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

Hourly Comics Day

One more thing...

I decided to print up some copies of my 24 hour comic under the title 'Things'. They are now on sale at Travelling Man, Newcastle should anyone want one. It contains a tale of paranoia, some decidedly odd gag strips, and a steam of philosophical musings.

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