Hey all!

You know, this comic has taken a LOT of time to make and now when I’ve finally begun to see the end of it all I’m starting to think about what I should do next… cause, I can’t just sit around doing nothing, right!?!?
These are the things I want to do, but I haven’t really decided what to go with – and in what order…

- Get better at drawing (anatomy, color theory, digital painting etc., etc.)
- Learn how to 3D and get good at it (I want to learn how to make low-rez 3D models. I dunno, It seems like fun!)
- Learn how to program (PHP, Actionscript or C? I want to do it all! But… *sigh* it just feels like it’s kind of late for me you know, hm…)

There is one big purpose behind all of this, and that is that I really REALLLLLLY want to start making my own video- or computer games. It’s been a life long dream you know…
Until now, I’ve successfully fullfilled every dream I’ve had:

- I learned Japanese
- I got to live in Japan
- I was on Japanese TV (a pretty small gig, but I was a regular for a whole year!)
- I wrote a book
- I made my own comic

When I lived in Japan I actually applied for a job at Nintendo. They sent me this big envelope with the Nintendo logo on it, containing various company info, but unfortunately I never got the job :/ I guess I COULD have applied more more jobs there, but I wanted to try other things as well, so I never got to it again.

Anyways, I’ll probably end up working on my drawing skills and maybe do some 3D before I try to learn how to program, because drawing is like the only thing I’m moderately good at… If I’m going to learn how to program, I’m going to have to start from square one. To be honest, I’ve always admired people that know how to program, because, think of it! They make stuff happen and come alive by writing some weird gibberish in frickin’ notepad! Now, THAT’S cool :) Programming – When you’re good at it, it’s better than sex (don’t quote me on that).

Alright, it’s late and I’m just gonna shut up and post this thing already.
Take care!
/T

Hey everybody! Long time no see eh?

I’ve been drawing and drawing and planning and drawing and I’m happy to announce that all the art is finished for the remaining 11 pages!! All I have to do now is add the speech bubbles in Illustrator and upload them… and of course, write these little “blog posts” about each of them. I tell you, writing this is almost harder than drawing the comic itself, since nothing interesting ever happens in my life, so it always hard to come up with a topic, lol! (>▽<) Plus, I’m so frickin’ hungry right now everything I can think of is FOOD! I’m starving… Well, I AM a “starving artist”, so I guess it’s only natural? It’s a part of the job.

Anyways, I’ll post (or at least try to) a new page per day until they’re all up! It’s goes up to page 52 which will be the last. However, when all that is done I’ll go back and do some touching up on earlier pages and try to make them fit the rest better. Like, changing the look of Claude and Chloe, because they have a whole different look to them in the beginning of the story. Some pages will even be removed completely, so the whole story will come down to 50 pages when I’m done. But don’t worry, the plot itself is still the same. I’m just getting rid of stuff that isn’t really needed – “Kill your darlings”, as they say.

So, I guess I’ll be posting here tomorrow as well if everything goes as planned. Until then, enjoy!
/T

Hey paisanos! :D

Long time no see! Alright, I’m going to start off by NOT apologizing for not updating in a while :) All the other bloggers/video bloggers do that all the time, but I don’t think it’s really necessary because everyone knows how busy real life can be and it really goes without saying if you ask me. There might also be days when you just don’t feel like it, you loose motivation for a couple of days maybe, your job is tiring and you don’t feel like doing anything else than just sleep when you get home, etc. etc. There are countless reasons why any blogger won’t update their blog on time. It’s just how life is.

I’ll tell you what I HAVE been doing though. I’ve been doing the biggest research on art supplies I’ve ever done in my life… so far! ;p
Why have I done this? Because for once I want to try making a comic the old fashioned way. I’ve looked at some amazing artwork, done by people who work at Marvel. These guys use brushes, pens, pencils etc. like they used to in the old days when they didn’t have computers or Wacom tablets like many people use today use to make their artwork.
I’ve literally spent days on reading brush reviews, brush SOAP reviews, ink reviews, pencil reviews (particularly non-photo blue pencils), manufacture reviews, eBay research (in case someone would sell any of the stuff I needed cheaper than the regular stores), nib holder reviews and of course nib reviews. I’ve visited countless online art supply stores, comparing shipment fees, product prices etc., etc.!
I’m going to share some the info I’ve gathered (sharing is caring, right?) in case some of you are looking for the same stuff as I am, so here goes:

Brushes
- Rosemary & Co Series 22 #4, #5 (Hand-made high quality brushes, cheaper than Winsor & Newton AND are supposed to be really good too! Great customer service.)

- Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2, #3 (All pros use this brush, has more “spring” to it than the Rosemary brush, a bit pricey, but it’s one of the fines brushes there is)

Nib holder
- Tachikawa Comic Pen Holder – Model 40 (It’s supposed to have a good grip and I think I read somewhere that Japanese manga artists )

Ink
- FW black (People seem to be using it, so I think it’s worth a try)
- Pelikan’s Drawing Ink A (I’ve read about this in lots of places, so I GUESS it should be good)

- FW white ink (Don’t know much about this, but I think it’s okay)
- Pro White (White ink, it’s supposed to be quite thick)

Nibs
- Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib – Mapping Model/ T-99 (Good for details)
- Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib – G Model/T-3 (Nice all-round nib, used by Japanese manga artists)

- Gillott 303 (Gives sharp fine lines)

- Hunt 102 Crow Quill nib (Some pro’s use this, so I’m guessing it’s good)

Non-Photographic Blue Pencils
- Sanford Col-Erase Non-Photo Blue (The lead is supposed to be pretty hard and won’t show up much on your paper, but it’s just the right color)

- Sanford Col-Erase Light Blue (A bit softer lead than the one above, but with darker lines)

- Pilot Color Eno Soft Blue 0.7 (Soft blue lead for mechanical pencils, breaks easily, but is just the right color no not show up on a camera or copy machine)

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
I think this covers most of it (^ v ^ ; )
So, out of all this, what did I end up actually getting? I got a “Soft Blue” Pilot Color Eno Mechanical Pencil (0.7 mm) with one pack of soft blue lead on eBay. That’s it… (go ahead, laugh! Because I am… hahhaha)
I would have got more stuff, but I simply don’t have the money right now. That’s also how life is sometimes :/

It’s getting late, so I’m going to end this post here, but more pages are on their way, so stay tuned!

Until next time!
/Tomii

Yo!

As a rule of thumb, when you’re planning your panel layouts, try to limit the number of panels on each page to five or maybe six at most.

As you can see in this page, I’ve used a whole of eight panels – if you count the small ones, which I usually do! Using this many panels tend to make the page feel crammed and hard to read, which of course is not what you want. I used to do this A LOT when I first started working on this comic, but after reading up on the subject, I try to avoid it as much as possible.
But, if you have a good reason to do it, then go ahead! My reason for putting this many panels in this page, for example, is because I felt I wanted to let the characters say what they had to say BEFORE the big surprise that takes place in the next page.
In other words, in order to give the next page more impact, I sacrificed a bit of readability in this… We’ll see if it works out as planned (^ v ^ ;) Even though I’ve already made 30 pages, I’m still learning, hihi!

Stay tuned and enjoy the comic!
/T

Yo!

For those of you that haven’t noticed, I uploaded the new character art for Chloe a few days ago, which you can find at the bottom of the ‘The Characters‘ page. The new version gives a better impression of her and what she looks like in the comic. I’ll update Pierre’s and the mailman’s character art as soon as I get time to do so :)

This page also presents two new characters to the story, you’ll see what they’re all about in page 30! hihi (^ v ^ )

Oh, this is not related to the comic at all, but I saw the movie ‘Lost in Translation‘ for the first time evar yesterday and I can highly recommend it to you, if you haven’t seen it before!
Just be aware of that this movie contains no violence or action whatsoever, so if you’re looking for an action flick, this is NOT what you’re looking for :) The movie leaves you with a feeling of loneliness and might even be a little depressing, but don’t let this frighten you, because it’s really worth a watch!

Well, that’s all I had for this time, enjoy the comic and have a good weekend!!
/T

Hi guys! Here I am with another sparkling new page of ‘Pierre the Baking Cat’. Can you feel the suspense building up yet? hehe >:)

I made some small changes to the site just now:

- Added small ‘Project Wonderful’ ad-spaces at the top of the site.
- Made the ‘Donate’ and ‘Buy Stuff’ buttons smaller and moved them down a bit.
- I’ll see if I can make a so-called “Favicon” for the site tonight. I don’t know why I haven’t done this earlier, but I think it’s about time now! It doesn’t do much, but it’s a nice touch, right? :p

Yeah, that’s about it :) Is there anything that YOU still misses on this website? Perhaps there’s something that you wish could be changed or added to make the site look better or whatever, drop me a line if you have any suggestions okay? (^w ^*)

Oh, and page 28 is also coming real soon, be sure to check it out! (^ v ~)

See ya soon!
/T

Wazzup everyone!?

I don’t really have that much to add, except that I’ve uploaded some updated Claude art in the Characters section (it’s at the very bottom of the page so you’ll have to scroll down) :p
Eventually I’ll make new art for all the characters, but I don’t know when it’ll be done, so you’ll just have to be patient!

What else? Hmm… Well, yesterday I finished one of the hardest Nintendo games I’ve ever played; Ghosts n’ Goblins for Famicom!
You can almost hear the game producers laughing at you when you’re playing it – that’s how HARD it is! Of course I had to use continues to be able to beat it two times, but I can at least come to level 5 without dying. When I first got the game, couldn’t get past level 2 so… yeah, “practice makes perfect” I guess :)

I’ve also discovered that if you’re getting tired of listening to music while drawing, you can always open up some random video blog on YouTube and listen to that instead. It’s actually kind of refreshing! I like to listen to this guy. He’s doing video game walkthroughs with commentaries and he’s quite fun to listen to. Highly recommended!

“How do someone get tired of listening to music?”, you might ask. Well, if you’re like me and often listen to the same songs over and over again, you know what I mean! ;p As long as there’s something in the background, I’m happy.

That’s it for now, see ya!
/tomii

Hi everyone, here’s page 24 at last!

This site has got about 50% new visitors and equally as many returning visitors at the moment. This has got me thinking… Wouldn’t it be nice for new visitors to be able to choose whether they want to start reading the comic from the start, or from the last page posted?
If I bought a comic at the store, I know that I wouldn’t like someone to tell me how the story ended before I had started reading – I’d want to read it from the start, of course!

With the current setting, when someone enters the site, they get to see the last page posted. This comic will eventually come to it’s end some day and when the last page is up, that’s what both new and returning visitors will see when they open the site.
SO… I was thinking about presenting the visitor with a choice when they open the site; do you want to read the comic from the start, or from the last page posted?

I think I’m actually going to go through with this. How about you? What kind of setup do you have on your webcomic? What do you think of this idea of mine?

Until next time!
/Tomii

Hi!

I was supposed to post this page yesterday, but I was still a little unsure about the script and needed a second opinion – so I asked my big sister about it and she helped me back on the right track (^ ^ ) She’s a very talented artist, by the way. So why don’t you check out Cecilia Elfving’s website here. Oh, and she works only with aquarelle, so her style is completely different from mine, just to let you know :p
Anyways, sometimes I take my work too serious and end up having trouble with deciding on what to do. A true perfectionist’s dilemma, indeed (^_^ ;)

Speaking about the script, I can tell you that there’s a very high chance of me changing the comic’s epilogue… again! :/ But relax, because I’m doing this for a reason, and it’ll only help the comic make more sense! Trust me. And with the new epilogue, I can actually get rid of pages 2,3 and 4 as everything you need to know about he story will be covered by the new intro.

Oh, and when I have some time over (I wish) I’m going to prepare some link banners that you can use if you ever want to link to this site. I’ll tweet about it when it’s ready (’> ‘ )

See ya!

Hi everyone!

Sorry about the delay, but I’ve been a little tired from work lately and this page had a little more detail than usual. I actually build Pierre’s whole store in 3D to be able to get the right mood in that lower right panel! I think it turned out nice, don’t you think?

If you haven’t checked out the ‘Characters’ section lately, you should! Because I added two new-ish characters there this week – namely Missy and Ms. Denise! And, as I wrote on my twitter, I’ll probably redraw the other characters as well to get a fresh new look on them too.

One more thing, I’m thinking about making a so-called “fan page” for this comic on Facebook … but the problem is that I don’t know exactly what I would do with it after (^,^;) Ah well, I guess I could just create one to begin with and see where it goes from there? I’ll twit about it when it’s done! :D

Well, it’s Saturday and it’s cold and windy outside … guess I’ll just have to spend my whole day drawing and drinking tea, yay! :p Man, I haven’t played any video-games in AGES … it’s time to change that!! (*-* )

Now, enjoy the comic!