Ramblings about "Summer of Blooms"

For (some) brevity, I'm deciding to do this in the form of a list!

• First of all, and this may come as no surprise to some, but my biggest inspiration behind the story was the Beach Boys. In fact, the antagonists of the story are parodies of the Beach Boys themselves. Tucker, Deirdre, and Mona, however, are my own creations.
• Deirdre was the first character to be made in the story, and was actually intended to be the main character with the plot revolving around her getting over her shyness in order to start a flower shop. Then later Tucker was made, and then the Boys (as I like to call them).
• Speaking of the Boys, the choice of species was heavily based on this Hanna Barbara Beach Boys cartoon that was tragically cancelled in the later '70s. And yes, they DID have anthropomorphic animal versions of them! (What the plan was for the two forms is unknown... although I think people say that it was going to be a commercial of some kind and not an actual show? Anyway-) I tweaked the species a little bit to make them more specific. For example, Carl cat is now Carl Scottish fold, Al duck is now Al wood duck... But yeah I thought I'd pay homage to that obscure little thing.
• I'm working out two sequels to this story called Summer of Water and Summer of Lights respectively, although there isn't any artwork yet. Bruce DOES show up! (And he's a platypus!) Marley also starts up a surf shop that nobody goes to.

... Okay sorry I'd literally be doing y'all such a diservice by NOT showing y'all the Hanna Barbara Beach Boys.

L to R: Al, Carl, Brian, Mike, and Dennis

The animal versions... just utterly amazing really

Brian and Mike in some sort of snowed-in Wild West town? I have a theory that the animal versions were the result of some sort of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe type plot where the Beach Boys go through a portal (or a wave?) and end up in an alternate dimension where everyone is an animal. Perhaps this alternate dimension also has various problems that they have to solve (for instance, the snowed-in town might have some evil outlaw lurking around who they have to go up against). They also could've just been animalized to sell merchanise, though. We'll never know...

I saw a few other photos but I wasn't sure about their authenticity so it's just these three. (The cancelled cartoon as a WHOLE though seems a little too niche to be fake. Plus I wanna believe)