Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

TPoH: Update!

New page available here on the TPoH website! Also available to read here on Smackjeeves!

If you like the idea of having more than one page of TPoH a week or just want to help keep a soul and body together, please consider supporting me on Patreon, even just one or two dollars a month helps!

There are also always lots of my doodles to buy on nice stuff on my RedBubble account or in my Society6 merch box :D

Anonymous asked: okay so I have been reading back through all the doodle comics you've made that I have loved (all of them), and the thing that always gets me is how you get the 'tone' of them right. Like, on the nose this-could-be-in-this-show right; and they're completely different! Gravity Falls, Osomatsu-san, Wander Over Yonder, Ace Attorney... hell, THAT comic felt more real than the game's actual ending! So... How do you do that? Do you have any advice on that part of writing? :o

Gosh that’s very awesome to hear, that you feel that way? Because I do try very hard to do that! However I am not really sure about how to advise on it, which sounds lame but it’s true! I suppose mostly it’s practice, and I did used to do a lot of RP writing, which requires getting into the skin of a character so completely that you can respond in their ‘voice’ almost without thinking. It was a great exercise for spontaneous plot reaction too- and really that is all a story is. You put a character, who is and exists and has feelings and a history, into a situation; you let the character respond to that situation, and that is how the story happens. If you put a character into a situation and force the outcome then it won’t feel right, no matter how many lens flares and explosions you put in; the motions of the characters have to come from the emotions of the characters, and I guess every show, game and movie has their own emotional vibe and sense of timing as well? Treat the world as a character: how does it breathe? Space and time are inherently linked, perhaps we can say that every ‘world’ has its own form of time; so how does that space dictate the timing of the story you want to write? Maybe that’s nonsense. Maybe I don’t care.

Basically get out there and try and try and get it wrong until you get it right!

Anonymous asked: Uncle Mod I am having trouble! I want to be able to draw things touching each other (like people holding hands) but it never works! Can you help? Thank you for drawing so much I hope you are not hurting because of it any more!

Drawing things touching is super hard! So don’t feel bad for struggling with it; I am still learning to do it myself, but I have found that there’s a trick in the lineart stage that you can employ which helps a lot.

Real life doesn’t have outlines, but we use lines in drawings to show where objects begin and end. Where things touch the spaces between them are reduced or eradicated, so thinner lines can help to enforce the idea that they are touching;

thicker lines emphasize distance between objects and the solidity of objects. If something is really pressing against another thing, you can completely break the line or sometimes remove it altogether! Try it out and see what works.

A simple way to think about it is that when two masses are pressed together they are making one mass overall. You use lines to separate objects, so it follows that if you want to ‘join’ two objects, you remove the line!

Remember that soft objects mesh more easily, so you can break and thin the line much more with flesh or fabric, while if you have a hard object it will maintain it’s form (and therefore outline) even when pressed against something else, and will even force a softer object to change shape!

Also thank you, polite anon, I am not hurting per say but my elbow and wrist still feel a bit funny, so I am trying to rest them and do my stretches as much as possible. Keep your hands healthy people!