Thank you for your comments - at some point we will redo the site, and somehow include a larger strip size.

We’re both in the UK, but I’m in Brighton on the South Coast, he’s way up North somewhere in the freezing arctic wastes near Nottingham.

Still, it does looke like they have electricity up there nowadays

behind closed doors, we’ve discussed posting the original strips that Tim does - maybe even doing them as guest strips - which would be novel: Tim guest stripping on his own website, that must be a first in the comic world.

the original strips that Tim sends me help take a great deal of work out of what i’d otherwise have to do. they provide a jumping board without which i’d probably just find myself staring at a blank canvas for several hours.

it’s like i have my own HITC comic strip to read that no one else can see. i like how they capture the expressions of the characters even though they can be totally different to the final strip i draw. a major reason for starting HITC is that Tim had already got a lot of ideas and strips already drawn - it was obvious that he had the imagination and writing skill to produce enough work so that the strip wouldn’t dry up after a dozen or so strips. without that i doubt i’d have made any effort to do something alone. i think Tim’s ease at writing for the Codex Transportica also demonstrates his creativity and writing talents.

for those of you interested in the technical side of things…

each strip is drawn using a Wacom Cintiq running Alias Sketchbook Pro 2. i find this to have a more natural and realistic feel when compared against something like Adobe Photoshop - though i still use several layers during the process.

regardless of how quick i try to do a strip it always seems to take an hour at least. even when trying to be clever an reuse elements from previous strips it still takes over an hour - it would probably be wiser to just redraw everything.

after that, the image is transferred to Adobe Photoshop. small corrections can be made and the text added. this may take anything from 30 minutes to an hour.

i know a lot of comic strip artists will spend a lot longer on their work. (they must be crazy if they are doing it for fun.)

final word: cobbe and twiggles will eventually have a consistent style and appearance - i’ve just got to get the hang of using the wacom cintiq and pen.

One day I’ll throw open the doors to the archive, but I’m afraid all my artwork is at the same level as the image in the post: very rough and ready. I reckon I spend about 5 minutes on the whole illustration.

Last time I tried to draw the strip “properly” it took me blimmin’ ages. I don’t know how Nick manages to do such a great job every time and still retain (vestiges) of his sanity.

it’s a really interesting and unusual method of collaboration — i’m sure there are teams where one writes and one draws but it’s just interesting that in this case it’s more like you are doing the first draft, and then nick does the final but changes the content too as he goes from draft to final. interesting!!

it might be fun (and unique!) for each strip to include a little link to the original sketch that inspired it!