On Thursday (9 July), the first day of a six-day vacation from work, I woke up at 5:30am, had some breakfast, and by about ten after six I was on my way to writing this comic. I didn’t have a story planned, I just set pen to paper and started, and 21-ish hours later I had written a comic book. Here it is:

Download My 24-Hour Comic (12.5mb PDF)

The experience of this marathon comic project was everything I hoped it’d be. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, and I came out of it different. These graphic essays are more meditation than tight thesis, but whatever they are, and in spite of any flaws I’m intensely proud to have done them.

After I finished I hobbled to bed and stayed there until afternoon, then hopped in a car to drive to Berkeley for a wedding. I haven’t really drawn anything since this, which I think is in part to regain some equilibrium. But I’m feeling very enegized about doing more. Not just more comics, but more art in general.

But this is all the stuff I talk about in the comic itself. So give it a read- it’s a big pdf, so make sure you’ve got some time to let it load.

Tags: 24-hour comic, comics, creativity, download, graphic essay, pdf, process

I originally planned on starting my 24 hour comic tonight, but I’m going to sleep and start closer to dawn. I like the idea of seeing two sunrises during this process- something kind of symbolically appropriate for the project, since I’m doing this to initiate myself into a life of making art constantly.

Tags: 24-hour comic, comics, ink, journal comic, pen, pencils, timing

I really am getting in my own way of getting anything done. And the key do doing this comic stuff well is to do it a lot, so I have to commit to doing it all the time, and getting it out there, even when it’s not perfect. I didn’t do any touching-up on this to emphasize the point. No more using “it might suck” as an excuse not to do work!

Also, I’ve realized (and it seems pretty clear from this one) that making comics is a physical act, like running, that requires training and practice. I don’t have the stamina to finish a one-page comic without getting pretty sloppy towards the end! That’s going to make doing the 24-hour comic a ton of fun, I’m sure. But I need to do it- it’s time to stop putting it off!

I’m taking some time off starting Thursday, so sometime after Brad’s Wednesday radio show (I might take a power nap beforehand), I’ll be starting in on my 24-page comic, with no pre-planning, and I won’t stop until it’s finished or 24 hours have passed, whichever comes first. I’m really excited, and kind of nervous. I can’t wait to try.

Tags: 24-hour comic, art, being blocked, comics, drawing, journal comic

Drew this comic way too small, and that is partly why the drawings suck. Also because I’m out of practice and lazy. Will work on that in the future, but hooray! A journal comic!

Tags: comics, doodles, drawing, journal comic, owl, wasting art supplies

Okay, folks, consider this fair warning: If you enjoyed looking at SnoogleZoo as it is right now, that is to say walls of text, very small pictures and a really cumbersome system for delivering cute wallpapers, go soak it in because I’m going to take it all down and reboot the whole thing.

It’s not working the way it is. And I mean that in just about every sense. The gallery plugin I was using suddenly decided that it didn’t want to have anything uploaded anymore. I mean the link to the upload screen literally disappeared. In trying to fix it I almost killed the whole site, and had to revert to a couple of days-ago backup to bring it back up.

And in and amongst all this drama of trying to get it back up and struggling with the whole system I realised that organizing the site under a CMS was actually limiting what I could do creatively with SnoogleZoo in the first palce. For instance, I always had the intention to start a comic. And I was having trouble serving up the wallpapers satisfactorally, so I put story development on the back burner. Maybe the characters would just blog, or I’d do online storybooks?

So I was basically letting the Content Management System dictate the nature of the content, and that’s backwards! So I spent my friday night reading comics, drawing pictures and thinking about how to start the story. For now I’m going to leave SZ up the way it is while I work on getting the story and the first couple of comics together. Meanwhile I’ll be looking into a good way to manage a visually-based website with lots of extras (ComicPress is looking very promising!), and once that’s all ready to go I’ll do the official launch!

Honestly? I couldn’t be happier about the way this has worked out. I leared a lot playing with Mambo, even if I’m not ultimately going to use it, and now I have a laser-focus as to what I’m doing with SnoogleZoo. I’m so excited to finally get this party started the right way!

Tags: cms, comicpress, comics, snooglezoo, starting over, webcomics