Inspired by a roman soldier knife rack I saw in my friend’s house, I looked for a cute character that would look great holding up a shield.

I was looking into the various characters by Kakao and found a perfect character with a perfect pose to hold up a shield. Ryan. Looks like a bear but actually a male lion.

The work was pretty straight forward using some scrap plywood in the woodshop, making the shapes mostly with a bandsaw and attaching the wooden pieces by a mortise and tenon joint.

I thought several times on whether I should be drawing the lines by a marker pen or just leave it blank but my daughter was very strong in drawing the lines so I ended up drawing them on the wood. It actually turned out to be not such a good idea since it was all smudging when I applied a cutting board oil as its finish.

I may end up making a cleaner version without the lines but good enough for now 🙂