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

Wazzup everyone?

You want to know something funny? I just applied for a job (okey, that’s not the funny part, wait for it). Can you guess what kind of job it was?.. Baker!! (≧▽≦) I’ll get the answer (if any) in 2-3 weeks from now.
That would be interesting… first I start working on a comic that revolves a baking cat, then I go become a baker myself, haha! I don’t have any experience from “the field” what-so-ever, other than baking at home, which I tend to do pretty often lately. Anyways, I hope I get it, because I’m tired of being a starving artist! :p

Speaking of starving, my stomach has started to make funny noises so I’m going to go make some porridge* now.

* Apparently, porridge is the exact same thing as “oatmeal” in the US. I thought oatmeal was something else, but now I know it’s not. Thank you Wikipedia, for once again shedding light over my biggest questions in life!

Hi all!

There will be two small changes in how the comic looks from here on.

Firstly, I think I’ll make Claude and Chloe’s clothes pure black, instead of using screentones for them. I’ve used a dark screentone for them until now, but I’ve never really liked that look they get with this. The small dots confuses the eye and you loose the little details. I might go back and change this to the older pages when the comic is finished.
Also, this is a somewhat old change, but Chloe’s hair style changed after page 29. The old style was so-so, but I’m quite happy with the new one :) Actually, hairstyles and clothes are the hardest thing to design I think. I always have a hard time with it (- _ – ;)

Secondly, This will be the last completely computer-inked page for a while.
I want to learn how to do it the old fashioned way, so I’ll be inking with my felt pens and fine ballpoint pens from here on. If I could afford a new high-quality brush and ink, I would totally use that instead, but I don’t have that kind of money right now, so I’ll settle with this for now. I will, however, still use the computer to add screentones, panels and word balloons. And if I’m not pleased with the inking result I get with the pens, I’ll use the computer for touch-ups and such as well.

Thanks for checking in and please click the “Like” button to your right if you like this comic! Not that I have any exclusive Facebook content (sorry!), but as an author it’s always nice to see how many people actually like my work :p

See you next time!
/T

Yo!

I got my “Pilot Color Eno 0.7″ in the mail a few days ago. I ordered the “Soft Blue” one to do rough sketches with, before I attempt to ink the page with my other black pens (until now I’ve only inked my art on the computer, in ‘Easy Paint Tool SAI‘).
I just did a quick test with my scanner to see what happens when you scan a picture with only the blue lines and then another test with some black lines over the blue ones. I was glad to see it really worked and it seems like there’s basically two ways to do it…
You can choose to scan your art in “Black & White” mode, which will give you a picture with ONLY pure black and pure white pixels – in other words, NO anti-aliasing. If you zoom in on a picture like this, you’ll see that the lines are jagged because of the pixels, but I don’t know if this will be an issue when you print the final image (if you’ll notice it or not). This might depend on what resolution you scan your image with also. I did my test scan in 300 dpi, but unfortunately I’ve run out of ink in my printer, so I can’t see how it looks on paper. If you scan your art in 600 dpi the file size will be bigger, of course, but It might look better on paper.

Anyways, the second way of removing the blue lines from your artwork (I’m using Photoshop for this, by the way) is to open the window/tab called “Channels” and click on the one called “Blue”.
Now, I don’t know how this works, but this will remove all traces of blue in the image, leaving you with only the white background and black lineart (but with anti-aliasing). If you don’t have any black parts in the image then you’ll end up with a completely white image when you do this :p
You might have to play around with the “Levels” in the image to remove dirt or other small particles that you do not want there.

The Pilot Color Eno 0.7 (Soft Blue) seems to be a good mechanical pencil with lead that is a little on the soft side, but still okay. Sometimes when you draw with a ball pen over the pencil lines, the ink won’t stick and you might have to draw the same line again. However, it seems that when you use a felt pen, this won’t be as big of a problem. Maybe there’s a different type of ink in felt pens? Maybe it’s because they put out more ink at a time, I don’t know :/ But these were my first impressions when I did some quick tests with it.

Thanks for watching/reading, see ya next time!
/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