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: Little Osbourne
Feb 17, 2006

Now there’s a penguin that can molt and melt.

Penguin feathers have two parts to them. At the bottom they are soft and downy and at the top they are stiff. The downy layer is fluffy and provides an airy area to act like insulation which is shielded by the stiff ends. They can lose this a bit in the water since it presses the feathers to them. Out of the water though they have an advantage over seals from the wind chill with their shell of feathers, seals will retreat to the water when the air gets too cold. When a penguin gets too hot it will fluff up the outer feather layer to let air in.

Little Osbourne will return next week so have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday!

24 Comments

  1. Kevin says:

    I think Wally should ditch his “Big Book Of Antarctic Facts” (Apologies if that’s the wrong title) and write one called “101 Things To Do with Snow”.

    It’s funny – the way you have drawn Little Osbourne reminds me of a volkswagon Beetle from an old Australian movie called “The Cars That Ate Paris.”

  2. Matt D says:

    Will Little Osbourne also get lost in a storm?

  3. Mr. Man says:

    Dude, please get him out of molting, fast. He turns my stomach every time I look at him. If he keeps it up for much longer, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  4. Sten says:

    Little Osbourne is MELTING! I mean Molting too!

  5. Lee says:

    Little Osbourne reminds *me* of a song by The Goodies (a once-famous British comic trio) entitled “Mummy, I Don’t Like My Meat”. Suffice it to say, it’s the tale of a parent who decides to make terrible sacrifices to feed his starving family and includes the line “We collected his feathers and stuck them together, | She’s asking me why he don’t sing…”

  6. Nikki says:

    It looks funny!!!

  7. Spyguy294 says:

    ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  8. Ashley says:

    awwwww Wally’s so sweet… lol 😀

  9. Sev says:

    Sweet / creepy.

    I notice that the background of the third panel is really colors from Wally’s scarf.

    How many colors are there total in your palette? Nine?

  10. Sev says:

    Don’t take that badly, by the way. I think it’s a neat concept to have such a limited pallette.

  11. Tyler Martin says:

    I’m not sure how many colors I’ve used total, probably the 9 consistantly. It’s basically gray, blue and orange, and then any lighter or darker variations of them (adding black or white). I’ve cheated a bit on lighter brown things like the cowboy hat by adding white to the dark organge, or black to the light orange or something. Heh.

    The funny thing is I didn’t do the comic in an artsy monochromatic way, which would have been easier for a limited pallette, but I did it so that things are literally that color. Might have been easier to create it all a monochomatic blue, and then just add a few orange spots for things to stand out. Guess I wanted more cartoony than artsy and the limited pallet was just a fun sadistic rule for myself.

  12. Lee says:

    Don’t you mean masochistic? Anyway, the limited pallet works fine. Another word for it is style.

  13. Ashley says:

    I love on the rock comics!!! lol

  14. Ashley says:

    oh, and im advertising it on my website so more ppl will check it out!

  15. SuperVegito says:

    Nice strip Tyler. n i think u must have used all the colours on the rainbow so far in the strip the water baloon comics made you cheat 😛 ne way i like the limited colour scheme it makes strips like the water baloon one stand out and i think mybe thats why ppl like the water baloon strip of course i mihgt be wrong 🙂

  16. Mute says:

    I think Tyler is really good at using the colors he has.I, on the other hand, can barely draw a circle without a compass.

  17. Sev says:

    Are you sure about that, SuperVegito? Looks to me like all the water baloons were within the three shade, three color pallette.

    He just tricked us into thinking there was more color there.

  18. Jason says:

    Just ran across your site. This is a great comic.

  19. bobo says:

    wally mite not have a lot of lines but there great ones. 🙂

  20. Gert7 says:

    In FunBrain they call this issue “Little” Osborne and you wrote Osborne wrong again.

  21. waffle_man says:

    auhh lil’ ozzy’s so shweet

  22. totally into ontherocks says:

    I love on the rocks comics! ozzy IS really sweet. and cute. and funny! 😯

  23. dude says:

    i think it’s stupid. penguins don’t MELT. they MOLT. STUPID COMIC STRIP

  24. Alex says:

    I think we were ALL more comfortable assuming that.

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