Bob The Waterbear- A Mini-Comic Experiment
- Duncan Maclean
- May 27, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 15, 2025
This was the first of my mini-comics, and like all of my comics, it began with a self-imposed challenge. In fact, there were three goals I set for myself with this piece:
1. Scale
Given the inherently small format of a mini-comic, I wanted to explore how scale could be exaggerated or reimagined. That led me to Bob the waterbear—a tardigrade—whose microscopic size and extreme resilience offered the perfect subject for this experiment.
2. Time
Mini-comics, by definition, are constrained—not just in size, but in scope. With a fixed format of exactly eight pages (or panels), I leaned into those limitations. I wanted to see how quickly I could develop and execute an idea within those bounds.
3. Portability
Rather than using my traditional drawing tools, I chose to embrace the portability of the iPad and Procreate. This wasn’t just a technical shift—it was part of the challenge to see what could be achieved with a minimal, mobile setup.
With those parameters in place, I began brainstorming. I gave myself 50 minutes to land on a subject. At the time, I had been exploring tardigrades with my children—marveling at how these tiny creatures defy the extremes of life. The decision came quickly. Their size made them a perfect fit for the theme of scale, and their otherworldly resilience brought a narrative depth I was eager to explore.
Knowing I had a 75-minute train journey ahead of me, I decided that would be my production window—from departure to arrival. I prepped the template in advance, fully charged my hardware, and restricted the artwork to black and white to streamline the process.
I did slightly bend one of my rules in the end—using Adobe Photoshop to clean up and lay out the final comic on an A4 page. But otherwise, the process stayed true to the original constraints.
The finished comic is what you see here. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. The theme of scale is one I plan to revisit. What other stories might be hiding in the worlds that exist just beyond human perception? Could this format be a bridge between education and entertainment? Do these short comics need to stand alone, or could they form chapters in a larger narrative?
These are questions for another time. For now, I hope you enjoy Bob’s story. You can download and print the mini-comic below. As a bonus, you can see the time-lapse of the creation process.
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