my successful 24 hour comic
hey, it's not going to be winning any awards, but it's successful in that i finished all 24 pages in 24 hours.
beginning at 8AM on April 23, 2005, at Atomic Comics in south OKC, alongside several like-minded comic geeks (hi, Jason!), I whipped up this steaming pile of crap, and I have nothing but pride and love for my ugly, crack-adled baby. it begins with kind of an actual story, which swiftly got boring and began to bug the crap out of me, so around midnight i dropped the whole storyline and started writing about robots instead. that's right.
the event was also broadcast via webcam... with sound. above's a shot that greggy was kind enough to grab for me. that's me in the, yes, pink leather jacket, thinking, "oh wtf wait, I can't actually draw." but that didn't stop me!
so scroll down and click the thumbnails to view each page. (i know the images are large - and even at this size the smooth lines are crunched, so they're not gettin any smaller. and the cover's last because... that's when i drew it.) below that you can read my journal entry from the next day that kinda sums up the experience.
& journal entry:
24 Hour Comic... conquered! (2005-04-24 14:50)
So... I finished my 24 Hour Comic!
I don’t have it on me because Jerry, the proprietor of Atomic Comics, is getting it copied and sent to Scott
McCloud, but I’ll upload probably the whole comic once I get it back later in the week. [ahahaha, i uploaded it nearly 10 months later.]
I finished about 7:40AM this morning, the full 24 pages, inked, no color. I can’t believe I did it. I dunno if
anyone checked out the live feed yesterday (other than Greggy and my sister and parents, who apparently
were watching it for hours), but there were three other guys and myself drawing. Two of us finished in the
time allotted, one guy gave up around page 17 and was snoring off and on for the last couple of hours,
and another guy started late because of work and is going to finish his later.
My comic started out with a lame story about a necklace that gives people different superpowers, and
by page 13 I was so bored with the story that I spontaneously killed it and linked it incredibly loosely to a
section about robots rolling around having conversations. At the end it comes back around to the original
characters. Very silly.
What’s surprising is that the guys there were actually genuinely fond of my art. I think this has a lot
to do with the fact that they’d never seen anyone ink with actual INK before, and the fact that they liked
my robots.
What’s sad is that I was so preoccupied with making the art not suck (until like 3AM anyway) that the
writing, which is normally my strong point, tooootally suffered. So it goes.
All in all, I’m just very happy that I finished the 24 pages in the 24 hours. And now that I’ve made a
comic, maybe I’ll make another comic. You know, without quite that level of neck pain and junkfood
intake. It was a really good time, though, the guys were really funny and somehow it was all free, even all
the food, which is very neat. I wish I lived closer to Atomic Comics, because it’s become my favorite store
in the city. Unfortunately, it’s also like 16 miles away.
Of course, cancelling out the freeness of it all, I took advantage of the midnight-6AM sale during which
graphic novels were buy 2 get 1 free. I picked up 30 Days of Night, Dark Days and The Filth.
And now my inner clock is all messed up, and I’m going to go eat a whole thing of cinnamon rolls myself
whilst watching Elektra.
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