The Oscillating Brow 24HCD process

The Oscillating Brow 24-hour comic 'The Device' was completed at around 8.30am on Sunday morning. I am pretty happy with it to be honest. My 24-hour comic experience was this:

I started entirely from scratch at around 9.30am, had a ponder, came up with some fairly vague ideas, made them a bit more specific, then made some page-by page plans (for some reason insulting a dinosaur had seemed quite important but this was dropped from the final book - probably for the best).

11.45ish: started pencilling in light blue pencil (a novelty for me which I hoped would save having to do any rubbing out before scanning/photocopying the line-work).

4.00ish: flagging a bit but still hopeful, I started on the inking.

Around 8.30: Having been working actual size on A6 pages, usually with my face a few inches from the paper using a 005 pen, my head was beginning to hurt quite a lot. I only had about six pages left to ink but I was beginning losing my grip on reality, my pen and the contents my stomach, so decided it was time to have a rest. With a mumbled farewell, I was off into the night like some kind of stumbling zombie, the first casualty.

It took fresh air, curry and a reasonable amount of sleep to get me feeling half human again, and I finished the inking on Sunday morning with a little time left before the deadline (witnessed and recorded on video for proof of course).

JOY etc!

It had always been the plan to finish in not much more than twelve hours. Some people, recalling my previous pseudo-24-hour-comic antics may have considered this wimpy or not getting into the full spirit of the day. To them, I offer a punch on the nose.

The idea of 24HCD is to do the best comic you can do in 24 hours. Staying up all night (either working on a more time-intensive piece or just working at a slower average pace) would almost certainly have lead to an actual decrease in the overall quality of comic, nevermind my mental and physical wellbeing.

I take my hat off to those people made of sturdier stuff than I, but I made the best twenty four page comic I could in twenty four hours. As for details of this wondrous product, it's kind of my usual kind of nonsense: bathos, hubris, the absurdity of existence, top hats, and me pratting around with visual narrative syntax.

I'll print a few up soon hopefully.