Above is the original strip as it appears in issue 14 (page 14!).
This isn't intended as an advert for a software package, so we'll move on...
The entire strip was drawn out as ten frames. Unfortunately due to space requirements, the first
two frames were omitted in the original published version. These frames basically set the scene
and were not actually necessary for the gag to work.
In the animated GIF, the frames have been restored. Two extra frames have been added for a
'closing', as well as a few little tweaks... The ghost has been given an outline as, well, it is
a ghost, not a postbox! The ghost should be a sort-of pulsating cyan, but since this is a
monochrome strip...
I am especially proud of the blobs in the eyes of the ghost, as now instead of being a 'generic
ghost', the pupils have allowed the ghost to become wonderfully expressive!
I have been asked, in the past, if I would consider making another digiwidget strip. The answer
is both Yes and No. I think the stories were useful to 'flesh' out the character in the same
sort of way that the Tomb Raider movie took Lara Croft and made her something more than a
gun-toting action babe. There is a certain challenge in getting a gag sequence down to a mere
few frames. As you'll know if you bother to ever look at the 'cartoons' in the newspapers, it
sometimes works to great effect, and sometimes it just fails. Or in the case of The Far Side,
sometimes you just look at it and think "huh?"...
...the only problem, I can't draw! You'll probably have noticed that the picture of Digiwidget
wearing the slinky black dress is used quite a lot - that's because it took forever to
draw a girl with the right sort of proportions.
The ending scene of the animated GIF has her wearing a button-up blouse and a skirt, though I
pinched the legs and shoes from the slinky-dress drawing. You'll notice that the arms are a bit
too thin, she looks like she's stuck in the '80s with shoulder pads. Though when I widened the
arms out, she looked like some sort of ape. So I've gone for narrower arms, as the rest of her
body is curvy and not podgy...
We won't discuss the face. All I'll say is that InterGIF's anti-aliasing adds a hell of a
lot to the face. I'm utter sh*t at drawing people's faces. I did try to go for a vaguely manga
look (you know, cute babe with huge eyes) but it looked a bit silly. Maybe it's something that
is better on paper?
I've also been asked why it was monochrome. The drawfile can support any arbitrary set of
colours, GIF can do any 256 (or 255 with transparency). Even on the old systems as the original
drawings were made upon, we have 4 shades of 64 colours. So why monochrome?
That answer is simple. Simplicity. I like to take black and white photographs because sometimes
less is more. Sometimes things look so much better when you remove the clutter introduced by
colour. In the café, the wall is a mid-grey. Is it blue, green, yellow? Maybe it is a
vomit-inducing hot pink? Well, colour it in how you want. It's just grey in digiwidget.
Additionally, I think it sets the scene more to have everything appear in shades of grey. I
notice both Evanescence and Christina Aguilera have released videos shot in
monochrome (the excellent 'My Immortal' and 'The Voice Within') - so I know I'm not the only one
to think monochrome is sometimes better!
How this was done, was to decide to set all (but one) scene in the café itself. The
external scene was one that was cut (oh well!).
As you can see from the picture below, I figured out a rough perspective and then drew a room.
The original room was more complex than you see here; so I used that as a template for the room
you see below. It's the Homer Simpson principle - simplify it. The room did not need any
sort of shading in order to look like a room! As simple as it is now, it draws instantaneously.
The next step was to design Digiwidget herself. As she was originally in a sitting position, I
did not need to worry about anything below the waist - which is probably just as well as it took
a long time to get her shoes right, as they come forwards slightly, the perspective was...
interesting (read 'bloody annoying').
I opted to dress her in a basic part-buttoned shirt. This is like a polo shirt crossed with a
standard secretarial blouse. Normally, she might be expected to wear a 'business suit', but
since her job involves hitting things with a mallet - she'd dress a tad more casually. And, let
us not forget the ID badge!
You can see what I mean about her arms - and especially her shoulders. If the angle goes down, it
is like she's slumping, and if the angle goes up, it's like she has shoulder pads. If the angle
is dead horizontal, we're into Metal Mickey territory... so I opted for the shoulder-pad look as
(while not pleasing me), it was the most acceptable of those choices!
Her arms are a bit too big here, and actually I don't think she looks like an ape. No, I think if
her polo shirt was bright yellow, we could maybe call her McDigiwidget or something...
A lot of little detail may have been missed...
And, yes... Her real name is Angela Hopkins.
Next, the can that she is given...
Well, put that all together and you have one Digiwidget strip!
Sadly, I think the creation of that one strip took longer than writing all of the rest of them, but who knows - maybe I'll do another strip?
I hope you enjoyed it.
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