Pygoscellis antarticus (Chinstrap Penguin)

Penguins can be awkwardly adorable on land. And like everything else in nature, it stays that way until you look a little too closely at the details. Like how the insides of their mouths have backward-facing spikes to help them hold on to slippery prey. Or that some nest-making species engage in a sort of prostitution for pebbles. Or that researchers use satellite images of their nest sites to track their poop color and thus track their changes in diet.

I created two separate poses of Pygoscellis antarticus; waddling and projectile pooping (the poop prints separately!). These are pretty simple to paint because there's no gentle color shifts from body part to body part, just straight from black to white and a bit of pink for the feet and the mouth. And you can choose if your pooping penguin has a fish-heavy (brown) or a krill-heavy (pink) diet!