Oh, rats!

I haven't posted lately because I've been working on a few things. I'd been meaning to expand my Year of the Pig kit with the rest of the animals, but with the lunar new year quickly approaching it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do all of them, so I just made a little Year of the Rat add-on.

I couldn't decide which rat pose I liked, so I just included both of them! He's a cute little guy.

The rat is the first animal in the Chinese zodiac cycle. There's a story about how this came to be. The Jade Emperor invited the animals to a party. Near the end of the journey, they animals had to cross a celestial river, and the rat tricked the ox into letting him ride on its head. When they were almost at their destination the rat jumped off the ox's head and arrived first. So the Year of the Rat comes first, and the Year of the Ox is second.

Last year I got a lot of hits from people looking for "papercut pig." I'll have to put my little rat over in the sidebar or something, for anybody looking for a papercut rat.