Oh man, this has been one of the biggest personal projects I've had in the works for a while now. Finally done! Full speed ahead onto commissions now (big thank you to those currently commissioning me, and being lovely and patient with me. <3).

quick notes:
• no, that isn't skye
• the year I chose for this pic is 2001. it took me longer than I'd like to admit to think of items that scream 90's/early 2000's

So there's a lot of context to uncover here. I think Byron (or someone who worked on the movie) mentioned that Zootopia takes place in the year it was released, which was 2016. I figured if this were the case, with Nick canonically being 32, he would therefore have been born in 1984.

This got me thinking — Judy is 24 during the events of the movie (again, according to Byron) which means she would've been about 9 in 2001 (the year she performed in her school play/got assaulted by Gideon) making Nick around 17 at that time.

So! I got inspired and decided to draw what I think Nick would've been up to in his teenage years. I've depicted him here with an ex-girlfriend. A vixen - I despise the idea of incorporating my own OCs into movies and media I enjoy, but I had a lot of fun with this particular character and decided to make some trivia about her:

- Her name is Heather Swift
- Mostly an arctic fox, but has subtle cream-colored hues to her fur (one of her parents is a different species)
- 16 years old (1 year younger than Nick), upper-middle class girl with a pretty comfortable life, likes "rebel" culture and is into bad boys. Hence she's dating con-artist Nick.
- Her parents greatly disapprove of her relationship with him so she sneaks out at night to go see him.

I like to think that they were together for a few years until he accidentally got her pregnant and left. It's cliché and nothing particularly original, but I don't plan to make a story out of it. I just enjoy the concept.

To really drive the "it's 2001" idea home, I chose the date after the infamous events of 9/11. Newspaper featuring the breaking news over his bedside table, and a calendar on his shelf. Spent hours researching early 2000's fashion. Decided I'd give Nick the same outfit as Fry from Futurama, as a homage to one of my all-time favorite shows. Made some posters of famous pop-culture media at the time, Zootopia-fied.
And he's playing on his PS1. Probably Tekken or some shit, lul

That is all. I hope you guys enjoy this picture as much as I enjoyed making it.