24 Hour Comic Day 2010: The Aftermath

In keeping with it's Appalachian Trail-like aura, I am beat and do not want to think of 24HCD again and cannot understand why I'd do such a thing. Of course, I said that last year, too.

The Event

This year was interesting. I took the lead on the poster, the marketing, the sponsor-gathering, the setting up, nearly everything and it worked out pretty well. The setup went smooth and worked well. Our sponsors came through magnificently. (more than we could have hoped, actually. Sweet Clover Market donated a HUGE box of chocolate-covered pretzels. Phoenix Books delivered two airports of coffee, some creamer, some cups and cookies. Rocky's Pizza came through with four cheese pizzas at 6:30pm.)

For my part, I didn't expect to finish and I didn't; only eighteen pages. The reasons for this were: 1) I was the MC, so I was answering random questions for a while, 2) and also as MC I had to check in latecomers 3) I bit off more than I could chew story-wise (more later) and 4) I decided early on that this wasn't going to be about getting work done. If I wanted that, I'd have stayed in the studio. So, I chatted with visitors, customers and other participants.

We started at 9AM on Sat and I petered out about 6AM on Sun. I couldn't draw anymore. So I walked outside to watch a rabbit eating in the grass near the store, went inside to start cleaning up a bit. We ended up leaving at 9AM and home by 9:30.

We learned a lot for next year (example: there's going to be an age restriction. Nobody under sixteen will be allowed to participate past 9PM without a parent present; 12 year old girls can get WAY too giggly after too much caffeine and candy at 2AM). But, I don't want to think of that now.

The Comic

This year, for myself and the other participants, I created 'inspiration cards'. I grabbed a bunch of images off of Google's Life photo archive , stuff of mine and photos and art I've collected over the years. I printed those out into a 'deck' of cards for the participants to go through for an idea. The one I chose was this:



I wish I knew who the artist was so I could give him/her credit. The image (and four others of the same artist) have been on my drives since 2002 and I've re-named them. I really like the stuff and wish I could see more.

I stared at this picture for five minutes then started writing words and connecting those words with arrows until I had a very bare storyline. I then hit the thumbnail trail and sketched out the entire story. As with most of my 24HCD works, this was like a Star Trek:TNG episode: 3/4 full of padding then a rushed resolution. What stymied me was the complexity that became inherent within the piece. I tried to mitigate this by doing lots of cinematic cuts of one talking head to another. Boring, but easier to draw. Another sticking point was that I scripted two fight scenes. I've never done a real fight scene before and never thought of doing one under this kind of pressure. The final bit was that my comic involved doing a kawai character and a dog. Neither of which I'd really drawn before and never as a recurring character in action poses!

I did decide early on that dark pencilling would be "done". Mostly because I liked how my pencils were looking and also because that would be the only way I'd come close to finishing. The art, of course, degraded over time, but there are some nice moments including some later on. So, here's the comic, one panel shy of eighteen pages, the last being nearly finished at 6AM Oct 3rd. It's called "Special Delivery" and I'd be curious to know if anyone would want to see it finished...





































Whew! Thanks for reading! If you've got an 24HCD event in your town next year and you make comics, DO IT! If you don't make comics, go see some tired artists!

listening to while posting: "Tokyo I'm on my way" by Puffy AmiYumi