Spend time with someone who makes you smile.

Some potentially surprising facts about Lila Grandis and Everett Cassidy of Deer Me:

Lila is my oldest anthropomorphic character. Only Daisy (the blonde dog of Pink Ink) predates her in design, and in design only. Daisy's design was my first for an anthropomorphic character at all, but the Deer Me character was created with the comic, pulling from that old design. Lila was an actually established character over a decade before Deer Me existed.

Everett also predates Deer Me by a little under three years... not as long as Lila, but he actually predates Velvet, Viana, and Woola by six days.

My first Deer Me-ish comics (before I selected a title and committed to making a regular comic) starred Lila and Everett, not any of the current comic's main characters.

The driving story from the Viana Is Mopey chapter was written years before Deer Me existed. The original driving story was a short story with Everett in Viana's role and Lila in Thomas's role.

In case her original design of a green "lizard" with a suspiciously round face and a headband did not make it obvious, Lila was originally my fan character inspired by the late 1980s cartoon incarnation of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She initially had blonde hair and a human twin sister named Sandra. Sweet Valley High books also played a role in her origin. Her new canine design is one more homage to my 1980s childhood: my childhood Smooth Collie, whom I had to give away not long after Lila's creation.

Everett's new form is a red wolf, because, as Shan noted, "The lengths you will go to to include coyotes in your comics" (and red wolves may be a hybrid of gray wolves and coyotes).

Category: Deer Me Art

Labels: Deer Me, Art, Female, Male, Dog, Red Wolf

Characters: Everett Cassidy, Lila Grandis