Oy - Celebrating ONE YEAR on the web!

I will be getting up at 12 AM this Saturday, October 20th, to participate in this year’s 24 Hour Comics Day. For more info about 24 Hour Comics Day, check out the official rules at the official site.

The basic gist is I will be attempting to create a 24 page comic book by midnight. That’s it. All day Saturday I will be drawing my butt off. I will be utilizing one of theblogComics titles and creating an extended story. One of the rules is that the story must be written on the day, so no writing ahead of time.

What’s handy though, is the title I’m using is “The Crow’s Nest”, which is an on-the-fly, improvisational comic as it is. I haven’t seen any rules about using or not using existing characters, but I’m doing it anyway. My goal for the day will be to complete 3 comics per page, resulting in 72 Crow’s Nest comics!

Now, what am I going to do with those 72 comics, assuming I complete them? Well, that many comics would take almost a year and half to cycle through on the current weekly schedule! The solution (for now): January will be declared The Crow’s Nest Month, and I will post only Crow’s Nest comics every weekday.

That’s roughly under 25 comics, so that still leaves me with quite a few to fill out the rest of 2008 (as well as the rest of this year.) While those comics are cycling through, I will be working on the other theblogComics.com series on my normal schedule. So, come February, I should have a better lead time than now.

The complete comic book must be sent in to Scott McCloud. He and his helpers pull out the best work and publish an anthology, so you may see my comic in print if they like my stuff.

Also, on Saturday, I hope to blog roughly once every hour about my progress, so if you happen to be able to swing by the site every so often this Saturday, you can see portions of the work in progress. But I may get too busy working and forget, but here’s hoping.

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I’ve never done anything like this before, but a philosophy I adopted shortly after starting theblogComics.com was, “just jump in and do it”. I started out trying to plan out every detail and would get overwhelmed. But once I started pushing all that aside, stopped making excuses about not having time, etc. and just focused on creating the work, things went better.

I’m not going to go into this with many expectations. I’m just going to have fun and create the comics.

*yawn*

Editor’s Note: I’ve been informed that they won’t be publishing an anthology this year. So, unless I take it to print myself, the comics will be online only.

I’m up, I’m refreshed and ready to have at it. I will begin by scripting out all 72 strips. I normally don’t write The Crow’s Nest ahead of time, but I believe it will be easier if I have the words ready to go and can draw like a madman the rest of the day.

I’ll try to blog each hour to update my progress, but I may get too focused on the comics and forget. I will be using military time as it counts up easier than normal time (13:00=1:00 PM, etc.) for a 24 hour marathon, and it matches my WordPress clock. Okay, it’s midnight now, see you in about an hour….

One hour in and I’ve prepared the lettering and panel template files for all 72 comics and am as far as scripting strip #12; only sixty to go… See you in an hour.

Two hours in and I have scripted 31 strips; 41 to go. If I keep up the pace, hopefully I can commence drawing by 4 AM. I’ll probably take a snack break when the script is done and then go to town on drawing! See you in yet another hour

I just completed scripting the 53rd comic. I’m on the home stretch here: only 19 to go, then I can start drawing. Hour.

That’s right the script is complete! That’s 72 individual comic strips, all related to the same story. I’m going to take a short break and commence drawing in a little while. I estimate I’ll need to draw about 4 comics an hour to meet my goal from this point. More updates as they come…

I just finished the lettering on comic #24; 48 to go.

Six hours in, here’s my progress update:

72 comics scripted!

48 comics lettered!

I just need to finish lettering 24 more comics, and then I can finally, finally start drawing. See you in an hour.

Time for another, theblogComics.com 24 Hour Comics Day hourly update! I took a 20 minute break this hour and completed the lettering through strip #64. That leaves eight more to letter!

See you in an hour!

Just a quick note that all 72 strips are now lettered. I’m going to take another break, and officially commence drawing when I get back! Yeah!