So how did it go?

My current recommendation for finishing a 24 hour comic is to sleep loads and while awake never be without a glass containing the following ingredients:

1. Lemon
2. Grated Ginger
3. Hot Water
4. Honey
5. Jack Daniels.

So, here's how it went: I successfully made a comic with 24 pages.

I tend to view 24HCD as a massively intense idea development day - and while I technically finished a comic with 24 pages, it's not going to get published anywhere. This has been the case every time i've done it. That's not to say I'm not happy with the outcome - I am - but more as a learning exercise and providing me with ideas to develop further in other comics.

So here's the breakdown of the comic:

Pages 1-5:
A robbery is occuring in a sci-fi city. A sci-fi city was chosen because it would allow a certain flexibility with realism.

Not enough flexibility as it happens, and this is a lesson for next time: choose a minimal environment you can draw sustainably and quickly. Make your characters fish, robots, beans, monsters but most importantly, closer to 2D than 3D. Don't make them real human beings with real human hands, because that's just too damn hard at the best of times and 24HCD isn't the best of times.

The robbery fails, and our hero, Jupiter Junior is saved after jumping off the building roof by the Techno Robbery Examiner in her flying car, who tells him that he's failed his Techno Burglary basic certification due to a) bungling the safe, and b) failing to spot that one of his colleagues deliberately tampered with his parachute to take all of the loot.

Pages 6-13: 
Junior returns to his caravan and tries to announce his PASS to his girlfriend, Malena, who is already aware that he failed and dumps him, because really what she wants in a boyfriend is someone who can rob her fathers house.

His next phone call is to his two partners in failed crime, both of whom passed and complain that they would have distinctions if Junior hadn't bungled the safe. No hard feelings about the parachute, oh and by the way, they're still going to do the job on Malena's fathers house he told them about. A shame he can't make it, but they'll still give him a ten percenter cut for putting them onto the job.

Junior gets himself together to do the job anyway, due to some television documentary on Malena's father, which contains some baiting aimed at him from Malena. The object we're stealing is apparently some artifact from a war against Carnoxotles where the dad was a general. The plot starts to fall apart at this point, but Junior doesn't notice so buys all the kit he needs and starts the job.

Pages 14-18:
The job: Junior makes his way through the mansion grounds and into the mansion, dealing with dogs, getting onto the roof, lasers, secret doors and pits full of spikes. The artefact looks suspiciously like a chess piece modelled on an axolotl, and on page 16 the safe type and cracking echoes that on page 2.

Once the artefact is removed from the safe, Junior is attacked by really cute Carnoxotle's who can't decide whether he qualifies as food. They conclude that taking some small bits out of him would allow them to make this judgement.

Junior flees, and encounters his two ex-partners who are already on the job. They end up being eaten by the Carnoxotle's that he's set free by removing the artefact. 

Pages 19 and 24: 
Junior escapes into the bedroom of Malena, and tries to convince her that now he has the artefact they can be rich and move away from her father etc.etc. But this turns out not to be why she wanted it. 

The father turns up, shoots Junior in the back and explains to Malena that trying to awake her sisters to have him (and all the evidence) eaten was quite a trick and reminds him of her mother. The sisters are back in their room now. While this father/daughter conversation is going on, Junior escapes through the window.

Junior ecapes across the lawn, The Father notes that Junior did ok - almost a pass, revealing himself to be the head of the thieves examining board/guild/whatever, and tells Malena that if she sees him again, she should tell him. 

The final page is an epilogue of Malena on the phone asking Junior if he wants to come around to her house for dinner, to meet the family.

And that's that:

Too ambitious and doesn't quite hang together, but having some good bits of action, a few bits of funny and some ideas worth stealing for other comics.

A successful 24 hours I think. The others should be along shortly to tell you how it went for them.

Newcastle Mini Comic 2012 Review

The 2012 Mini Comic event was an amazing success. Despite me making a mistake with the dates it was part of World Mini Comics day in May.

The day began with Paul Thompson's and Ingi Jensson's presentations about all things comicy and Icelandic. Both were brilliant, I learnt absolutely loads to use with my own work. Paul spoke eloquently about all aspects of comic storytelling and making visual jokes work. Ingi gave a powerful presentation about style and the ups and downs of his comic career. We also learnt alot about Iceland and Ingi's cool uncle.

The comics making event was great. We had a constant stream of people of all ages attending wihich totally nearly 70 overall. The pace was relentless and everyone had a great time. Loads of great comics were made.

It was great to speak to all of the various folk who attended and help them get started. Everyone was full of enthusiasm for comics and cartoons. It was particularly good to speak to Kris, a gifted cartoonist, who wants to get into comics after retiring. The Awesome Comic Machine award should go the Ruth aged 11, who spent the whole event relentlessly drawing amazing comics without moving, pausing or flagging.

There was great works byPaperjammers Matt Gan and Lydia Wysocki. Ingi did a great one too, but I'll have to pick up a copy next week so I don't know its name. Britt Coxon's were amazing too. It is now a tradition that Paul never finishes his work during the event.

It was amazing to see Nigel Auchterlounie and his mini comic The Adventures of Whinnie the Dog. There was also a great comic by Peter Coulthard titled the Scarecrow, there was loads of great comics made by unknown makers one titled A Trip to the Shops was a particular hit. The photo shows most of them that I picked up, but I know I didn't get them all.

As part of the workshop we will be sending samples of them over to Mike. He was able to attend the morning but hopped on a plane to Malta, so the comics will reach him in the next few days. He's doing a reciprocal zine which he's promising to send back to us.

I couldn't have managed the event without the help from a number or folks, especially Britt and Paul for doing the photocopier duties. Also, Sophie and Judith were both brilliant as well.

As usual the Newcastle City Library were great and the success of the event was due to the helpfulness of all the staff involved, particularly Pauline and Patrick.

Many of the attendees were keen to hear about future events, which got us thinking.  You'll have to wait and see for now.

Magic Beans and Son

That's me with my son, Dylan helping me on 24 Hour Comics Day. He's the main reason I wasn't at the glorious event with you all, but I literally couldn't help myself getting involved, so I decided to work from home...

This was my third attempt at 24 Hour Comics Day. The first one was a disaster best not mentioned, but also a valuable lesson in how not to do it! The second attempt was in 2008, which produced a comic amidst the desolation of spending a whole day in the house on my own, drawing comics.

I really fancied trying the group effort this time, but my family comes first, even *GASP!* before comics :)

But you know, it worked out rather well in the end. I wasn't alone all day for a start, just in the bleak hours of night, but Paul and the gang were just a text or phonecall away, which gave me a great boost. Jo and the boys were there for me and supported me all the way, and I couldn't have done it without them. I even did a special 2 page story for six year old Alex to help with, he inked it and lettered it himself and it's brilliant! I'll be including it in the printed version, so I guess I kind of managed a 26 page comic...

As for my comic itself, I did cheat slightly by deciding beforehand to use an established character, crime fighting local news TV presenter Mike Neville, but beyond that I went completely unprepared and made it all up on the day. Unlike last time though I spent a lot of time working on the story early on, and this really helped later on in the day when I was drawing on autopilot, having lost the ability to think in any useful way :)

Dylan does have a habit of getting up at 5AM and thinking it's playtime, which no doubt contributed to me falling asleep after midnight, and waking up at about 7AM with a bit of a mountain to climb. So the last quarter of my comic existed in a pretty sketchy form when the deadline loomed, but exist it did. So I'm calling it a modest success!

Keep watching the pies,

Ben

Cheaters Sometimes Prosper

So... It's been just over a week since I started my 24 hour comic. What did I learn in those 24 hours? I already knew I was batshit crazy, so that doesn't count. I think I learned that it doesn't matter if you don't reach the 24 pages but more that you get something out of it, I got 16 pages, the story finished on page 16 and I was happy with it. I also learned that while bringing fruit is healthy you also need savoury foods to survive a full 24 hours.

I also learned that all video footage of the event is for some reason... corrupted. I took a few clips and was going to put them together into a montage of comic greatness (or madness) but technology has failed me. :|
Not impressed.

In compensation for the lack of video please enjoy this photo of Daniel telling us what he's thinking.

And a preview of my comic from the event. I plan to clean up and shade this and make it available for mass insanity by Thought Bubble!

I blame the low level anti-technology forcefield and the possible corrupting influences of us for the lack of video in this post. It's a shame, there are about 10 files and all of them are just strange beeping noises.

My name is Ingi and I survived the 24HCD.

So - I went to this wedding on Friday the 1st of October, stayed up late and got up early morning Saturday to drive up to Newcastle from the Boro - I looked something like this at the time.

A great way to start, what would become 27 hours of no sleep - when I desperately needed one to begin with. - Anyhooo...

The drive up was extremely uneventful and not really worthy of mention, but I just did, so here’s a picture to go with it:

- I then met up with Martin at the Church for some prayers and then we sacrificed a pigeon for good luck and being a no good Icelander I then commenced to steal his money - because, that’s what we do - it’s an old Viking trade, you know.

In-spite of gospel singing, verbal diarrhea and breezy flatulence the 24 hours flew by, thanks to barrels of Nestlé’s finest and delicious home-made cookies/muffins supplied by Martin and Brittany.

So! - to the actual comic making.

This being my first ever 24HCD, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself in to.
During the days leading up to the event I had had many ideas and my mind seamed to be overly active in coming up with stories ....however - when push came to shove, I went absolutely BLANK!

When I came back to reality, I went with one of the first images that came to my mind in the days before the event: - A 'picture' of when I saw my future wife to-be for the first time, back in 1997 in Arnhem (Holland) as we both started our ballet teachers education...

My idea was to bring in glimpses of my life while I was sitting at the bottom of those stairs, both past and future to 1997.

I don’t know if it was due to the fact that I was listening to melancholic Suede on iTunes or what, but I decided to pick out ‘sad-moment’ from my life and illustrate them accordingly.

How I’ve ordered the comic is not the chronological order in which it was made - and that was something I set out to do - Since I was fixing myself to one moment (the stairs) and wanting to bring memories to that moment.

The surprise was the appearance of King Flea - like something out of Naked Lunch - so I decided to see where that would take me. This happened at around 23:00 and I went on a roll and almost managed to make a page per hour, but due to my lack of direction before I was never going to make 24 in 24.

I came to Newcastle to have fun and spend quality time with fellow comic makers - and in that sense the 24hours were a great success - as to my 11pages, I can only say that NEXT TIME I’ll manage better :-)

I’ll finish with the words of Walt Disney, who said:

Awesome

Well I had a great time and got the comic finished. Started well, struggled a bit for a few hours around the evening but finished strongly. Did a few pages I'm overjoyed with.

Many thanks to everyone who attended and kept the faith 'til morning.

Respect

Aftermath

I'm currently still pretty shattered from the event, only having managed a couple of hours of sleep since we finished. Though to be honest I was shattered from the very beginning of this years twenty four hour comic challenge, not having gotten much sleep of late.

I ended up creating a comic made up of a number of seperate sequences, some more succesful than others. The first ten hours produced a four page story that I'm pretty happy with and intend to reconfigure into a minicomic.

The following eleven hours produced a string of ill conceived and rapidly scribbled strips that were rushed out to try and hit the 24 page target whilst acutely feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. During the last three hours I filled the remaining pages by asking most of the artists present for some sort of pearl of wisdom, daft or serious, which I placed in speech bubbles above a portrait I sketched of them as they worked.

Things I've decided having completed the challenge:

• Producing twenty four pages is not the most important part of the event, creating something you're happy with is more important.
• It's okay to bow out if you become too tired to create decent work. It's supposed to be fun, not torture.
• Junk food seems to be a neccesity if you are to survive the ordeal.

All that's left is for me to do is give a big thank you to Martin for putting on the Newcastle event, to Paul for sorting out this blog, and to all those who participated for making the event so enjoyable. Cheers guys!
- James Wilkinson

It's been emotional!

Well, I'm awake, six hours after the ending of our 24 hour comic experience. We had some successes, some failures of which a full report and pictures will certainly be forthcoming.

Unfortunately it wasn't possible for us to maintain the blog from on site due to lack of modern networking magic, but many photographs, video and audio were taken, so they'll be on here soon, including hopefully our early morning video exchange with the lovely 24 hour comics crowd of Amsterdam.

The official Newcastle 24 Hour Comic song 2010 is Rock Lobster, by the B52's.