So it’s been a week since I actually posted anything on here, so now’s as good a time as any I guess. Actually, it’s not, because I’m at work. There are plenty of far better times than this one. Like that time I did nothing because of something something…. I wasn’t really paying much attention that day.

But anyway, what’s been happenin? Well I’m in the last few weeks rehearsals before I’m on stage again in the upcoming comedy ‘It Runs in the Family’ at Daneside Theatre. It’s 10th-15th October and I’ll post some more details soon for anyone who’s interested in coming to see it, or to see me in the flesh making a complete choad out of myself. And please, no jokes about choad flesh….

Another reason I’ve been dead busy is that I have my first practical driving test coming up this Tuesday. So basically, either I fail and end up feeling gutted, or I pass and leave you fellow road users and pedestrians absolutely petrified! Sounds like fun.

A couple of people have also asked me why there’s still only been 1 comic strip so far, and why the other pages such as how I make them don’t exist yet. Well there’s a very good reason for this - I’m changing the way I make them.

The way I did the first one was to hand draw the images, scan them into my computer, and then draw over them in Photoshop. But I found that I had to make the images large and then resize them to be smaller. This causes all sorts of problems and at some point I hope to open an online shop to sell stuff, but I will need high quality, large images. And to be honest, I don’t want to have to redraw them at twice the size to ensure the quality. So the solution? Make them vector-based!

For those who don’t know what that means, it basically makes the images sharper. If you zoom in on an image, you’ll see that it’s all pixelated - you can see every dot that makes up the line. That’s why if you make images bigger they always look worse. Vectors don’t work in dots, instead they work using directions and percentages and angles and all other kinds of funky mathematical stuff so that no matter what size you change the image to - it stays really sharp! As an example, below is a section of two identical black dots which have been zoomed in;

The left one is vector-based whilst the other is a regular image. If you can’t spot the difference then you may actually be looking at a dead chicken instead of your screen.

Anyway, when I’ve mastered it you can expect the Choad to look better than ever! This way should be a lot faster for me to come up with cartoon strips but the initial batch will take some time (as did the first one) as I’m going to have to draw most of the characters all over again (for the most part). But never fear, for word has it that Dave will be adding some posts to this site aswell soon (it’s about bloody time!).

Anyways, the bears are starting to regroup outside. They must be dealt with. If only schools supplied irons….

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Site-Related, Comics, Acting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.