Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Christmas Story: Part 2


Frank the mouse puts on the coat, But just then, a large, hairy hand taps his shoulder. It's a rat, towering over him in an undershirt, pants, a floppy hat lined with the same fluffy material as the coat, and suspenders.
 Frank tries to say something to the upset rat, but before he can, the rat forces the hat on Frank's head! Frank pushes the bell at the tip of the hat away from his face, and gazes up at the rat nervously. The rat smiles at him in an extreemely friendly manner, and Frank smiles back, relieved.

The rat leads Frank away by gently touching the top of his head, through the snow, and  into the horizon.

Woah, that's a lot of panels! I guess that's what happens when you choose to work without words. If you're confused, wondering why the rat's hat has jingle bells at its tip, you need to
"Drink More Coke." The phrase has been photoshopped behind an image of the Coca-Cola Santa Claus taken from a 1930's advertisement
As to why the rat is in an undershirt in below-freezing weather; I have no excuse except, "because it's funny."

Next ⇨

Fun fact of the day: mice are up to 4 inches long (nose to base of tail), while rats are on average 10 inches long (nose to base of tail). This means that the average rat is 2½ times as large as the largest mouse.

This is also the first time I draw long sleeves on an animal character (the pants on the rat).

You'd think that without words, these images would need no postprocessing once scanned, allowing them to be ready before midnight. However, as the pencil tip blunts and is resharpened, some lines come out darker than others, and sometimes I drew the characters closer up, making them appear to change sizes between panels. The computer, alone, can fix that. Also, the last panel was drawn on recycled paper. The "horizon" you see, is actually a printed line on the flipside. It went through my mouse and rat and had to be edited out in those places.

2 comments:

  1. Now that you mention it, it reminds I wanted to put a "tap, tap" sound effect in that panel. I guess I just forgot!

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