#bunnywithacheckeredpast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 1” First things first, the question that I get asked more than anything about Bunnywith, is “Why doesn’t he have arms?” I personally never saw that as a design flaw or as something that was “incorrect” so I always just said “Because he wasn’t born with them so who cares.” But there IS a genuine reason. It’s because Bunnywith wasn’t always Bunnywith. Bunnywith’s visual design was taken directly from one of my oldest characters: an alcoholic manic depressive Nutcracker that was tragically allergic to nuts, named CONRAD, who appeared in many of my zines in the 90’s. I liked drawing Conrad, and since he was a jerk, I started drawing him “with” weird diseases and ailments in hopes that it would humble him. I drew Conrad With Elephantiasis, and Conrad With Syphilis, etc. But that was just gross. I thought it would be funnier if I infected something sterotypically cuter with these random ailments and items. So I made Conrad cute. I added fur, Bunny ears and cute content face and Bunnywith was born. This also explains why Bunnywith had a cool cute visible penis for so long, because Conrad did. Conrad had no arms, so Bunnywith didn’t either. Swipe to see the very first sketch of Conrad, as well as some of his zine appearances and how gross and rude he was . 🤗#BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 0”: Bunnywith is a character that I created in 1999 at Sacramento Community College as a way to make myself laugh and escape reality while I was supposed to be paying attention in math class. That is STILL Bunnywith’s one and only purpose in my life. To help me escape. With the upcoming online release of my brand new #BUNNYWITH book this Friday (on alexpardee.com), I wanted to share almost 20 years of Bunnywith’s history and evolution. Starting now, I’ll be uploading a over 100 photos chronicling some of Bunnywith’s best adventures as well as some personal commentary and little known facts about his creation and evolution. Hope you enjoy my little happy masochistic spirit animal as much as I do. Above is one of my favorite portraits of myself and Bunnywith, shot for @juxtapozmag by the wonderful @ohchloe. #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 14” - In 2013, @99centbrains and I developed a creative mobile-sticker app called #WayCooler. The development process was so fun that we wanted to do something similar for #Bunnywith, because Bunnywith made both of us laugh. Toward the end of 2013, Franky and I worked feverishly on a new Bunnywith creative app, but for scheduling reasons, we didn’t quite finish it and it got shelved (but not forgotten:). However, diving back into the world of Bunnywith so deeply again with the app-design gave me a resurgence of creative love for the character and I became obsessed once again with re-introducing him into the world. Now there was Twitter. Now there was Instagram. Now there was .GIFs. Now there was Snap Chat. Now I could draw digitally on the road! Bunnywith hasn’t seen ANY of that stuff! Coincidentally, I had an upcoming solo art gallery show booked at @galleries1988 in a few months and I didn’t yet have an idea for the show. My obsession took over and, with Gallery1988’s support, I decided to create an entire art show dedicated to Bunnywith. But I didn’t want it to stop there. I wanted to create a Bunnywith experience that I could travel with, so that I could have multiple Bunnywith art shows. So I did it. I worked with some of my closest friends and together we made an accessible, portable, affordable mobile gallery experience and in 2014 I went from Gallery 1988 in LA, to @blondegrizzly in Salt Lake City, and ended in Portland at @upportland, making each gallery experience slightly different, but all fun, and all filled with Bunnywiths. Special shouts to @retroband, @atomicvomit @davecorreia @proak @ohchloe @quake1986 and @rickywatts for helping out a ton with this madness. Photos by @paulanthonyphotos & @ohchloe <3 #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 1.5” - In the late 1990’s, I found an unlikely HUGE ally in Tower Records, hands down one of the best media stores ever before it went out of business 10 years ago. Tower Records was one of the largest WORLDWIDE supporters and distributers of independent magazines. Because of this, I was lucky enough to have my first few zines distributed in hundreds of stores, and to my surprise, they kept selling out, so I became close friends with Clint Johns, the director of Tower Magazines Corporation, located in Sacramento, CA. At the turn of the century, during the weird Y2K scare in 1999, moved to Sacramento with @bowenstuff and I needed a job. Since I already had a good relationship with Tower, I got a job at the very first Tower Records store in 1999 on Watt Ave in Sacramento, CA, mostly so that I could make sure that my zines were properly placed in front of all of the tattoo magazines and at the front counter. Within a few months, I transferred jobs from retail into the corporate side of Tower, where I worked in the magazine shipping department with Clint Johns as my boss and mentor. Tower Records would later play an enormous role in helping produce #Bunnywith. Also, fun fact, @theartofskinner’s wife @eastbay_ladyk was one of my bosses at tower and she was so lovely. #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 17” - After redesigning and re-energizing #Bunnywith around 2012, it was only a matter of time before I reverted back to my original passion and outlet for the character and created a new Bunnywith book. By this point, Bunnywith as an entity pretty much speaks for itself, so if you know Bunnywith, you know what the book is going to be, and to me, that is an amazing feeling. Taking Bunnywiths from everything he’s been a part of in the last 5 years, from the art shows, the mobile app, the toys, and even from my nightmares, I compiled a new collection of over 100 Bunnywiths. And just as history seems to repeat itself, I debuted the new book at Comic Con a few weeks ago, and just like when I debuted issue 1, my brand new book sold out before the con closed. I was floored. BUT, I immediately got some more in production and I am excited to say that TOMORROW, Friday, August 11, at 1PM EST / 10AM PST, this brand new BUNNYWITH book will be available to purchase exclusively on my store at alexpardee.com. 100 Pages. 5 years. $15. 0 ARMS. (well, maybe some fake arms). #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 15” - The idea of a fully-realized, animated #Bunnywith series had only gotten stronger every single time I gave Bunnywith something new to be “with”. Over the years, I have had a plethora of ideas on how to expand Bunnywith’s universe, ranging from the smaller, bumper-style shorts from earlier on, to concepts similar to the Smurfs, to completely and fully realized worlds with supporting characters, other lands, quests, and insanity. In 2015 I finally started realizing the actual world that I imagined Bunnywith to inhabit, and I started developing it on my own. It’s still a long way off, so I don’t want to share too much of it, but here is a tiny glimpse of a new Bunnywith world I am working on and hope to expand soon. #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 13” Even before my “tragic” Nickelodeon embarrassment, I had always imagined seeing #Bunnywith animated. I always envisioned little simple 5-10 second animated versions of my one-panel-one-gag comic strip. Until recently, much like a lot of the other aspects of creating your own DIY brand in the 2000s, there weren’t many outlets for things like this, and definitely no way of monetizing something like this. Adult Swim bumpers didn’t exist. You Tube had minimum video length requirements and no monetization, and social networks didn’t accept video formats until around 2013. However, around 2011 I began talking to my friends @pretendforreal @patrickstarr about trying to do something like this regardless. And since they have always been as fearless as me (or maybe I’m just naive:) they did what I could never do on my own: they made Bunnywith MOVE! Together, they created a few WIP concepts for what may have led to something more fleshed out. I have never shared these until now, because they were never finished, and are rough concepts, but love them and I just got permission to share them from @pretendforreal (who, btw, is an artistic/animated lunatic in his own right so check him out!) Sadly, it’s my fault why these were never finished and this direction was put on hold. I was (at the time) working heavily on Zack Snyder’s #SuckerPunch film and working with Zerofriends and had no time to oversee the project, and additionally I had just redesigned and re-introduced a newer, cuter version of Bunnywith so I decided to hold off on this. #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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“THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 16” - 6 months ago Franky from @99centbrains and I decided to team up again and revisit the idea of making a little fun mobile game for #Bunnywith to live in. Or rather, to die in! Continuing my thirst to see Bunnywith move and breathe and….get hurt, Franky and I began to brainstorm some simple ideas to mobile games that we could develop that would help me further learn the process of developmen@neonroots, and next thing you know, we got a rad little team of developers together in Uruguay and every single day for 5 months we all worked together on Skype to create a brand new interactive mobile game. It was an amazing learning experience for me. Two of the biggest realization moments I have ever had creatively were both at retrospective museum shows. First at the Tim Burton show, and secondly at the Jim Henson show. While experiencing both of those shows, it hit me just HOW important having a supportive team is for any kind of visionary artist. So working together with the Neon Roots team was an enlightening and important experience for me, as they helped me immensely with realizing my vision for the app. Plus it was the first time that I actually drew and colored almost every element, background and frame of the game on my iPad Pro using @procreate. That enabled me to consistently work on the game while I was traveling and juggling (not like, KLUTZ juggling, but that would be cool). Level up! In case you missed it a few weeks ago, the BUNNYWITH mobile game is NOW AVAILABLE on both iOS and Android for FREE!!! Go get it in the app stores or at bunnywith.com! We are still working on it, and, just like the comics and the toys, the next version is just going to be sillier, grosser, and probably a little too over the top. #BunnywithACheckeredPast

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"THE HISTORY OF BUNNYWITH: PART 13 BONUS FOOTAGE!" - Here is an additional quick animation of "Bunnywith A Cruel High School Prank", animated by @patrick_t_starr and @pretendforreal around 2010 :) #BunnywithACheckeredPast