First Kickstarter Rewards Out!

Dear Reader,

The Squirrel King just hit a major milestone: our first Kickstarter rewards are in the mail! Kickstarter backers who ordered stickers, keep your eyes open :)

It feels so good to finally be physically sharing our rewards with our wonderful supporters!

For those of you who ordered kits, stay tuned, acorns are almost in California and the kits are becoming more real every day! There's still time to pre-order on this site for those who missed out :)

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Freshly Squeezed!

Dear Reader,

There's nothing quite like the joy that freshly squeezed orange juice can bring, and yesterday Alien Two took fresh to a new level with the inspired idea of simply slipping a straw into her clementine :)


It's nice to see creativity blossoming :)

Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy some family time of your own!

Chin chin Ruthless Whims

Inspiration in Technique

Dear Reader,

Sometimes the behind the scenes work on animation can be even more inspiring than the final product. There's an ad running in England right now which fits that bill. Here's a review of that ad written by my cousin, including pics from the behind the scenes. And here's a little video:


Personally I think the ad would have been even more powerful if when watching we were aware of the technique behind it ... I guess that's what I like so much about Aardman :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Great Balls of Yarn

Dear Reader,

Remember those tiny stickers that arrived a few weeks ago? Well they're starting to find homes on the little balls of yarn that come in our kits!

A lot have been rolled ... and a lot more rolling is still to come :)

Meanwhile the hoola-hooping squirrels that sit on my desk have been looking on hopefully that more friends will soon spring from the scraps ... and they might just be in luck as I turn on our high powered die-cutter today and try digitally cutting limbs for the first time! Stay tuned :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

PS Great excitement in other departments ... our molded pulp acorns are on a truck!!

Big View from Olloclip!

Dear Reader,

The other day I heard about a Kickstarter campaign for a lens attachment for the iphone, the Olloclip. Well like our Kickstarter campaign, theirs was already over too. On the bright side, Olloclip now has a site where you can now order it yourself.

And look at the fun the squirrels and I have been having with it!

The 4-in-1 attachment has a wide angle, a fish eye and two macros! The possibilities are endless :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

The Mustache Dache!

Dear Reader,

As the sun rose on the weekend Squirrel King headquarters was devoted to the 'stache (and the fight against prostrate cancer)!




Bump pink pipe cleaners found a new use and on the trek to the start the Alien found some fine pre-race food!

At the start we found Elvis, aka Tom - The Squirrel King's magnificent cinematographer. And then we were off!

Shooting out of the gate Alien Two took out second place in her first road race. In the under 12's!!

Alien One was a close third and they shared the podium :)


A great day was had by all and even the clouds came out to support the event!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Inspiration for The World of Dreams

Dear Reader,

In life it's often useful to percolate something important in the background. Work on The Squirrel King is quite like life :) While we've been very focused on our squirrel kits, I wanted to let you know we have not forgotten our work on the series that inspired them. Indeed here's a clip we came across recently that has inspired our vision for the World of Dreams!


I simply love the feeling of scope this clip has. Of course we'll be quite a bit more colorful! ... except maybe when the black void that's blotting out humanity's dreams starts enveloping the World of Dreams.

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

PS To read about all the latest on the kits, check out yesterday's Kickstarter update :)

Let there be Light

Dear Reader,

With a view to many late nights of construction ahead -- and the base of the craft table long complete -- the need for lighting has been high.

Selecting the actual hanging fixtures took a little longer than expected and we had to figure out the electrics(!) but the final result feels like an awesome realization of the plans!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

What To Do with a Fu Manchu

Dear Reader,

As long time followers of The Squirrel King will know, a mustache is important! So is fighting cancer. In honor of both we will be partaking next weekend in the Mustache Dache!


If you live in LA, come join us. You'll see my Fu Manchu :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

The Math Behind Our Game

Dear Reader,

By popular demand, here's an explanation of the math behind our Squirrel Match card game!

On the right is an example of what our typical playing cards look like. The tricky thing is that for every two cards there is exactly one squirrel in common. How do we achieve that? ... Hold onto your hats, to understand we're going to venture to infinity and back :)

To start, here's some basics: As everyone knows, two lines on a flat surface always intersect at exactly one point ...

Except when they don't!

But anyone who's ever looked down a set of train tracks knows that parallel lines really do intersect, if only you could walk all the way out to infinity.

Mathematicians like all things equal if and when they kind of should be, so here's tricky step number 1:

To each line we add a point "out at infinity" that corresponds to the slope of that line. We've now made what mathematicians call "projective space" and parallel lines all intersect at their corresponding slope point out at infinity!

Soooo ... how does this relate to our squirrels? Each card correspond to the points on one a line. ... But there's only 8 squirrels on a card! So here's tricky step number 2:

Imagine that the whole plane is represented by a square, sort of like one of those old computer games - if you go off the right, that means you just come back on the left. Off the bottom, you come back on the top. So the line in the square below is one line.

This is all well and good, but there's still infinitely many points on that line I hear you say. Well yes, sure, but suppose we only worry about the whole number points represented by the dots. I've chosen a square with 7 dots across.

Now putting this all together is the last tricky part:

Because 7 is prime, a line that goes through two points in this square will go through seven points, add in the point at infinity corresponding to the slope of this line and you have the eight squirrels on a card! And the kicker!! Every pair of lines meet at exactly one point, ie every pair of cards have exactly one squirrel in common.

Now who said math isn't cool?!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Justus Goes Epic

Dear Reader,

In the couple of hours a day when Justus is not working hard on Squirrel King antics, he's also a starring actor in other people's projects. Here's the trailer for his latest role, which will premiere November 12th on Epic Level TV!


Back to squirrels on Friday :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

A Lovely Pair

Dear Reader,

Life sometimes makes delightful pairings for us to enjoy. Last week offered one such unlikely coupling. While shooting the tableaus for our card game I happened across our pirate, veritably arm in arm, with our Hawaiian Island girl. They look so happy together :) May we all find true love!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

PS I promise later this week to explain the mathematics behind our card game!

Surrounded by Squirrels!

Dear Reader,

What started life as a button has now grown a greater purpose ...

Lop off the loop, turn it upside-down and suddenly it became the dome for waiter squirrel's tray.

But where is the waiter?! Our entire world of squirrels has come to life over the last couple of days as we shoot the squirrel match card game. See if you can find our waiter squirrel among his peeps - he's in both of these images :)

More on the game itself next week!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims