Illustration: Mr. Clacky-Teeth 🐰

“You always for­get my den­tures, Holly!”

In this week’s episode of the NoSleep pod­cast, the pro­tag­o­nist of the tit­u­lar sto­ry Mr. Clacky-Teeth makes reluc­tant acquain­tance with her roommate’s stuffed bun­ny slash ven­tril­o­quist dummy. 

While she gets an eerie vibe from the toy right away, she ignores it at her own per­il until she finds her­self forced into find­ing out about the his­to­ry of the rabbit’s den­tures.

Emu­late anoth­er style? Or do my own thing?

As I have men­tioned in the past, I try to not spoil the story’s reveal of the crea­ture if they have some kind of mon­ster in them, but in this case, since the rab­bit is intro­duced in the first scene, I thought I could make an exception.

Besides, who could resist­ing draw­ing this smile?

The image of the pup­pet formed in my head pret­ty quick­ly; and the final result end­ed up look­ing pret­ty close to my orig­i­nal idea. For the back­ground, how­ev­er, I had to decide between two very dif­fer­ent ideas.

The first idea is the one that made it into the final art­work. Since the girl in the sto­ry uses Mr. Clacky-Teeth as a ven­tril­o­quist dum­my in a standup rou­tine, I sat him on a bar stool onstage in a dim­ly lit café.

The sec­ond idea would have end­ed up blind­ing­ly col­or­ful. The sto­ry tells us that Mr. Clacky-Teeth’s own­er Hol­ly hangs a poster fea­tur­ing the art­work of Lisa Frank. If you’re from out­side the US like I am, you might not have heard of her — in that case I strong­ly rec­om­mend click­ing that link and look­ing at her art.

It is — and I can say that with­out hyper­bole — an awe­some experience.

Her style is so unique in fact, that I shied away from try­ing to emu­late it. I nev­er worked in her over­ly car­toony, bright and over-the-top style, and try­ing to bring myself up to speed to do her jus­tice seemed like a larg­er task than I could tack­le in the time I had at my disposal.

So! Dim­ly lit stand-up café it is!

An unwit­ting model

Short­ly after the episode was released this Sun­day, Lind­say Moore, the story’s author con­tact­ed me on Twitter.

“It looks uncan­ni­ly like the inspi­ra­tion for Mis­ter Clacky-Teeth,” she wrote. ​“How did you know what my child­hood bun­ny looks like?!”

One could argue that toy bun­nies look some­what alike, but I’m still hap­py that I unwit­ting­ly chose a like­li­ness for her imag­ined crea­ture that made her think of her child­hood toy.

I love my job so much.