I am feeling CHRISTMASSY (Patreon)

Today I spent the few hours I had at home to do some reindeer studies. I'll share more sketches next week - but this has been something that's been wandering through my mind since last year, same time.

Can I stylize the nine famous reindeers of Santas sleigh.
While still making them look like accurate realistic reindeer.
How far can I push the barrier between realism and stylization? Can I make the reindeers recognizable in build while still staying accurate to existing body types and coat patterns?

I love reindeer but they very rarely get accurately represented in media, especially in cheapily made christmas ads/movies or decorations they're usually presented as STAGS or common deer and it makes me MAAAAD

So I love these kinds of challenges, I am OBSESSED with them. If I go into pure stylization with Faemon or Chibi-fying animals, figuring out how to stay true to the core essence of the animal is an absolute delight. I argued with myself all morning if I wanted to go for a cartoony stylization of reindeers or lean more into realism for this - in this case I'm gonna do a mix of both while leaning more into realism.