The clock starts now

I'm participating in Sequential Tart's 24-Hour Minicomics Challenge, starting ... now. 3 a.m. Central Time. Wish me luck and stay posted throughout the day for updates (assuming I don't immediately fall asleep because of getting only 3 hours of sleep).

God help me

My randomly generated story seeds are:

-A manly Chihuahua (huh...?)
-A Tibetan prayer wheel
-A strip club

... hm. This should be ... interesting.

First update

Status report: 6:31 a.m., cover is inked, 4 pages penciled. The whole thing is written ... I'm amazed that it actually turned into a coherent story and (I think) a pretty decent one. Now let's see if I can do the actual work by 3 a.m. tomorrow morning ...

Back to work

Took a 15-minute break and a brisk walk around the neighborhood. The 15-degree-with-cold-wind neighborhood. Brr. Felt good to get up and stretch, though.

8 pages penciled plus cover. These are very rough pencils ... most of the detail will be added at the inking stage (I hope).

Must re-fuel

Got hungry, stopped to make a sandwich. I have now penciled 13 pages ... since I'm cranking along on the penciling, I think I'll pencil all the way to the end and then do the inks on the whole thing.

It's snowing! Whee!

Time to ink!

20 pages penciled, with 8 1/2 hours gone. (The remaining 4 pages represent the covers and inside covers, and will be done on the computer. Cheating? Maybe.)

I'm starting to notice a distinct lack of picture quality and detail in the last few pages. Another reason to pencil everything first ... that way by the time I get to the finishwork on the last few pages, I won't just be drawing stick figures, and my characters will have all their limbs. ^_^

Now I'll stretch a little bit, and start inking.

Also, let's have a moment of silence for Google Image Search, without which this comic would not have been possible ... or at least would have looked even crappier than it already does, if that's possible. I wouldn't know a prayer wheel if I was clonked over the head with one.

Status Report

As we close on the halfway mark (3 p.m.) I have:

-all pages penciled
-cover and 6 pages inked; starting on the 7th
-all pages still need to be scanned and lettered

I know I can ink fast; this has to be the only thing that saves me. ^^ I've started jumping around -- inking the most pivotal pages first, because I suspect that as I get towards the end, I'll just be scribbling. At least this way the crappy pages will be scattered throughout the book rather than concentrated at the end.

Also, Livejournal is reaaaaaaallllllllyyyy sllloooowwwwwwww.

Back to inking!

The halfway mark!

12 hours down, 12 to go. Still having fun. My neck is starting to hurt, though. Maybe I should take a break and walk around again.

Just finished inking the 8th page ... I'm really having fun drawing this Chihuahua.

I'm getting tired of my mix tape. In honor of the fact that I like listening to music while I work and knew I was going to be working for a ridiculous amount of time today, I loaded up on 99-cent songs yesterday via Apple's iTunes -- mostly Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Roy Orbison, happy peppy stuff to keep me awake. By now, it is starting to wear kinda thin, but it was nice for a while to have something new.

Hm, had to edit the time-stamp. My dates are coming out wrong for some reason.

Productivity is dropping

At 16 hours, I'm having a hard time making myself sit for long periods of time and work on pages. I keep wanting to go off and get a snack, or check message boards ... or (ahem) type in livejournals.

13 pages inked, another half done.

I'm starting to see why it's so hard to do this in one consecutive stretch. I was much more productive in the first eight hours than (I suspect) in the final eight.

Wait, I did the math wrong

It's only been 15 hours, not 16.

On the one hand, this is good news; I can use that extra hour. On the other hand ... ANOTHER hour???

The first commandment of 24-hour comicking should be ...

... thou shalt not use any art technique involving cross-hatching.

*hand falls off*

Hm, my livejournal comments are growing more frequent and stream-of-consciousness. This cannot be a good thing.

Doing pretty good ...

I've inked and scanned all the pages. Now I need to do the lettering and the covers. Suddenly my deadline of 3 a.m. is looking attainable, although I'm fighting a major case of the sleepies. Need caffeine ...

18 1/2 hours! Yeah!