Groundhog Judgement Day

Last week, PETA (which stands for Batsh*t Crazy Animal Organization) claimed that the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Pennsylvania is cruel to real live groundhog "Punxsutawney Phil," and demanded he be replaced with a robotic groundhog.

Oh, PETA, you've done it again!

Seriously, what is up with them lately? First they said fishing is cruel, so they wanted to rename fish as "sea kittens," because according to them, no one wants to hurt an adorable kitty and people will stop fishing. They also demanded that Ben & Jerry's stop using dairy milk in their ice cream and use human breast milk instead. Ew. Then they denounced President Obama because he killed a fly during a speech. Sadly, I'm not making up any of that.

There was a time when PETA was a relevant and effective animal rights organization that achieved admirable results. That time is long past. Now they're like the crazy old aunt that shows up at Thanksgiving wearing her bra on the outside of her blouse.

Anyway, PETA's ridiculous Groundhog Day demand inspired this illustration. It's February 2nd, Judgement Day for humanity. We'd better hope Punxatron 3000 aims his visual receptors at the ground and detects its shadow, or it's lights out for the human race.

I'm sure I probably messed up the program code in the word balloon. It's been a lonnnng time since I took that Basic class in college. If any programmers are out there, feel free to correct me. The red text is hand lettered. It's a good start, but I feel like it needs some refinement.

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.



Here's the digital sketch of Phil. Like most of my illustrations, it started as a simple image and quickly got out of control.

Note that in the sketch, there are two vertical lines under his upper "lip." Those lines made it seem like he had giant buck teeth, which caused him to look more like a beaver or a woodchuck than a groundhog. From the reference photos I looked out, groundhogs don't have prominent teeth, so I deleted one of the lines and centered the other. Problem solved!