Tilteed

Artist Interview: thunderpeel

Curator’s Statement:

Life as a bunny must be really tough. I mean, while you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re cute (because you always are), you do have to constantly worry about all the big bad creatures that want to eat you. Bunny life is no piece of carrot cake. 

Hi, Brian! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi, Tilteed!  I’m a guy from Michigan that loves to draw and write and run and jump and climb and, well, all sorts of things.  I make my living doing freelance illustration and design, which, I have to admit, is kinda cool.  In unrelated news, according to an online quiz I took a while back, I could totally take twenty-eight 5th graders in a fist fight… and that’s while sober!  According to a similar quiz, I have a 67% chance of surviving a zombie-pocalypse.  That missing 33%?  I’m a sentimental lout.

Where did you get the idea for “Stormy Nightmares”?

Originally it was a sketch for a concept I was working on called, “It’s not easy being yummy.”  I figured that yummy little critters like bunnies must be scared half to death at least half the time, including their bedtime hours.  I could just picture a little bunny asleep in his hole on a stormy evening having nightmares of weasels or snakes or—in this case—foxes leering over the burrow with their big toothy faces.  Scurry stuff!  In any case, I’ve since gone in a different direction with “It’s not east being yummy,” but this was a pleasant offshoot of it.

Looking at your artwork, you seem like a guy who loves animals. What’s your favorite animal of all time?

Oh geez, that’s a very difficult question!  I’ve always been kind of obsessed with animals and I’ve got lots of favorites… although, a lot of them are extinct.  When I was a kid it was definitely turtles.  Nowadays it would probably be otters, crows, or cuttlefish, although as a University of Michigan alumnus I have to say that wolverines are way up there as well!

If you could live your life as a cartoon character for a day, who would you be?

I should probably pick one that can fly or breathe underwater or has phenomenal cosmic powers or something, but for now I’ll just say Tigger.

What are your thoughts on sporks?

Sporks are complicated… Normally I’d say that it’s better to do one thing very well than be mediocre at a couple different things, but sporks might be an exception to that rule.  The main problem for me is that plastic sporks are super-flimsy and can’t stand up to anything, but when you find a sturdier metal spork it’s usually really big and flat, which just ruins the whole thing.  My ambivalence grows with each spork encounter.

Are there any websites that you want us to check out?

http://www.brianwalline.com is, of course, a top-notch URL

If you’d like a little more narrative with your pictures (including fun stories, like the time I met a bear in the woods in New Jersey), then you should probably check out my blog: http://walline.wordpress.com

The world is about to end. You have just enough time to say one last thing on Earth. Go!

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.