Year of the Sweepy Sheepy by @smarle (Staci/Nadia)

Yes, I realize that the Year of the Sheep was LAST year, but between my laziness and our monitor and scanner problems, it never got done... ^^;;;;; I got the idea for this pic ages ago when I found out that the sheep was the Chinese Zodiac animal for 2003. The phrase "sweepy sheepy" comes from the game Lunar 2, when I cutified the spell name "Sleep Sheep". Then I started using the term constantly to mean a person who is sleepy. Obviously, I had to make the year name Year of the Sweepy Sheepy... ;)

The original picture idea I had was to draw a sleeping Jack and sheep from Harvest Moon 64, and I'd always imagined it with thick black lines and simplistic coloring, much like the style in Yoshi's Island. Since I still can't scan anything, I had to draw the picture with the mouse... The sheep came out REALLY cutely! :D But once I drew it, I couldn't bear to add Jack because 1) it was hard enough drawing a sheep with the pen and paintbrush tools in Photoshop, and a human would've been really difficult, even an SD one, and 2) he would interfere with the widdle sheepy... ^^;;;;; I tried not to spend too much time on the coloring to keep with the simplicity. For the grassy background, I just drew a couple of grass blades with the pen and paintbrush, then copy and pasted them... ^^;;; I repeated the process with smaller grass blades for further in the background to give a feeling of depth... ^^;;; Kind of cheap, but I think it works... ^^;;;

I'm so very happy with this picture! I'm a huge fan of ridiculously cute things, and this definitely qualifies! I want to pull it out of my screen and give it a big huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuug!!! ;_; Oh my gooooooooooooooooooooosh, so cooooooooooooooooooooooot! ~hugs~ Oh... er... ahem... ^^;;;;;;

It's pretty darn late, but I hope you all enjoy it! :D