This is a Zootopia themed illustration I came up earlier this week, featuring Morris the polar bear cub inviting a friend, Kiki the panda cub, to come over to his place. Kiki and her family had recently moved into the city and struggled at first to make friends, once school started – one of her classmates in kindergarten just happened to Morris. As the weeks went by, the two became closer and closer. Morris, is now the adoptive son of Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps (although he still refers to them as uncle and aunt respectively) after tragedy struck which took the life of the polar bear cub’s biological father, Koslov, a former bodyguard of the don of Tundratown, Mr. Big.

Because of how close Nick and Judy were with Morris, because of how frequently they babysat the cub, Koslov has written in his will that should anything happen to him then Morris should be under the care of the two police officers. When designing Kiki, I wanted to make sure she would fit within the world of Zootopia which did mean looking up how giant pandas were designed for that franchise, and while I have drawn pandas before I had to make sure she didn’t come across as too catlike. Plus, I wanted her to be noticeably skinnier than chubby Morris.