Alex Heberling

October 18th was 2008’s official 24 Hour Comics Day, and I was among the innumerable participants. I did it from midnight to midnight, so that my comic would be completely done within a single calendar day.

I ended up doing a sequel to The Shepherd!  I’d never really intended to do one, since The Shepherd is a pretty standalone story, but since the goddess of Summer was the only goddess I didn’t portray in the original, I thought it would be fun to make a story just about her.

Summer’s Year adds to the concept that The Shepherd is the actual mythology of a fictional world.  When I thought about it, I imagined that the mother and little girl (who are in the frame story of the original) live in a subarctic environment that has very long winters and short summers.  The Shepherd explains, in that world’s mythology, that the winters are long because of the Shepherd’s love for the Winter goddess, and Summer’s Year answers the counterpart question of why the summers are pleasant, but short.  The Summer goddess is childlike and exuberant, and therefore runs out of energy quickly and cannot make the summer last very long.

I did Summer’s Year all in colored pencil, which took me back to the days when I used to color almost exclusively with colored pencils and markers, before I got into computer coloring.  I inked the comic a lot more than I thought I would, considering how much pain I was in after Pariah, possibly due to the fact that graphite and yellow colored pencil does not mix very nicely.

I took a nap on Friday evening to prepare for the marathon.  Around 4 to 6 AM, I was starting to regret that I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, since I was dragging quite a bit at that point, but once the sun came up I started feeling pretty normal.  Now that’s it over, I’m definitely glad I chose to do it midnight-to-midnight, since having the daylight for a good part of the marathon helped me deceive my internal clock.

There were several points where I was scared I wouldn’t make it in time, but I actually managed to finish the comic completely and got it online at 11 PM, a whole hour early.  I did all the dialogue and word bubbles in Photoshop this time around, which definitely helped speed up the process.  (And saved my hands from some wear and tear.  I’m quite heavyhanded when I write.)  Unfortunately, I need to fiddle with my scanner’s settings because the first scans I got (the ones online now) are not very good quality.  It’s picking up oranges and reds very badly.  So keep that in mind when reading; the originals look MUCH better.

Summer’s Year

My 24HC Day comic is done!  I’ll do a proper post about it after I’ve had sleep.

The scans I got of the pages are really terrible, and I’ll be messing with my scanner to get nicer versions in the future.

I can hear my brain shutting down!  It sounds like VEEEERRRrrroooooooooo….

It’s a bit after noon, which is the halfway point for my 24 Hour Comic Day.  I just finished my 12th page!  So I’m plugging along just about on schedule.  I keep thinking I’m behind and need to pick up the pace, but then I remind myself that that includes my breaks, which have totaled about 2.5 hours thus far, so I’m not really behind schedule.

In fact, I feel fine right now.  Around daybreak I was really dragging, but then I took a nap while Chris made me curry.  The curry seemed to wake me up pretty well, and at the moment I feel like it’s a normal day.

Chris’ mom came by a little while ago with an electric pencil sharpener, which will ease up the process immensely.  I had an electric sharpener, but had to dismantle it in the name of art two years ago, and since I haven’t colored with colored pencil in at least as long, I never bothered to replace it.  Up until then, I’d been sharpening with a little hand sharpener that came with some pencil set.

That’s right, I’m going old skool with colored pencil.  I’m actually doing a sequel to The Shepherd, as I mentioned on Twitter in the wee hours of the morning.  It’s about the Summer goddess, since she’s the only one I didn’t portray in the original.  It’s very whimsical and fun so far.

I’m inking a lot more than I thought I would.  The first few pages of this comic are very pencily and colored pencily, but as I went on, I found that I didn’t hate the inking so much if I was just erasing the pencil directly underneath it.  Go figure.  The look of this comic reminds me of the colored pencil and marker art I did all the time around 2001, before I got into computer coloring.

Back to work.

Yet another 24HC blog post.  By the time December rolls around, I’ll be sick of them, I bet.

Tomorrow, October 18th, is 24 Hour Comics Day.  I’ll be attempting another go at it, but this plan is to do it all within the 18th– that is, midnight to midnight.  I’ll be sleeping the evening away to prepare for another marathon.  Hopefully the physical strain wont be as bad this time, since I’ll be making a conscious effort to prevent repetitive motion injuries.  My hand wraps will be close by regardless.

I originally wanted to do this attempt with a group, and I had several friends and acquaintances interested in gathering somewhere, but when it came down to it, I was afraid that the effort needed to organize a hosting party would result in me being unable to actually make a comic.  After going through one attempt on my own, and realizing the work involved in just doing a comic, it didn’t seem feasible to get it all together, especially since I ran out of time to do so rather quickly, due to the nonstop busyness that invaded my life starting September 24th.

On a related note, I’ve been so damned busy with school that the thought of trying to maintain even Garanos right now seems really crazy to me.  I’m really glad I decided to put it on hold.  I’m thinking that when I do continue with Gara next month, I will announce an irregular update schedule until school is over.

I plan on doing the video documentation a bit different this time around, as well.  I felt like I was saying “Okay..” and “So…” way too much even when I was just filming, so I’ll try to be a little more eloquent and ditch the filler words.  And at the suggestion of my peers, who critiqued Pariah last week, I’ll try to get more footage of myself actually drawing somewhere in there.  I did get footage like that last time, but in the interest of getting the video done ASAP, and YouTube’s dumb 10-minute rule, I didn’t include them.

When it comes to inking, all I have to say is that I hate drawing things twice.  It was even worse with Pariah because I disliked how much of the character of the original sketches got lost when it was inked; this is a complaint I’ve had about inking for years.  I think I’m going to go with a something a little less polished, something in pencil and colored pencil, perhaps.

And I’d like to potentially do a comedy this time.  I’ve been doing serious comics for… how long now?  Over two years.  I do believe something jigworthy and fun is in order.  I need more of that in my life.

Teenage Superhero Full Map

Teenage Superhero is my most recent website artwork.  It’s a single-page website invoking the capabilities of Infinite Canvas, and tells the short story of a very self-centered, presumably female, teenage superhero.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Infinite Canvas is a webcomics concept.  Unlike the constraints of print dimensions, comics on the web (or in this case, a website) can extend infinitely in any direction.  This concept was introduced by Scott McCloud in Reinventing Comics.

I’ve been using Twitter since the beginning of September, and the inspiration for this project came from wondering what the Twitter feed of a superhero or other fictional character would be like.  I’m a big fan of the stream-of-consciousness capabilities Twitter has, so I wanted to arrange each thought into a large map that wanders around the canvas like the mind wanders from thought to thought.

To look at this site, the browser window is used as a viewfinder to observe a small part of the map at a time.  There are handy arrows that point you in the direction you need to scroll next.  (I reccommend using the mouse scroll button to scroll up and down, and using the mouse pointer to scroll from left to right, OR press down on the mouse scroll button to get the icon with four directional arrows, and just drag the mouse around as you read.)

Excel Map

To build this website, I first made the images that represent the character’s individual thoughts.  When I had quite a few of them, I then made a map in pencil on graph paper, and marked the in-between blocks with the squares I knew would be images of arrows.  I converted this to a digital version using Microsoft Excel, then used that as a visual guide to setting up the actual HTML code.  The map is structured using a table.

Like, OMG!  It’s Teenage Superhero!

My video log from last weekend.

I put together the seperate website for my 24 Hour Comics, and made Pariah much prettier!

I’ve completely overhauled my portfolio website!  I’ve updated many sections with new art, and added some sections I didn’t even have before, including the commercial design work I’ve done for various clients in the past, notes and personal commentary on my student projects, and the illustration section, which will one day be full of stuff.

Go go go!

My first 24 Hour Comic, Pariah, was finished this morning with 15 minutes to spare.

I’ve got many many ideas on how to make my next attempt more successful.  Mainly, my right hand and my back and neck got very VERY sore from being slumped over the tabletop, so I’ll probably get a hand brace before the 18th.  Chris was very very helpful and supportive, and stayed up with me through the entire 24 hours making me food and helping me wake up from the naps I took throughout the day.  The naps at regular intervals, in retrospect, were extremely helpful, and I’m glad I thought to do so.  I took a 30 minute nap every three hours or so, though one nap turned into an hour, and another into 45 minutes, but they did help me get refreshed, and gave my hands and back some much-needed rest.

I literally made up the story as I drew it, which I think you can tell if you pay close attention to the unfolding of the plot.  The beginning has a much different feel than the ending.  Scott McCloud recommends improvising for the 24HC, but I think this particular story would’ve benefited from a little more planning before I put pencil to paper.  Specifically, there were several points near the end of the 24 pages that would’ve been good places to end, but since I needed more pages… I just had to figure out ways to add to it.  It was painfully frustrating around 4 AM this morning when I was up to 22 pages and had no idea how to expand the ending to fill two additional pages.

The concept of the Marked is something I may build upon for another comic idea I’ve had in the back of my mind.

I logged my progress with a video camera throughout the endeavor, so next week at school I’ll be capturing the video and putting together a short little movie about this project!  I got some nice shots of my actual drawing work, too, so it wont just be me talking into the camera about how tired I was.

I slept most of the day away, but I’m definitely still feeling some fatigue.  I probably wont have any trouble getting to sleep tonight.

I’ve finished the basic inking for all 24 pages.  Third stage is adding all the heavy blacks and line weights.  I’m still making good time…  Very tired, but also very happy.