Inky Fingers

So, over the last weekend I drew a lot. I participated in 24-hour comic day, then went home, took a nap, and continued to draw until bedtime on Sunday.

I don't HAVE my comic - I left it at Rain City Comics, because they'll scan it and send it in - but they promised to send me a copy. I'll put it on my site so long as everyone remembers it was a 24-hour comic. That is to say, NOT A MASTERPIECE. It's called 'Parking on Mars', and was 'inspired' by the random name generator they have on the 24-hour comic site. It's about a woman's effort to find parking and escape from criminals with a fondness for hostages. It would be rated "Teen" if you had a comic shop stupid enough to rate and host it.

So, I started by writing a few words about each page, to make sure I had exactly 24 pages. Then I drew pages that were halfway between storyboards and pencilwork. Then I went and inked them all. I'm so spoiled - I don't like paper inking any more. It's crude and difficult. And it's impossible to fill in black areas with the pens I had, so there's this incredibly nasty HATCHING that I used to make areas 'black'. :P

Now, my 'mistake', if it can be said to be one under the constraints, is that I did not STORYBOARD or SCRIPT. I jumped straight into the mess. While I knew roughly how much content each page could hold, I dramatically underestimated the number of beats my blurbs contained. This meant that the story progressed like an 8-year-old with ADD. And I couldn't FIX it, because I had a 24-page limit and a strict time limit.

I think I'll whip up more 24-page comics, under a slightly more leisurely time frame, to solidify pacing in my mind.

As to the actual event, it was nice and cozy. Rain City Comics is a tiny little comic shop, and there was a card table CRAMMED into the only space they could fit it. Me and one other comic artist sat at the table and chugged away. He brought a lot of neat pens, like a silver pen which actually wrote over black opaquely. And a host of expensive markers for making three-quarters of his page black.

He prefers 'cartoony cartoons' - the simpler, the better. There's something to be said for that, to be sure. Due to time constraints, my comic was also pretty simple... but nothing like the starkness of his. I didn't get to see his comic finished - I finished four hours early and went home.

Anyhow, the POINT is the Rain City Comics had a HALF OFF day. The whole time we were there, 9AM-9AM, EVERYTHING in the store (except new issues) was HALF OFF.

Got me some comics...