01 - Gift Horse

Published in parallel as a [blog post] where each panel is a separate image to adapt to the various modern screen widths.

Transcript

(A snow-covered forest. The trees are young and skinny. At their base, something small and brown is moving, leaving a trail in the snow. Upon closer inspection, it’s obviously a European House Mouse with long, ruffled fur, wearing a bulky jacket. The mouse's name is Frank and he's limping on all fours – well, threes since he's having to keep his right leg out of the snow.)
Frank: Oof!
(Not looking where he’s going, he bumps his head against someone else.)
Frank: (looking up) Jane! Who… how… what are you doing here?
(Jane is an adult American Field Mouse. She stands on her hind legs, wears a green dress with a V-collar lined with golden embroidery, and a red shawl lined with some fluffy white material.)
Jane: (pulling out a box from underneath her shawl) I brought you a present.
Frank: (getting up, still keeping his right leg out of the snow, and taking the box) Thanks, but Christmas was ages ago.
(Frank unwraps the box)
Jane: Well, I’m not the one drawing these, am I?
(Frank begins to dig into the box in silence, but stops himself, suddenly, and turns to Jane, doing a double-take, but doesn't say anything. Jane only smiles adorably.)

Notes

If you're wondering why Frank is limping, it's because I'm trying to maintain a continuity. The preceding story arc starts [here].

This didn't exactly come out as I planned it. Originally, there was going to be three "throwaway" gags and fifteen panels. I'm hoping to do the other 7 next week, as part 2.

Incidentally, the full, uncropped picture for each panel is huge. (The full picture for panel 2, for example, looks
[like this] at 150 dpi.) I like to think of the making of the full picture as doing the [blocking] and the cropping as fixing the camera angle. Somehow, I didn't think it would work so well if you saw who he was going to bump into before he actually bumped into her.