Twenty Four Hour Comic Day. What to bring.

24 hours to complete a 24 page comic. Scott Mccloud who invented the idea must have been smoking the good stuff. I'm taking part in my first this weekend.

Anyway it doesn't sound that hard. An hour a page, pfft no worries. As the guys over at Blitz comics pointed out, if you have a 2.5 minute break every hour, over 24 hours that is 60 minutes wasted on breaks. Go on do the sums. I know I had to as I didn't believe it.

Anyway their fantastic guide reckons you realistically have about 40 minutes to draw a page, 5-10 minutes for the lettering, a few for toilet/break and then back into it.

I've never done anything like this before. I'm hoping it will sharpen my process and make me better at creating comics. I just hope my art doesn't suck to much.

Supplies

This is all the stuff i'm taking with me. Hopefully my other half can think up some good meals that will give me energy to keep powering on. I think my aeropress will be getting a workout.

Process

This is the first bit I needed to figure out. My current process for my comic Death of the Commons is convoluted and slow. It involves pencils, scanning, printing, painting, scanning some more and on and on. So I needed something similar.

First I thought "easy, i'll just do pencils" but that sounded boring. I like pretty colours. I particularly like the randomness you get from using traditional acrylics, none of this photoshop stuff.

So I settled on pencilling it all in, but doing the pencils dark enough they can pass for inks. Then closing all the drawing lines which will make it easier to fill any extra colours i want to add in photoshop.

Next add texture and splashes of colour using acrylics brushes, cardboard and toothbrushes. Then scan using the $30 portable scanner I got.

I love the texture you get from using acrylics and then scanning it in.

Finally do background colours and lettering in Manga studio. Presto finished.

I'm very much looking forward to meeting new people, getting better at telling stories using sequential art and hopefully having some fun while i'm at it.

See if your local area is running an event. Or if not participate online. Either way should be a load of fun. Cya on the other side.