Spiders at the Natural History Museum!

Dear Reader,

This weekend we made a trek to the Natural History Museum in LA to help celebrate the opening of their spider exhibit.

A fun time was had by all and in the end the kids that stopped by crafted about 500 furry friends!!

Spiders were creeping all over the place, and they weren't shy of hogging the limelight ;)

And when it came to construction, even the security got interested in crafting an assistant (look at the end of the table in the shot to the right)!

Keep an eye out next year, the sheer joy of it was so great that I think we'll try figuring out how to bring this craft to you in a kit. Then the spiders can truly take over :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Behind the Iron Curtain to Pick Up Acorns

Dear Reader,

Recently there's been a lot of action behind the scenes and I think it's time we shared some of the good news! First off, we have signed with a Toyology, one of the best toy reps on the West Coast, so soon acorns and squirrels will start spreading farther and wider :)

In preparation for the impending surge, Justus and I visited our acorn warehouse yesterday:

Secondly, we are looking into what it takes to send internationally!! This is still early days, but for those of you outside the US, know that it is in the works :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

The Importance of a Goal ...

Dear Reader,

It's been a couple of weeks since I took my inspirational little road trip up the coast with my old math buddy Rob Pollack and I just realized I never regaled you with images of our galavanting.

It was a wonderful trip that underscored a few truisms of travel that equally apply to life, and it feels important to share them with you.

1) Have a goal. With no reason beyond that it looked interesting, we aimed for Carrizo Plain National Monument.

2) Don't be hung up on your goal! A rock slide blocked the road to Carrizo so we simply went in a different direction.

3) If it looks like an interesting side excursion, take it! This is perhaps more obvious when on holiday, but I kind of think it applies equally to life in general. We noticed a tiny side road at one point that led to a magnificent walk along a beach, up a cliff and along some train tracks.

4) Stop to smell the flowers. This didn't apply very literally to our trip, but we did stop to look at a rock pools of wildlife down by the ocean and pretty much any fun thing that crossed our path.

All in all, a wonderful trip :)



Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

For the Birds

Dear Reader,

A fundamental tenant of The Squirrel King is to mix media. What a joy it was then to see Alien One completely embracing life this way :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

PS it's always good to wear a helmet when you're flying :)

A New Year's Resolution!

Dear Reader,

With the beginning of the new year The Squirrel King has decided to articulate its commitment to the world around us. The Oath has been carefully crafted to include all manner of civic commitment we want to make, simply put this is it:

To help give context to these words we have dedicated a new tab to further expanding what this means to us. As time passes we hope to quantify The Oath more precisely, but for now we wanted to get it out there :)

Feel free to take The Oath yourself!

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 :)

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

Something from Nothing!

Dear Reader,

The king has arrived!

We're closing in on the last couple of squirrels for the card game to go on the back of our squirrel kits' instruction cards.

One of the big joys of this little operation has been repurposing discarded materials. Careful examination of the throne reveals a cardboard box!

And left, you might see broken sunglasses, but I saw ...

An ice hockey player!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Ode to a Squirrel Kit

Dear Reader,

As you can see, the Aliens and I have all been hard at work knitting and kitting out our various squirrels for the upcoming game shoot. While we were doing that though, a wonderful poem celebrating the squirrel kits arrived in the post from one of our super special backers!

I just had to share it with all of you :)

Ode to a Squirrel Kit

Wrap some wool around chenille, add some googly eyes,
cardboard paws and feet to stand and pose these squirrely guys.
Each one needs to have a name that suits it to a T -
You alone will choose that name, what ever will it be?
Now let your mind dream up all kinds of things you'd like to do,
then make the props and clothes they need with odds and ends and glue.

And by the way, in case you missed our Kickstarter campaign we now have pre-ordering ability online! Check it out on our Squirrel Kits page.

Hope you like skiing and rodeo squirrels!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Thanks!

Dear Reader,

A virtual posy of flowers for everyone!

Thank you so much for the amazing support you've shown us during our Kickstarter campaign over the last couple of weeks! It has been truly inspiring to see how many people have come aboard and helped to spread the word about this wonderful project :)

And a special thanks to Scott Thill for his wonderfully fantastic article about The Squirrel King, in case you haven't seen it already, check it out on the Huffington Post!

As an extra thank you from the team here, rest assured that we're going to include the game with the instructions! And we're still looking into local manufacturing to see if we can find a way to swing it anyway :) So now ... now we're getting right into putting these kits together ... Christmas is coming really soon :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Yoga Squirrels

Dear Reader,

Just in case you were wondering how to make use of the entire "craft bonanza pack" pledge on our Squirrel Kits Kickstarter campaign, here's your answer: open a yoga studio!

Of course the kits do make great party gifts which is another idea :)

Seriously, thanks for all of your support so far! Keep spreading the word, there's some super wonderful "stretch goals" we can't wait to reveal once our initial target has been hit!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

The Squirrel King Kicks off Kickstarter!

Dear Reader,

The time has come to bring Squirrel King squirrel kits to the world!

And to kick it off in style the royal squirrel graced us with his purple laptop and hit the launch button :)

It's now time to:

click here to visit Kickstarter yourself and order your own Squirrel King squirrel kit

Go forth and spread the world! With your help we can bring the joy of The Squirrel King to the world :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Squirrel Kits Coming Next Week!

Dear Reader,

They have been a long time in the making, but finally the opportunity to get your hands on your very own Squirrel King squirrels is here! ... well next week it'll be here :)

That's right, our Squirrel Kits that enable you to craft your very own squirrels are coming to fruition. We'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign next Tuesday.

Stay tuned for more details!!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Squirrels In Yosemite!

Dear Reader,

We're back, from an amazing family vacation to Yosemite! Squirrels and all :)

As you know, our mini-stunt squirrels love some wild rapids. Well this trip was no different. Check out the bark surfboard churning up the white water!

Of course Yosemite also has sequoias ...

That would be big ... big trees :)

To give you a sense of the scale, here's the Aliens climbing to the top of an old stump.

We saw a 2700 year old tree!

Time, scale, everything was grand!! The Squirrel King aesthetic is predicated on human marveling at scale and this trip underscored that appreciation.

Oh, and the mini-squirrels were delighted to find two-foot long pine cones!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Inspiration: Life is Not Zero Sum

Dear Reader,

Sometimes it takes a kid President to sum things up nicely. Happily I stumbled across this message the other day:


A good reminder that life is not a zero sum game. Create, expand, make more, go forth wonderful people!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

New Improved Title Card

Dear Reader,

As promised, following the insightful creative input of our good friend Kylie Matulick and the hard work of the mini-construction squirrel we finally arrived at our new, improved title card!

Stickers to be made soon :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Scientists Decode Dreams!

Dear Reader,

It's always fascinating to watch someone dream, and as every parent knows, watching your kids while they sleep is endlessly endearing.

The new extensions we're working on for The Squirrel King have to do with the World of Dreams, so it was particularly interesting to us to see that if we're not fast, scientists might beat us to the punch. Apparently, they've now been able, in a small way, to represent the mystery of that alternative universe!

For a quick step away from art for a moment, check out this NPR article on decoding dreams.

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Hidden Away in the Grass

Dear Reader,

A couple of weeks ago we noticed some activity in our hanging grassy planter. And on closer inspection we found ...

Some baby bird chicks!

And as we watched them grow, it occurred to me that these chirping little chicks were a perfect metaphor for the quiet foundational work happening at Squirrel King headquarters.

With the conclusion of principal production on the first season closing in we've taken some time to step back from what we have and look at where we might go next.

Like the little babies hidden in the grass on our balcony, we see an amazing future, full of possibilities!

And then one day they left the nest - well one of them tried to move into the apartment, but after a tactful negotiation we convinced him there was more to eat outside.

Like the baby chicks we have been looking for the right home for our series, and we've had some fantastic discussions which are taking us in unexpected new directions. Like the cheeky little fellow on the right here we're still looking for the right home, but our story is already in the process of expanding to include the World of Dreams ...

We're still very focused on finishing the first twelve episodes and before that, bringing the mini-stunt squirrels to you, but it's very exciting to think just how much bigger our world is expanding to!

Stay tuned for more :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims