Little mouse thoughts

Cute drawings, ocassionally quotes, maybe some worldbuilding Twt • FA • DA • r/ • IG • Ko-fi • Fedi

[frankhightower]

[WIP] Sonas Explained (8)

Added Silly (the Typhlosion) and Alvin (the fox) to the diagram -- two characters from radically different worlds. I'm probably the only person that complains about how long it took me to art on one day and then goes on to pick harder art for the next day. Alvin makes preserves.

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[frankhightower]

2025 year in review

This morning, I bring you my 2025 year in review and OMFG has it been a long year! (Admittely, I'm cheating a little; most obviously: Terrible Comics Day is in July, not June, but June was the month my computer was broken so it "feels" like june!) January: Start of the TF drive: Jane is sworn in to testify in her own defense. February: Past me, you madman! March: Missingno accidentally turns Susan into an umbreon and is really sorry! April: Sergeant Thompson interrupts Jane's trial by virtue of being a 6 foot-tall rat with a rifle. May: Growth drive: Evan is grown to towering heights. June: Terrible comics day: I dreamed my characters were assigned to play The Simpson's. July: Art fight: Sparkey just has to respond to @@lightfurdragon and -- hey, no, put me down! August: The Officers Jenny are not happy about the Evan thing. September: Megaraichu reaction: Sparkey can't not-tease me. October: Meme: The loneliness epidemic has always been with us. November: The speechless meme but it's one of those "draw yourself as a meme" challenges (the other cheaty drawing). December: Christmas at the Pokémon center: My pokémon aren't the only ones who will trigger the Pokémon TF curse, but my family is a bit more pragmatic about it.

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[frankhightower]

Christmas at the Pokemon Center

Merry Christmas, everyone. I've been sick a lot lately because (no joke) that is what depression does. Susan had the idea that if we triggered my curse I could get unlimited unjudgemental free healthcare, so that's what's been on my mind this month.

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[frankhightower]

TF drive The Last Stand 5: Badgering the Whiskers

<<Prev | Start | No next yet, donate now! The witness is credible because he placed Jane outside the courthouse on a day and time she definitely worked a trial! No donations for this page so I'm filling the bar to 60% with the pledges from my patreons: Jespe and Obv10usly! One more page left!

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[frankhightower]

TF drive The Last Stand 4: The Real Problem

<< Prev | Story start | (No next yet. Donate now!) Mr. Lowe, is growing desperate! He's just using gossip off the street now! Jane's fully allowed to object here, since she's representing herself; but she knows that, by that saying nothing, Mr. Lowe will be in a lot more trouble! The transformation's now at 52% thanks to @jespe87.bsky.social! To donate to TF drive, go to http://paypal.me/frankhghtwr

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[frankhightower]

Susan and Missingno

A quick thing I whipped up to capture a moment in my head, a #DreamDiary of sorts, featuring my "little girl" mouse Susan, and my Missingno (whose form shifts abruptly when startled) who will NOT appear in this year's Macro March drive and so are spending some time together.

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[frankhightower]

February 2025 Explainer...well...anecdote

I drew this to capture what I thought was a funny coincidence created by the days between bills getting deducted and paychecks getting deposited (which I hadn't had to worry about for a while). I think I'm going to be okay, but I won't know for sure for another week or so.

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[frankhightower]

Twitter

There's been rallying cry lately in the furry community: "stop posting on Twitter! just f'ing stop!" To be honest, it is unclear whether the motivation is the morally and legally questionable actions he's doing as part of the Trump government (the day I saw it, he'd put some rando to block the entrance to the department of education, which is very much not allowed) or the morally and legally questionable actions he's taking as proprietor of Twitter (on the same day, Twitter's "Grok" LLM chatbot was augmented with image generation capabilities trained on every image ever uploaded to twitter), or both, but let's just say the arguments are ...persuasive. I'd been planning to wind down my activity on twitter ever since the twitterpocalypse (my name for the sudden literal decimation of tweet impressions in October 2023) but wasn't sure how to go about it. the first big step was using Fedica, which lets you publish the same post to several social media sites with one click; I just haven't had to look at twitter as much anymore! But what I'm going to do next is a bit more radical.

The Macro March growth drive will not have its art uploaded to Twitter. Instead, I'll be tweeting out a link to where the people still on twitter can view that day's page. I expect to reevaluate at the end of the year. Now I can already hear the boos and jeers, so let me answer the implied questions: Why wait until March? Well, it seems kind of insensitive to leave the people still on Twitter hanging as to the resolution of the current TF drive story, so I at least want to finish that first and then do a "goodbye" post or two. Why did I wait this long? To be honest, I wasn't sure where to jump to until last fall. I'd been trying Bluesky, Mastodon and Instagram for my new "main", and none of them seemed to "feel" quite right. The latest exodus changes that: hitting the repost button on Bluesky every 3 hours is no longer "too often" with all the new activity!   Why tweet anything at all? Mainly for archival purposes. I mainly use Twitter now through the search function when need an old post of mine, and if I misremember if it was pre-wind-down or post-wind-down, I don't want to come up empty. And if Twitter ever does return to its former glory (a mouse can dream!) I want the full sequence to be there for people to click through. Why care about the people still on Twitter? I still have a couple commissioners on there, mainly Ms. Pam who was prominently featured in a recent page. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but if only one student shows up in the classroom, that student should get to have the class. Why am I making such a big deal about it? For one, no longer uploading to Twitter means the comic panel aspect ratio will no longer be 16×19 and that is a pretty big deal. I'm not even sure if I can comfortably fit them on the screen which means I may need to rethink my entire drawing process!

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[frankhightower]

TF drive The Last Stand 3: You never asked

<< Prev | Story start | (No next yet. Donate now!)

The charge levied against Jane is Witchcraft, so John is trying everything to see if she “lets something slip” (However, in the process, he’s forgotten the first rule of lawyering: never ask questions you don’t know the answer to!)

Harland & Lowe’s is a riff on the real-life Hogan Lovells law firm, which was making headlines back when I wrote this. The “replacement” names are taken from Harland & Wolf shipyards and Lowe’s hardware store.

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[frankhightower]

Who am I?

Bluesky has been doing this meme where people post four "x-coded characters" where "x" is their own name. I have no idea what my four me-coded characters would even be so... I created my own counter meme: "Post this in your profile to let your followers tell you what your you-coded characters are!" The background is from Disney's Once upon a Studio. No copyright is claimed.

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[frankhightower]

TF Drive The Last Stand 2: It was her birthday

<< Prev

Finished page 2 of the TF drive (she remembers the day because it was her birthday). This would, of course, be the moment when the judge bangs his gavel, but gavels aren't used outside of the US!

Transformation now at 20% thanks to a donation from @obv10usly​ on twitter!

Donation link is still paypal.me/frankhghtwr

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[frankhightower]

January 2025 Explainer

I am very proud of the poses in this one, particularly the "I want you" pose as this was my first time drawing it without a reference; it came out surprisingly well! No winter fluff because it hasn't been consistently cold this year and I'm upset about that. Disclaimer: Deadlines are approximate. Happy New Year. I'm sorry.

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[frankhightower]

So what happened this year?

“Meg, my little flower, my little bird, my little nut, Meg. What exactly happened here? I thought you were gonna [draw the comic] for the [TF drive], and here I am, kind of [TF]-less.” --Hades, Hercules (1997) Things were going relatively well this year and then my art output fell off a cliff. I’m writing this to try to explain why. Firstly, by now you should know I’m a teacher for my dayjob and I just changed schools. You’ve probably noticed that teachers need to be in some time before classes start to get everything set up. At my old job, this “sometime before” was “any time during the previous 2 weeks”. New job demands 3 weeks in full (meaning they check that you’re doing it in-person, work-from-home is not acceptable any of of those days). I misread as 4. So I show up on the day I’m supposed to start showing up, believing I have a full month and pace myself accordingly. Then, halfway through my “month” I hear “classes start next week, right?” I’ve never felt such panic before. This singular mistake meant I spent the entire semester playing catchup because, in case you don’t know, the fall semester is always the one with the most “things you have to do”. I didn’t sleep, didn’t do my usual self-care, all in the name of meeting my obligations. Now, I fully accept responsibility for my mistake, but I did need some moral support to keep me going. I tried leaning on my online friends… it backfired. They were too busy with their own problems. They made me feel worse. And when I tried to talk to them about that, take interested in their problems, they kind of disappeared. I even tried talking to people at work…but of course I was rewarded with “more work” (not to mention there’s a few fundamental differences of opinion I don’t think I can get past). This is why I couldn’t tell you if I ever did catch up or just barely met the deadlines, because of these unforeseen obligations. And, of course, this wouldn’t be complete without the car breaking down a couple times and a few firing threats, because when is it ever just one thing?

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[frankhightower]

2024 year in review

Saw people doing the "my artistic journey this year in review" thing again, so I dusted off the template from last year and looked over my stuff. I will always regret not having done one for 2022 so I refuse to let it happen again! January The First Pokémon TF Drive: A trip to See Mom. It feels a bit like cheating since I did start it the previous year, but it's also true it consumed the entire month. February The only thing I really put out this month is my "monthly" explainer, this time explaining that I had a new job. March The growth drive was a qualified success! The "tour" idea worked well and we hit all the planned locations! April Finding a colorist wasn't the only thing I did this month; but I think, with time, it will prove to be the most significant. May The pokémon shrink drive was another qualifiedly successful experiment. June Refsheets for my pichu form and for Sparkey did get finished and proved unexpectedly popular! July I almost hit my goal for artfight this year, represented here by the piece I spent the most time on, but when you consider this was also the month I lost my computer, that's pretty good! August The Second Pokémon TF Drive: Back Home, was one where I really challenged myself. I do feel like I passed those challenges, pun intended, with flying colors! September Worked on Commissions in September, unfortunately the only one I can show is this one, which is a rehashing of one I'd done last year, which feels like cheating again. October The Trick-or-treat picture was also unexpectedly popular but feels a bit cheaty too. Although it's the same concept I posted at the star of the month, and the lines were done on October 31st, the finished piece didn't go up until November 10 because... November ...mental health is a bitch. December Another unexpectedly popular piece and a great way to close off the year.

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[frankhightower]

TF Drive The Last Stand 1: Always wanted to ask

Next Page >>

Page 1 of the TF drive story is finally done!

Jane and this guy have been have been leering at each other for a while, so of course Jane isn't going to miss this opportunity to mess with him. In the prosecutor's defense, This takes place before the Ellis Island name thing is known, Jane just happens to have insider knowledge.

The transformation stands at 10% thanks to a donation from @sereg.bsky.social

Donate at paypal.me/frankhghtwr to keep it going!

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[frankhightower]

About February 2

Growing up, my family kept the medieval tradition of leaving Christmas decorations up until February 2 (formally known as Candlemas). I used to shrug this off as silly, but when I lived alone for college (that's right, entirely alone, no roommate, no visiting family) I performed an unwitting experiment: I took them down "early" (first week of January) and I started noticing a sensation I had never felt before: seasonal depression. I put them back up and it didn't happen again. I became convinced the reason I normally seem "immune" to seasonal depression (until someone else decides to bring me down with theirs at least) is because of leaving those decorations up. Our ancestors were smarter than us! They knew! We should listen to them! Leave your decorations up! Now, if you're a Scrooge, firstly, I am very sorry for whatever your Marley was, but secondly, you're a grownup now (probably), you get to decide how you celebrate the season! Got PTSD over tinsel and garland? Put up some posters or whatever! Grow a houseplant indoors! Just get some color into your living space! It's for your own mental health!

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[frankhightower]

When your family has shrinking powers 3

Merry Christmas! (or winter?) Another in the "Family with shrinking powers" series. Woke up with this in my head and just had to show you all. This is also canon and happened because Susan's adoptive brothers are way better at snowballs than she is, so she needed to distract them!

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