Thirsty Tanuki

This is a promotional illustration made for the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Print Lab. They said I could do whatever I wanted so I decided to do this. The little guy is a “Tanuki”, a raccoon-like animal in Japanese folklore. They often carry around their book of unpaid bills and a jug of sake. They like to get drunk and cause trouble. The background is modeled from memory after one of my favorite spots to drink in NYC, "Kenka". Kenka has a stuffed tanuki sitting on their cash register counter and i sketched it months ago and kept exaggerating it more until it got to this. I like to envision that this is the night that he comes into Kenka, ready to drink, and the staff has had the final straw and are tired of this Tanuki not paying his bills and they take him in the back and stuff him and display him on the counter.

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