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For my final quarter at Ohio State, I'm taking on the 24 Hour Comic challenge. The 24HC was invented by Scott McCloud, and has been undertaken by over 1000 comic artists since its inception.
I decided to take on this challenge because I've never really pushed myself to meet a deadline as demanding as this. With my webcomics, I've always been good at updating on the schedules I set for myself, but since my preferred coloring style is so time consuming, the concept of completing more than one page a day is rather daunting to me. By taking on the 24HC, I have to finish an entire stand-alone story in the span of a single day. This is my mission, and I choose to accept it!
Learn from those who have done before, my elders have always said. I don't think anyone else has documented their 24 Hour Comics to the extent that I have, much less written a guide like this, so I want to share my knowledge and experiences in the process of doing these comics. This is not only a creative challenge, but a mental and physical one as well.
Set your date and time. I recommend a Saturday, from midnight to midnight, but any stretch of two days that you have off will do. Midnight to midnight is especially helpful because you have nonstop daylight for a good chunk of time in the middle of the 24 hours, and it will help you trick your internal clock into forgetting that you've been awake for so long. Having the following Sunday off is also very beneficial, since you'll have as long as you like to sleep off the all-nighter and relax before you go back to school or work on Monday.
Eliminate things that will distract you. I, personally, can get easily distracted by menial housekeeping when I have something to do with a looming deadline. I can't number the times that I've had to finish a paper for school, and suddenly had all sorts of initiative to vacuum my carpet and clean my bathroom instead. The week before I did my first attempt, I cleaned my entire apartment from top to bottom to eliminate any possible distractions that could take my focus away from the comic. If you know you have habits like this when you're working on a deadline, make sure you remove them before you begin your comic.
Sleep sleep sleep. Rest is important, especially since you'll be awake for such a long stretch, so if at all possible, make sure you get at least 8 hours of sleep for several nights before your attempt. If you choose to go the midnight-to-midnight route, you may not get the full 8 hours of sleep beforehand, but in this case, even a long nap is better than no sleep at all.
Gather your ammunition. Get your materials together. That means anything you could possibly need during the course of your comic. Reference materials, paper, media; hell, even a list of bookmarks in their own special folder in your browser. If there's something you will need, make sure it's easily accessible.
Rations. Make sure your fridge is well-stocked with healthy food and snacks and your energy drink of choice. That carb or caffeine boost will come in very handy in the later hours when you're really dragging.
Don't plan the story before the 24 hours begin. Not only is this against the rules, but it's also more fun if you improvise when the challenge starts, not to mention it's Scott's recommended route. I've had tons of ideas for what to do for 24 hour comics, but since you can't write anything down beforehand, I've always forgotten them when the time came. So just make it up! There are tons of idea generators out there, so make use of them if you get stuck.
Stay hydrated and fed. It's important to keep yourself fueled during this challenge. If you let yourself get thirsty, you're already dehydrated, so keep a full glass of water or a water bottle with you at all times to sip on. Make sure you don't forget to eat at regular intervals, as well! Since you're not operating on an everyday schedule, you need to make sure you give yourself regular mealtimes every 5 or so hours, depending on how often you eat on a normal day.
Pace yourself and budget your time. It's one hour per page, and if you're planning on sleeping, then make sure you plan accordingly. If you're doing any post production like Photoshop editing or publishing on the web, make sure you budget time for that at the tail-end of the 24 hours.
Get a wingman. Having a wingman during your attempt is to your advantage. They can be someone who is doing their own 24 hour comic along with you, or can be a friend or partner offering moral support. They don't necessarily have to be artistically inclined, either. My boyfriend, Chris, stayed up with me every time I did a comic, doing things like cooking, waking me up after naps, and letting me bounce ideas off him whenever I got into a rut. Even having someone standing by on IM to talk to can be good, as long as you don't let yourself get distracted by them too much.
Polyphasic sleep. Take short breaks throughout the 24 hours. I take a 30 minute nap every three hours, to rest my brain and my body. Resting your body is very important as the hours go by; every time I laid down for a nap, I noticed my back muscles had always tensed up quite a bit, and letting that tension deflate for a little while helped me keep my stamina as the hours went by. My hands also got quite sore from the drawing and writing, and it was always a relief when I could put down the pencil for half an hour. Sometimes my naps would turn into 35-45 minute naps, depending on how groggy I was after 30 minutes, so go with the flow, and stay in bed for those few extra minutes if you think you need to.
Fool your internal clock. Like with any all-nighter, do everything you can to trick your internal clock. When you first wake up, eat breakfast food, no matter the time of day. If it's nighttime, turn on all your lights and close the curtains or blinds so you can't see what time of day it is outside. Keep the curtains open during bright daylight, since natural light is awesome and will save electricity, but once it starts getting even slightly dark, lock it all down and use artificial light. If you're doing your comic in your home, take a shower around halfway through, or sometime when you're starting to drag, and go through your usual morning routine to refresh your mind.
Document your progress. Since my 24 hour comics were part of an independent study for OSU, I documented the hell out of my attempts with video, blogging, and Twitter. You don't have to do all this, but documentation is good to have when it's all said and done! At the very least, make a blog entry the day before as you prepare, at the halfway point to talk about what you're doing, and the day after, when you've gotten some sleep. It'll be easier to document your experience during the attempt than to try to remember all the details in the days after it.
If you're not finished with all 24 pages... then you have two options. You can either end it wherever you stopped (the Gaiman variation) or you can continue to work on it until it's done (the Eastman variation). Scott considers these the "noble failure" variants, and still true 24-hour comics in spirit.
If you do have 24 pages... then congratulations! You've successfully completed the 24 Hour Comic challenge! Keep in mind that with webcomics, the comic must also be online in some fashion within the 24 hours.
Now go sleep! When you wake up, you can brag to all your friends about how you made an awesome comic in a single day.
The story was made up as I went along, which is why the beginning of the comic has a much different feel from the end. The concept of the Marked people, a caste of people who have this certain biotech-based protein present in their bodies, is something I may expand upon for another comic idea in the future. I'd liken the Marked people to something like the slave caste, or the In-Valids in Gattaca.
Drawing for a straight 24 hours gave me some pretty extreme pain in my right hand, so I'll be investing in a hand brace before my next attempt. Both hands and wrists were later very irritated, and caused me to have to wrap them up in bandages while I slept off the all-nighter, so as not to bend them for any long period of time. My neck and lower back also got very sore from being hunched over the table, so I'll try to do more drawing upright in the future, leaning back in my armchair with a clipboard, instead of bent over like I was.
Summer’s Year adds to the concept that The Shepherd is the actual mythology of a fictional world. When I thought about it, I imagined that the mother and little girl (who are in the frame story of the original) live in a subarctic environment that has very long winters and short summers. The Shepherd explains, in that world’s mythology, that the winters are long because of the Shepherd’s love for the Winter goddess, and Summer’s Year answers the counterpart question of why the summers are pleasant, but short. The Summer goddess is childlike and exuberant, and therefore runs out of energy quickly and cannot make the summer last very long.
I did Summer’s Year all in colored pencil, which took me back to the days when I used to color almost exclusively with colored pencils and markers, before I got into computer coloring. I inked the comic a lot more than I thought I would, considering how much pain I was in after Pariah, possibly due to the fact that graphite and yellow colored pencil does not mix very nicely.
I took a nap on Friday evening to prepare for the marathon. Around 4 to 6 AM, I was starting to regret that I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, since I was dragging quite a bit at that point, but once the sun came up I started feeling pretty normal. Now that’s it over, I’m definitely glad I chose to do it midnight-to-midnight, since having the daylight for a good part of the marathon helped me deceive my internal clock.
There were several points where I was scared I wouldn’t make it in time, but I actually managed to finish the comic completely and got it online at 11 PM, a whole hour early. I did all the dialogue and word bubbles in Photoshop this time around, which definitely helped speed up the process. (And saved my hands from some wear and tear. I’m quite heavyhanded when I write.)
I had a webcam for video documentation this time around, which gave a very different feel to the videos I did, especially since most of them were posted directly to YouTube. I really enjoyed having the ability to post the videos almost immediately as they happened.
I drew every comic strip in Sharpie, without any pencil sketches or planning, other than what I pictured in my head right before drawing. I enjoy drawing with Sharpie, and it's the sort of thing I do all the time at anime conventions; someone gives me a dollar, and I draw them in Sharpie on an index card. It generally gets me a ton of money, and takes me roughly 30 seconds per person. This comic got done in a similarly quick fashion, and so I then decided to color the comics in Photoshop. I really like the look of the marker drawings with computer coloring, so I think if I ever decide to do a fun side comic, I'll probably use this style.
I had my setup on a granite platform on the second floor of Haskett, complete with my computer and a cot to sleep on. For the first 12 hours or so, I was sitting directly on the granite slab, sometimes on a blanket, which believe it or not is not particularly comfortable. The whole experience left my legs and back extremely sore.
I had a few false starts with this comic, initially intending to do an artist statement in comic form, summarizing my college experience. After a couple pages of that, I got bored with it, so a few hours later I started a really stupid comic about unicorns being turned into jerky. Which I recognized was a completely terrible idea.
Chris suggested I write these false starts into the overall comic, and do something more meta, so I ended up basically documenting the things that happened during my performance piece, such as an encounter I had with the vending machine on the first floor in the wee hours. This was a much more successful approach, since after three 24 Hour Comics, I'm pretty dry on ideas for short form story comics.
So it's basically the documentation of my performance in comic form, with some small embellishments. This will probably be my last 24 Hour Comic until 24HC Day next year, so I have some time to generate more ideas.
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