24 Hour comics

So the 24 hour comic's day happened yesterday Oct 7, 2006. Created by Scott McCloud, the challenge is to create a complete full 24 page comic with story and art from scratch in 24 hours or less in a row. Sort of a super marathon challenge for cartoonists.

Being a long time fan of comics and having at one time seriously considered pursuing a career in comics, the competition has great appeal to me. A local shop, Night Flight Comics in Salt Lake City hosted for the event and several of my art friends from work attended. The results of what they did will be posted here: http://headgateart.blogspot.com/. I went to visit them on Saturday to support them and see what cool stuff everyone was doing. Very exciting, very cool. I decided that I had an hour to spare (My wife was shopping with her mom in Park City) so I decided to go ahead and see what I could do in one hour... no more. My friends game me some Bristol board, non-photo blue pencils and a pen-brush and I set to work. Sad to say I didn't finish the piece, but here are the results after the hour:
I call it "Too Much Caster". Click on the image to see it in more detail.

I went ahead and took it home and finished it today in about another half an hour:

So I love the idea of 24 hour comics! The only problem is, I won't do it. Here's why:

• My wife says I am not a nice person to be around when I don't get enough sleep.
• I have family responsibilities that would be difficult to pass off for such a competition.
• I would be doing it on Sunday.
• I would be too tired to attend church properly on the Sabbath.
• I am not in good shape for the competition.
• My hand cramps up after inking for just a few minutes let along hours at a time.
• It's been a long time since I've drawn for a long duration.
• I have never done a full 24 page comic before. I think 12 or 14 was my max.

So how about a twelve or eight hour comic day? That I could justify. Not nearly as challenging as the twenty-four hour event, but still very cool nonetheless. Sort of like when I ran a half marathon in college.

So next year I've decided to do it... at least as my own self designed eight or twelve hour event. That way I can still have all the fun and not feel awful the next day. ^_^