes BUT I do love this transitional period where I just drew a bunch of sexy aishas with nub hands and dot eyes:

At one point there was a moratorium on giving the anthropomorphic characters helix piercings. It had become a kneejerk instinct to just toss a couple hoops onto a character's ear as you were designing them and it got: wildly out of hand

the worst notes were the ones we'd get on the Neopets Magazine covers, hands down. We could have so much fun with the on-site art, but anything public-facing like merch and the magazine were under way more levels of impenetrable scrutiny. The feedback was always to make the smiles BIGGER and B I G G E R