Rat Comic (Patreon)

Hello hello!!!! As I mentioned yesterday, this month's Pen Pal drawings, when put together, double as a comic!

I'm not sure how this mass image dump is going to display across Patreon's app, webpage and emails, and whether it'll be a pain to navigate through or not, so I'm also attaching a PDF version to this post if that's easier to read- and easier to save, if you'd like to!

This is the first time I've done these as a comic, though in some ways it's similar to the Pen Pal paper animations I've made in the past, because instead of thinking of a bunch of different things to draw, I just think of one scenario that then changes gradually.

Much like a lot of my animations, it was an open-ended exercise, and I didn't have any story pre-written before jumping in. I don't have much comic experience so it was actually a little intimidating. Mainly because I don't already have a feel for how fast comics progress compared to animations, and so I didn't know how much narrative I was going to be able to fit or how far ahead I had to think. Still, it sure was refreshing being able to fly through a story and just see where it goes, without it taking hundreds of hours!

These rat characters are ones that I find myself drawing a lot, including in previous Pen Pal drawings, but I haven't worked out what their deal is. I've always sort of imagined there's a lot of them, they all work together, and I imagine them diligently running around completing little assignments. Beyond that I haven't figured out any of the details, but I thought this would be a great opportunity to take them out for a little test drive, and see what else occurs!

They're still a bit of a mystery to me, but perhaps they'll appear again one day in an animation (which will probably directly contradict this comic), once I find a good use for them!