Giraffe Vs. Okapi

I have a friend who is OBSESSED with giraffes XD it's my childhood friend who I'm at university with... Yeah. Anyway, she's totally in love with them, and has a giraffe pillow pet, and just recently she got a giraffe plushie from her mom for St. Nick's Day. She was obsessing over it for about an hour, when finally I got fed up (not really, I just wasn't in the mood for giraffe talk anymore ) and I asked her if she knew what an Okapi was. She kinda looked at me with a confused expression on her face, so I google-imaged a picture of an Okapi for her, and told her it was a "rainforest-dwelling, shorter-necked relative of the giraffe." What does she say in response?

"Ew, it's ugly!"



So we got into a "joking debate" about how they aren't ugly and how their faces look almost exactly like giraffes (which after drawing them so much I realize now that's not true ) I think she was just kidding about it being ugly, because I showed her a picture of a baby (which, not even kidding, looks EXACTLY like the adults, just smaller,) and she thought it was adorable... And through our whole "argument," she sounded like she was kidding/being sarcastic, and I sounded like I was kidding. But I was really quite upset it sounds really lame that I got upset over her calling Okapi's ugly, but it's true. I was legitimately offended by her comment. I was not a happy camper for the rest of the night

So ever since then (I think it was 3 nights ago,) I've been doing non-stop anatomical studies/drawings of okapis and giraffes and trying to get their anatomy down as perfectly as possible. I've been wanting to do a side-by-side comparison drawing of the two and shoving it in her face to show her that okapis are pretty much the cutest things ever! seriously, ever since she made that comment about them being ugly they've become my new favorite animal (not really XD)

Like... Dolphins have been my favorites since I was 10 and it hasn't changed at all during that time, but when I was 14 I went through a "wolf-phase" where I drew nothing but wolves, and then from 17 until now (I'm almost 19,) it was a "dragon-phase," etc. I go through phases XD Now I think it's going to be giraffes and okapis... But mostly okapis Because I love them. And they aren't ugly! I've actually got some character concept sketches on my biology notes not that I need anymore characters or anything XD I have too many as it is... Oh well!

Enjoy!

REFERENCES USED!

Giraffe: [link] [link]
Okapi: [link] [link]
Baby Okapi to prove that they look identical to the adults XD: [link]