MooBeard: The Cow Pirate

(The above drawing was colored brilliantly by Verna Jääskinen)
Here’s the next installment in my series of posts about what you won’t see in the MooBeard short. The next crew member that didn’t make the cut for the short is Quill.

Quill, a porcupine, is a manic, violent woman who takes great joy in destroying. She comes from an island with a manic, violent culture. She also acts as MooBeard’s best rough-and-tumble guy pal, despite the fact that she’s female. Apart from MooBeard, Quill is the only other clearly pirate-like crew member, and as such is the most likely to think like one. In one of the early MooBeard pitch storyboards, Quill cut a circular hole in Dark Blade’s ship as he was going on a longwinded tirade. She has an Aussie accent, which isn’t to imply, necessarily, that she’s from Australia. The accent just seems to fit the character well.

In an online poll taken while I was still pitching MooBeard, Quill was voted the second-best character (with MooBeard himself being the victor), so it was a bit heartbreaking having to cut her from the story. Still, the chemistry between MooBeard and Sailor Bird pushed the story along much better than it would’ve with Quill.