And It's Not Even 24 Hour Comics Day....

I've been participating in 24 Hour Comics Day since it began in 2004. Last year was a busy year for me, so I missed doing one for 2007. I'm planning to self-publish a collection of these for San Diego Comic Con this year but I wanted to have a nice thick book with at least 100 pages, so my better half suggested, " Why don't you just do your 2007 24 Hour Comic this year?" So we set May 24 as the date to work on my fourth 24 Hour Comic. We got my brother, Anson in on the act as well and we worked on it at his place. You can see a few pages of his 24 Hour Comic here

Above is the third page. One of the first rules of doing a good 24 Hour Comic is to get proper rest before you start. In this case, I didn't. I didn't feel 100% and my concentration wasn't there. The first page I did ( page 2 ) was really a stuggle. I usually try to be very disciplined and give myself a self-imposed deadline of 45 minutes per page ( which means 15 minutes per panel for me ). I had spent so much time stuggling with that first page that I found myself behind schedule by the time I got to this page. The last panel here is a bit of a cop-out, but it bought me a little bit of time to catch up.

Another way to save time is the splash page! Whenever I get in trouble, I stick in a splash page when appropriate. Here we have the flying saucer blowing up our heroine's car. Good riddance I say! I was having a real problem drawing the car. If you can't draw it, blow it up I say! I find it very difficult to draw anything requiring perspective in photoshop. Kind of a hassle to draw a straight diagonal line, even with the Cintiq.( Anyone have any tips on an easy way to do perspective drawings in photoshop? ) All in all though, I'm pretty happy about the way this page turned out.

There's that lame 3rd panel again. Laziness prevails!

Thank God for explosions and smoke clouds! They're easy to draw and take up a lot of space! I thought it would be fun to do some shots from the flying saucer's point of view.

I actually like the mood of this page. Gives a good feeling of the terror of being chased by a UFO! The drawings I feel, were pretty successful as well. When you do a page you like, it kind of gives you a boost. I felt a little better going into the pages following this one and I think it showed.

Again, I encourage any cartoonist to give this exercise a try. I'll be doing another 24 Hour Comic on the official 24 Hour Comic Day on October 18, 2008. I always find I learn something when I do one of these, so give it a shot!