Yo!

My throat hurts and I’m feeling cold, does that mean I’m going to be sick? (+ _ + ) Hm, I hope it passes…

Anyways, you know what day it is today? Today it’s exactly one year since I uploaded the very FIRST page of this comic you’re hopefully reading now. However, I remember that I had a bunch of pages that I uploaded at one time and I think I changed the dates on them all, because I think that Wordpress (or ComicPress, which is the theme I’m using) only allows one post per day, or something like that. But, let’s just make things easy and say that the official “birth” of the comic was on March 10th, 2009! So, yay!! (^▽^)

I haven’t had time to plan anything special for the occasion, but I’ll see what I can come up with – if anything! :p

Anyways, enjoy the comic, wish Pierre a happy birthday(?) and I’ll see you next time :D
/T

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

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!

I’m feeling a little down today :/ The reason for that is because today I got some bad news at work. To make a long story short; I won’t have a job to go to next week. It’s not because I got fired, but the thing is that I was only there as an intern and today I was told that the internship will end at the end of this week!… Yeah, it was super-short notice, but it was because of an “human error”, so I can’t really be mad at anyone.
I guess I could see it from the bright side – now I’ll have more time to work on the comic! But, on the other hand, if I can’t pay for food and rent.. well, you get the idea (>_< )
Ah well, I’m not the only one to be unemployed and broke these days – far from it!

To all of you who are also unemployed: Everything will be alright, sometimes you just have to give things time and N-E-V-E-R give up (<– this is the most important part to remember)! Better times are coming, friends. Just hang in there!

Now, enjoy the comic!

/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