The 'remake the rules to suit your requirements' approach

Having undertaken the challenge a couple of years ago, and struggled to create a 24 page story, I decided to take a different approach this year. Instead of creating a 24 page comic from scratch, I decided to create an 8 page picture book, that I'd already written most of the script for, and had completed a couple of character sketches for already too.

So how did it go? Well having far less than 24 pages to do meant I had plenty of time to tweak the script, to play around with characer sketches until I was happy with the way the stories single character looked, and to create 8 pages and a front cover to a standard I was happy with. Also I had some time to spare to take some time out and have a bit of rest in another room from the event part way through. 24 hr comic day purists will probably be shocked and appalled at my reinvention of the rules, but ultimately I ended up with something I was pretty happy with, which I don't imagine would have been the case if I'd stuck rigidly to the rules. I just don't work quickly enough to make a satisfactory 24 page comic book in as many hours.

So now what? I'm planning on printing up copies of the book to send to a couple of magazines to see if they might like to print a regular cartoon featuring the books character. Fingers crossed.

P.S. May I give Matt (left) a big thankyou for organising the whole event and allowing my picture book to get completed

- James