FRIDAY, ~16.30
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It is done. Yesterday at 18:00 sharp, pen hit paper. A few minutes ago I signed the last page. I have done the 24 Hour Comic Challenge and I came out alive, sane, and with a comic.
With a twenty-four page, 60 panel comic. Improvised but technically "planned per page", with roughs, inking, and lettering. None of it is professional. There are typos. It is experimental. But that makes its charme.
I went through two DIN A3 sketch pads. I murdered three 0.3 Stabilo markers, 5 Stabilo Ink Makers, two blue copy pencils, and I broke a ruler when I sat on it. My behind is okay. I also may or may not have eaten an eraser; it was pretty late and dim and the bag of marshmallows really wasn't a good idea.
My floor is littered with two bottles of mineral water, one bottle of Diet Pepsi, and I I gulped down two RedBull and one Monster KAOS. I lost track of the coffee counter but it was a generous amount of coffee and it all came out of a really cool cup. I will not tell you how my ashtray looks because, you know, smokin's bad.
Food. A nice bowl of cream soup with Maultaschen, a huge sandwich with too little bacon, a family size pizza with tuna, onions, double cheese and saveloy. And a small breakfast at McDonalds. I love these tiny excuses of pancakes that they make. Some Dutch candy and one Wunderbar; I kept the sugar pretty low tonight and I didn't have my steak. I'll make it tonight to celebrate.
My playlist is still playing, currently there's Cinnamon Girl by dunkelbunt but honestly, after a while it became a pleasant background hum. I really was in the zone for a while.
I am still too groggy and exited to talk about it objectively, but here's what I think of the challenge
right now, it is amazing. It. Is. Amazing. With a capital ZING.
For me it was a lot like MAGS or the old Stickam Hourgames. I tend to overthink stuff. I often want to have the perfect result and then talk about how it will look for ages and never get to actually DO that amazing thing, and eventually it is so awesome in my head that my hands can't do it justice, and I drop the idea and move on and then complain how I never get stuff done
I think that's not the rarest form of self-limitation.
With 24 hours I felt incredibly insecure and that shows. Twenty-four hours, twenty-four pages, that's an hour per page and there are always some pages that have little to show so you can actually WIN time, right? No. I absolutely misjudged my speed and skill.
The first page took me longer than an hour, much longer. I had no plan, no character(s), and I used a somewhat huge amount of shading. And so I adjusted as I went along, never going back. Just like MAGS; there isn't enough time in one full day to make a super plan AND the perfect image. Or maybe there is, and I've just not found a way to tap into that.
Letting things just flow was okay and felt nice- as I said, I treated each page as a single experiment. One was to put many expressions down. One was to refrain from copy-and-paste when it would have been the sensible option. One was to have a silly joke. I think it shows; the story is very weak and bouncy but the ghost character manages to become pretty well characterized just by talk, thoughts, body language and interaction with a firefly (that is totally not Navi from Link, who is totally NOT listed on a headstone in one panel either).
It was a great way to just get things done, that challenge. Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Would I treat it as a valid way to start a big project? No. It's destructive. My hand aches, I am tired and my stomach isn't exactly my friend right now. I have a hard time remembering how to pronounce Cthulluh. I am empty, in a good way, but empty. There is a lot of adrenaline and pride but I know that there will be a price to pay and I am not very keen on waking up tomorrow. It's a challenge alright, and I am actually VERY surprised that I have a good hour to spare. Not enough to correct much, but one hour to spare. Why?
The truth is that I started to sacrifice images for time. There are maybe two pages that I would have done totally different and more complicated and more detailled without that time limit. This is NOT how I'd normally treat a project; I would put that extra effort into the page instead of finding a (creative, maybe, but still somewhat lazy) way to get a quicker result. Maybe that is different for people with more experience who are better at judging their speed and who can come up with better plans. After ten pages I finally realized how much time I could safe myself by making a stencil for a rough 4-panel page layout. Someone with more experience would have HAD such a thing already.
But considering that this is my first "full" comic I am more than surprised how nice it is. There are pages that really look very good. There is variety, too; there are style shifts but it still looks like it was supposed to be "one story".
I am a very happy man right now, is what I am trying to say. And proud.
I'd like to you guys. I wasn't quite sure if an open thread for what is basically an ego trip would be well recieved, but you were great and I checked back every so often and your cheers gave me a bit of extra energy during the wee hours. This forum is an awesome place with awesome people.
Well, so. Yes, that is it. I've officially done the challenge. Tomorrow I'll head over to the copy shop, get the pages shrunk to DINA4, scan them and, naturally, will make the comic available as a download. Right now I wanna share it with everybody.
Some pics to close this- thanks again to you guys!
