#tlg tupp

[tired-lamb]

favourite side character ever

[intothetlkverse]

Decided to challenge myself by drawing every single TLK character out there, up until this point in time, and post it here. You can see the finished project on my main account, though I figured to post it on my tumblr just show I could proudly show off my work and a few of my head canons.

Here's all the rodents, plus lagomorphs, across TLG/K:

First are the jerboas; Tupp/Thupi(body-Nyanja) the lesser Egyptian jerboa from "Journey of Memories" and Jerboa/Impuku(rodent-Zulu) the long-eared jerboa from "The Call of the Drongo". Right between them is a springhare we see from the TLK book "A Wild Night Out". In the book where Simba and Nala sneak out at night to explore and find an aardvark, a porcupine, and a springhare before heading back home. This discovery has unfortunately made me have to do back and retroactively add some more characters, though at least it is nice to get some animals in proper TLK style for a change, though I kinda feel a bit sheepish for not realizing that TLK has done springhares before I did my revamped beavers into them. Anyways, meet Bazara(spring-Hausa).

Next are the mice, including the first one we see in TLK, the striped grass mouse Scar plays with I've named Eku(mouse-Yoruba), Nobi/Inabi(grapes-Hausa) the spiny mouse from "Good Mousekeeping" who is an albino African spiny mouse who gets bullies by a trio of elephants before he learns to stick up for himself, and lastly the female four-striped grass mouse we see also in "The Call of the Drongo" I've decided to name Lishe(nutrition). Not much to say about them, though my headcanon is that Eku is actually one of Zazu's partners, having gotten close to him during Zazu's rib cage imprisonment, and kept him informed about current events while also trying to help him escape by gnawing on the bones time to time.

Following with TLG rodents, which make up the majority of this list, we have Tafu/Tafiya(journey) the scaley-tailed flying squirrel from "The Accidental Avalanche". As far as gliding rodents go, I really like his simplistic design and kept it pretty much the same. Additionally for flying squirrels we have Piper/Pyp(pipe-Afrikkans) from "Saskatchewan Catch", a flying squirrel who gets help from Timon and Pumbaa to find herself a mate in exchange for some hard-to-reach tree beetles, though ditch them on their deal once she finds her mate. Not much to say about her story wise, though design-wise I did think the purply-grey colors were alright, though no lipstick, scarves, or updos that make Pricilla Presley weep in envy, though I can justify the beauty-mark.

Also for squirrels we have the the Teds, Ithendi(heel-Xhosa) and Kitendo(act), now a pair of ground squirrels, which just look like prairie dogs to me, from "You Ghana Join the Club". These brothers and their family decided to hog the resources of a certain area in the Oasis, though thankfully and rather painfully got their comeuppance by peeving off one of the local lions. Again, not much to say, though I think I did a good job of sneaking in some pink and blue elements into their designs, though I had to do quite a bit of redesigning, since the first draft came out looking like evil Care Bears.

Next are the porcupines, all pains in the neck with all their individually drawn quills, where we have the African-crested present with Mama Binturong-now-Civet's lackey Smun/Sumai(high). At some point in time the Forest was a pleasant place, where the inhabitants freely interacted with each other and freely shared the resources around, even inviting new folks to live in the community. However one of them, a malicious civet, took advantage of everyone's naivete and generosity, instead hogging all the resources including their precious medicinal tuliza, and threatening anyone who tried to get in her way, as well as making the price to get even just a blossom of tuliza unobtainable at worse and back-breaking at minimum. Sumai and his prickle were unfortunately casualties in this that only worsened the problem. They were so young when they lost their parents to an easily preventable disease that could've been stopped with the tuliza, but they were denied it and ended losing their lives, and leaving their children alone and vulnerable. Acting as the doting 'mama' figure, she took in the orphaned porcupines, acting as the poor doctor who was unable to save their parents due to everyone wanting the tuliza and taking it from her, leaving none for her to give to save them. Over time she successfully convinced them that the other inhabitants of the forest were to blame, wanting to hog all the tuliza for themselves and did not care about trampling over or taking out others to achieve that. Slowly she grew her army of porcupines, heavily dependent on her and unable to realize the harm she had caused, to neither them or their communities, by controlling the flow of tuliza, so caught up in their devotion and false belief of misplaced blame. By the time they return back to the forest after failing to get revenge on Bunga, they find that the forest has flourished in their time away, the tuliza and resourced are now being shared and cultivated as originally, and to boot the inhabitants have grown more of a spine. Mama Civet has grown frail and ill with age and a few porcupines were injured during the fight. The forest inhabitants are still resentful, but merciful enough to allow them to remain in their old area and use what they are given to recover, but they will now be required to work for the community and their tuliza, and the second they step out of line, they're out. Over time some of the other porcupines begin to see the community for how it truly was and begin to question how they were raised and acted before, whole Sumai remains almost fanatically devoted and serving to his ailing, crippled foster mother, now refusing to even get up and demanding quantities of food and tuliza served right to her, succumbing to sloth and addiction. Sumai can only painfully watch as she slowly keeps on digging a hole she can't climb out of, while his brethren try to help him move on.

So yeah, decided to give Smun's prickle a backstory with orphans, dependency, abuse, and addiction. I imagine tuliza, while it does seem to have calming/pain-relieving aspects, too much or condensed quantities can be addicting, though I believe by the time Bunga meets Mama for the first time and he finds her hogging all the tuliza, the effects have mostly worn out and she needs a higher, more concentrated dose to feel the effects, hence why she stole Makini's tuliza, hoping it was a more stronger version... I think I need to stop watching MLP's Breaking Bad/Poison Joke.

Back in the Pridelands we have Male Porcupine/Nungu(porcupine) and his sons; the Porcupine Brothers; Chembe(quill) and Sindano(needle). Nungu is a single dad of two that tries really hard to raise his sons up right, though between a certain honey badger bouncing him like a ball, being chased by curious giraffe calves, and having fruit dropped on him, the poor guy just needs a break.

From "Prickly Problems" we have Spike/Karu(spike), a porcupine that accidently spikes Simba, only to regret it after he realizes that the cub meant him no harm. Fortunately Simba does recover and they do make up in the end, though I personally don't like how he looks like a North American porcupine in the book.

Last of the porcupines is Zungura(poke), featured in, but never mentioned by name in the TLK book "A Wild Night Out", where she does meet Simba and Nala when Simba accidently steps on one of her shed quills. I find it a bit coincidental that I put her next to a porcupine that actively stuck Simba with quills, though thankfully African-crested porcupines are smooth quills instead of barbed like the North American variants, so while still extremely painful to get stuck, are much easier to pull out. I know this from experience, though I will say this, African-crested porcupines are like big guinea pigs. Give them something like a nut of piece of sweet potato and they will hunker down, grab the food, and start munching on it, they are so adorable.

Next is the pika we see at the Tree of Life that Mama Binturong/Civet bullies after they try to give her some tuliza. His name is Ponya(heal) and he often helps Nirmala by finding and gathering supplies for her, as does the rest of his group. So while doing research for this, I incidentally discovered that the pika, which I originally thought was a rodent, is actually a lagomorph, aka related to rabbits/hares, who are also not rodents. But come on, we kind of do associate them with these smaller critters, so this sheet is now rodents + lagomorphs. I did reuse the model from the last time I made him, though I also added the little mouthful of grass you see pikas with. Seriously, if you're having a bad day, look up 'pikas with flowers', it so sweet, you'll feel better. I have them here in Colorado, and while I don't see them all that often, I sure am glad I do have them here, though I did learn while drawing them that apparently there are some in Asia too, so that's neat.

So starting off with the hares we have the TLG ones, including the young female hare/Sungura(hare/rabbit) who is a scrub hare, and the red rock hares with Masikio(ears) and his sister Sikiliza(listen). And lastly... the ones from the Timon and Pumbaa Show... the three-fingered jackalope/Gaidi(bandit) who is now a scrub hare.... and horrifying Rabbit/Hofu(fear), and neutered as much as possible from their show counterparts and for good reason, please trust me on this. Best I can say is that I did y'all a favor by turning mister nightmare away from y'all.