Yo!

I’ve been looking into the art of pixel graphics since yesterday. It’s quite amazing how much emotion you can put into a picture with what seems to be super simple graphics. Something trivial as choice of color can really make a picture come to life in a whole new way.
I’ve come across two great pixel-art-themed forums so far…

- Pixel Joint, this is the bigger one of the two, with 28.000+ members! They have a great pixel art gallery and all kinds of interesting stuff. Definitely worth a watch!

- Pixelation, A bit smaller than Pixel Joint, but seems to be a pretty interesting site nonetheless.

Also, this is not a forum or anything but it’s really cool! It’s called IsoCity and if I understand it correctly, it’s purpose is to showcase peoples portfolios, by letting the artists create a small pixel house/structure on fixed spaces in this “city”. Check it out to see how it works! (^v^)

Alright, that’s enough pixel talk for today, adios muchachos! Enjoy the comic!
/T

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

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

I’m really sorry guys. But right now, I’m watching a movie, playing games on my DS and might even start to draw on the next comic page soon (all at the same time), so I’ll just post a couple of links to YouTube videos of crazy cats this time :p Sorry, I’m lazy and I’m lovin’ it >:D

- Some fat japanese cat that’s doing all kinds of stuff… There are a whole bunch of clips of this cat.

- You might already know this, but if you don’t, you’re gonna thank me later. It’s a compilation/music video of cats flushing toilets with a song so catchy you’ll NEVER get it out of your head.

See you next time!
/T

Yo!

This page introduces yet another character to the story! :D His name is Ross (he’s a penguin) and, as Chloe said, he’s got the honor of counting aaall the cookies that Pierre and GLU-10 made.
I’ll update the characters’ section with a short description of Ross in just a minute…

I’ve only drawn a few penguin characters in my whole life, so I had to use a lot of referenses (thank you Google Image Search!) to get him to look the way I wanted. But I’m happy with how he turned out. Plus, I had a hard time finding a good picture of a guy/girl with a sweater tied around his/her neck, but I think I got that down too :D

Thanks for checking in and I’ll see you next time!
/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

Hi all!

Man, I’m not used to publishing these many pages in so little time and I’m really not used to blogging in general, so I’m kind of running out of things to say here, hehe (^ , ^ ;)

This is not related to the comic at all, but I guess most of you have seen/played “Super Mario Bros. Crossover” by now? If you haven’t, then I suggest that you do so!
Jay Pavlina, the author of the game, has uploaded it to Newgrounds for everyone to play (in fact, if case you see it on any other site, it’s stolen, unless it specifically says that he has given the site his permission to post it).

So what’s all the fuzz about? Well, get this; Jay has not only recreated the entire game of Super Mario Bros., he has also added 5 extra playable characters except Mario. All of them are retro gaming superstars, of course, and they are none other than Link, Mega Man, Simon Belmont (Castlevania series), Samus (Metroid series), Bill R. (Contra).
Each character has their own set of sound effects, music and gameplay and well, you just have to play the game to fully understand how perfect this game is in every way.
There’s also an interesting in-depth interview with Jay, where he tells us more about the story behind the game and stuff.
During that interview, he admits that he slept “next to railroad tracks”, because he didn’t have enough money to pay his rent! But did he let that stopping him from completing the game? Heck no! He kept on working, probably day and night, seeing nothing else than the goal in front of him. What a guy, huh?
I can totally relate to this, because this comic is done under very similar circumstances!… Ok, maybe not quite as bad as sleeping next to a railroad track (^ v ^ ;) But I don’t have any money, I’ve worked on this comic for a very long time, and I’m not getting payed to do it. So why do I stick to it? Because I have a passion and a set goal that I’m constantly aiming at and I have decided to finish this comic matter what it takes. In fact, I think this is true to any independent indy-game developer or amateur comic artist like myself. I “feel his pain”, and I wish him the best of luck in his future projects. By the way, use the search function on Twitter and type “mario crossover” and you’ll see how this game is literally sweeping over the entire internet, it’s crazy! :D

Anyways, enjoy page 33. I hope to be able to upload the next one soon – if not tomorrow ;p
/T

EDIT: The authors website is: http://www.exploding-rabbit.com/