I have mixed feelings about this comic, because it turns out that drawing great apes is almost as difficult for me as drawing human beings – somehow, my gorillas seem to have fallen into the uncanny valley. (See also this article for an excellent graph that appears to contain a moustache.)

The concept of the uncanny valley is as unsettling to me as its effects – why on earth would it be that we have an easier time drawing half-mad corpses than we do rendering lifelike replicas of ourselves? Does the human heart really tend so towards death?

Put another way: is the uncanny valley our punishment for reaching too often towards artificial human creation, and if so, isn’t this proof that the robot apocalypse is inevitable?

And as importantly: why, when I spent hours sketching reasonable practice images, are my final ape drawings so wonky and floppy?