Alex Heberling

I’m 14 hours into my third 24 Hour Comic. This attempt is going very differently in a lot of ways from the first two… Firstly, I now have a webcam, and thus I’m recording more little things that get posted to YouTube immediately, and don’t have to worry so much about capturing DV video from now on. I’ve recorded several clips of myself drawing and coloring a comic, both on YouTube and my Google Video account. (Anything too long for YouTube goes on Google.)

The real story is that yesterday, I stayed late at work without realizing that Classroom Services closes at 5 on Fridays, so it was 5:05 when I was leaving the library and realized I had no camera for today.

Well, I thought to mysef, It’s payday and I’d been planning on getting a webcam eventually…  So I made a trip out to Microcenter and found the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000.  It was on sale for $74.99, instead of $99.99, so I took the chance, and it’s turned out to be a pretty decent webcam.  It’s quite easy to use, and can post videos directly to YouTube.

Anyways.  I tried sleeping before I started at midnight, but as my luck would have it, didn’t get sleepy until the last 90-ish minutes of my nap.  So I’ve been dragging a bit, especially up until the sun came up.  I’m feeling fine now since my internal clock has been successfully tricked into thinking it should be awake.

I decided to do the webcomic variation of the 24HC, which is only given a quick mention on Scott McCloud’s website, but the goal is 100 panels in 24 hours, instead of 24 pages, since most webcomics don’t follow the traditional full-page format.  Because of this, I’m going with more of a premise than an actual plot, and coming up with random “life lessons” to make into comic strips, like so:

My drawing materials for this comic are Sharpie markers.  And that’s it.  I have mad skillz with my Sharpies, so I’m just drawing these directly in marker without much planning other than the picture in my head.  I love this method of drawing because it’s fast and intensely permanent.  Whatever marks I make, I have to work with.  Luckily I haven’t made any major mistakes.

I’m also coloring this comic in Photoshop, since it really doesn’t take long with my new technique.  This is also an oppurtunity to practice the new style on a comic that isn’t as involved as Garanos, so hopefully when this is all done, I’ll be quite proficient.

At some point, I decided to amend my goal to 24 pages, and then work up to 100 panels once I hit the page count.  Since I’m so sleep-deprived, I want to have a reachable goal before I go for the proverbial gold. Back to work! Enjoy a video: