Hello, Mousers!
I’ll begin by apologising for the delay in updating the comic. I have an exam on the 18th and I’m also trying to buy a house. I have to therefore devote a lot of time to non-comic endeavours, which is a massive pain in the backside.
In the mean time, I thought you might be interested in this little gem from the archives. Long-term Mousers (or anyone who has done an archive trawl and not just read the comics!) may know that the earliest extant drawings of Nob Mouse and friends are on a set of cards I made because my friends and I got sick of playing the usual sets of Top Trumps cards, back in the 1980’s.
I found those cards a few months back and decided it was time to compare the oldest incarnation of Nob Mouse with the newest. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is 80’s Nob and 21st Century Nob. Compare and contrast, if you will.
The mice, they are a-changin'!
The more things change, the less they look alike. Still, it’s possible to see where the current version of him came from, I suppose. I’m also amazed that the colour scheme has stayed reasonably intact considering I was never one for actually paying attention when drawing him. I’m sure I’ve drawn him with red feet and blue hands on more than one occasion, for example.
Ink experimentation
Hello, Mousers!
I must wholeheartedly apologise for almost missing today’s update. The reason is that I’ve been experimenting with different forms of inking lately and my first attempts haven’t exactly gone to plan.
Normally, I ink on the computer and it goes rather nicely. The ink looks good, it’s thick and bold when I want it to be. It’s thin and less bold when I want it to be. Overall, it’s nice.
Today’s episode was inked by hand using an ink pen. I managed to vary the widths on the ink by altering the angle I drew at. It looks fantastic on paper. It’s bold, it’s thick where I want it to be and it’s thin where I want it to be, too. Overall, I’m very pleased with it.
Except when I scan it.
I don’t know whether it’s the paper quality (maybe it’s too thin?) or what but the ink that looks so nice on the paper comes out less than opaque when it is scanned. I tried changing the resolution and it didn’t help. I tried messing with the levels and that didn’t help either. Quite frankly, I’m not sure what I did wrong but it just didn’t look good.
Suffice to say I ended up inking today’s comic digitally as well, which is why it’s later than it should have been. I’ll keep experimenting with inking by hand because I think the results are well worth it but for now maybe I’ll just have to factor in more time to ink by computer as well, in case I get more bad results down the line.