August 2025
Putting together a comic about a group of mice means you find yourself imagining what mouse-life would be like. They are all just creatures in the world: delicate, vulnerable, aware of many dangers and so there is a question that must turn up again and again, a question that is forced upon us all: what is your mouse style? That is, how far do you come out of your hole? Most mice would probably pick Only As Far As Needed (OFAN). But some more daring or curious or carefree mice might pick a style of As Far As Possible (AFAP). Every mouse must answer the question of their style through their actions and these actions will have consequences.
As the mice work through their 'mouse style' in the story it raises the question of how each mouse is styled to look in this comic? There are twelve characters at the heart of this adventure and each needs to have a distinct silhouette separate from any of the other mice no matter how it moves or could be imagined to move. It is beautiful to see how other comic artists solve these problems.
For me, making distinct characters involves a little playtime. One activity is to use a marbling kit where you drip brightly coloured oily paint into a bowl of water and swirl it and then lay paper on the water's surface to soak up the paint floating and making swirling blobbed shapes. Those paint shapes suggest character's body outlines or movements. Another game is to use an IBM Flowcharting Template which I find is listed by the Smithsonian Institution of Museums as a historic artefact. The shapes on the template are all really great and combined with a Spirograph ® you can enjoy very nice afternoons playing the game of filling a page with whatever shapes feel good and then seeing which look twitchy and sniffy and mouse-like if you add a nose or some ears or paws. After lots of tries, in the end, I'm happy with the twelve characters I've settled upon, they are distinct silhouettes and each seems to work to at least interest me. The next step is to draw character sheets which I'll describe in the note for September 2025.