Jack's Gifts

Well, it's that time of year again, and this year's Christmas image stars many people's favourite rabbit Reaper and ferret angel - Jack and Farrago, from David Hopkins' comic Jack ([link]).

I daresay Jack is pleased with the new scythe from Farrago. Readers of Jack will be able to figure out the reason for all the sparkles on Farrago's wings.

Onto the technical notes:

Yet again, all done in Paint Shop Pro 7 by mouse. I would have done the text by hand, but I was running out of time. The image comprises half-a-dozen layers, three of which are for the lighting effects.

Speaking of which, the lens flares were drawn using the available tools in PSP7 a few years back. The layer containing them is actually several combined together so nothing opaque gets in the way.

I used two panels from one of Mr Hopkins' strips as reference material for Jack and Farrago as I've never drawn her before. Believe me, those feathers in Farrago's wings were very tedious to draw!

There was originally going to be Drip's head mounted on the wall above a fireplace in the image, but that proved to be too distracting, so I took it out. The image was also originally going to be 4096*2304 (16:9 widescreen), but I ended up cropping some out, and the results are for the better, I think.

Download is 3687*2304 pixels.

EDIT (28 Dec 2007): I sent the full-res version of this to Mr Hopkins as a Christmas present and he thought it was very cute!