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The art, craft, and life of writing.

24 Hour Comics Day, Redux

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24HCD at Sunnyvale No, I'm not doing 24 Hour Comics Day 2 weekends in a row ... but my buddy Nathan Vargas is. He's the other half of Blitz Comics and through an odd set of circumstances involving the Alternative Press Expo we ended up signing up for a 24 Hour Comics event at Mission Comics 1 week before today, the official 24 Hour Comic Day. (And I completed mine!) my 24 hour comic ... in my lap I owe too many people too many things (fixing my wife's computer, finishing edits of "Steampunk Fairy Chick", finishing a draft of STRANDED, doing an interview, scanning last week's comic, etc) to do 24HCD again, but after tonight's Doctor Who finale I did drop by around midnight tonight with donuts and good cheer. Krispy Kreme (and Pizza) We hung out, gave donuts to the security guards, and watched some Batman fan film. Then, while the toiling artists toiled, I spent some time cleaning up the images from last week's 24 Hour Comic Day (which I had scanned while watching Doctor Who). I just finished, it's only been two hours, but it already feels like another 24HCD! However, I'm happy with the results, and will do 24HCD again next year. I particularly like the dual page spread from Stranded, but I'll hold it back until I get the whole comic uploaded to Dresan.com and will instead tease you with the first page of the novella: The first page of the adapted STRANDED novella. Onward! Upward! Homeward, for me! And best of luck to the toiling comickers here in Sunnyvale! -the Centaur

A 24 Hour Comics Day Timeline

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24 Hour Comics Day can be quite the intimidating challenge, especially if you haven't done it before. Because Nathan Vargas and I had tried it before and failed, we started thinking hard about how to succeed - and I in particular started thinking about timing: how to break down your hours, how long you typically take breaks, and so on. To keep myself on track, I started writing down panel timings as I was working, an almost unconscious decision that soon turned into a policy. As a result, I produced a nearly complete timeline of events of a successful 24 Hour Comics Day. Everyone's method will be different, and this may not apply to you. But it shows at least ONE successful approach: preparing ahead, bringing good food, other refreshments and adequate supplies, getting planning done early, keeping each page tight, noticing that you're falling behind, finding faster ways to do things, taking breaks to stay energized - and never, never, never giving up.

BEFORE THE EVENT

T-Minus 1 year: Fail to finish 24HCD ... Again. Resolve to take more life drawing classes. As a result ... actually took more life drawing classes and practiced. T-Minus 4 months: Reminded by Nathan about 24HCD. Started to panic. Nathan mentioned he was thinking about how to succeed this time. I started thinking about that too. T-Minus 3 months: Drunk guy at a comics booth at the Sub Zero festival hears us talking about 24HCD. He suggests we should do a tutorial. We go to Slave Labor Graphics, find out they aren't set up to host a full 24 hour event. A tutorial or boot camp starts to sound like a better idea. T-Minus 2 months: We decide to do the boot camp. After a marathon brainstorming session where we came up with the name BLitz Comics, we start meeting every Wednesday, producing tutorial materials. T-Minus 1 week: We do a runthrough of the bootcamp. Around this time, we find out that 24HCD at the venue we've chosen is not October 1 but September 24 ... 1 day after our boot camp. Panic. T-Minus 18 hours: Last minute trips to University Art to buy notebooks, pens, pencils for the boot camp (which will also be used at 24HCD as well). T-Minus 15 hours: BLitz Comics hosts its first 24 Hour Comic Day "boot camp" at Kaleid Gallery. The camp includes a 45 minute tutorial (that ended up going on for an hour and a half) and included 2 1-hour drawing exercises. I learn precisely what I *can't* draw in just 1 hour. T-Minus 12 hours: Boot camp concludes. Hours of packing required. Get to bed at 3:30am, get up at 7. T-Minus 3 hours: Pick up Nathan. Trek to Mission Comics begins with a hearty breakfast at Stacks, a trip to Starbucks for coffee, and a trip to Safeway for bagels, cereal, tangerines and bananas. T-Minus 1 hour: Traffic jam. Panic should be in full swing now, but we just had coffee, a hearty breakfast, and have gone through boot camp. No worries. T-Minus 1 minute: Pull in front of Mission Comics; Nathan runs in with our art supplies and I leave to go find parking.

24 HOUR COMIC DAY BEGINS

11:00AM, September 24th: Driving around for parking. Find a great place. 11:15AM: Arrive at Mission Comics. Nathan has found primo spots halfway back the main table; we're sitting opposite each other but are in easy view of the window, door, bathroom and 10,000 comics. 11:21AM: PLANNING PHASE Start comic with a planning page. Consider two ideas; decide to go for broke and adapt my novella "Stranded" rather than wussing out with the stick-figure "Story of Blitz Comics" which I had already done a 1-pager on anyway. 11:30AM(ish): Skim novella I'm adapting, especially chapter headings. Decide on a rough breakdown; can probably draw half the novella. Pick a good stopping point. 11:38AM: Did the 24-page thumbnail sheet. Laugh at my foolish notion that I can draw half the novella. Some things that take a line in the novella need a full page; other things that take a full page don't even need to appear at all or need to be completely rewritten. Added talking animal to the plot as the only way to make the story work (it's OK, it's a robot). Break down the pages into approximately the first third. 12:13PM: Done planning. Total planning time: 52 minutes In my experience, it can take 2-4 hours to plan if you don't have a story in mind (the first two years I had vague stories in mind but no novella in hand to adapt). As it turns out, that extra 3 hours of planning would not have hurt me. 12:13PM: START PAGE ONE Did a space scene (not recommended from the boot camp!) as the first image. 12:30PM: Panel 1 Done. Blacks are surprisingly time consuming even with wide Sharpie. 12:45PM: Panel 2 Done. More blacks, more time; starting to get worried. 01:08PM: Panel 3 Done. Damn spacecraft again. Almost no blacks, but it took longer. 01:34PM: Panel 4 Done. Closeup of a character in a pose I'm bad at. Argh. Total page time: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Did some calculations; need to DOUBLE my page rate to succeed. 01:37PM: START PAGE TWO No black space vistas on this page at all. Maybe easier going? 01:43PM: Finished roughs for the page. 02:10PM: Panel 1 Done. Getting a grip on figures, sound effects, word balloons. 02:25PM: Panel 2 Done. Needed to know fuse ratings to fill in detail on the end of a fuse pulled by central character. Decided to use phone instead of computer to look it up - the answer was "in kA" and 207 is a good super-high number. This worked so well I resolved not to turn computer on until I was "way ahead". 02:39PM: Finished Panel 3. Liking this "draw people from the back half obscured" trick. Total page time: 1 hour, 2 min. Need to pick up pace by at least 20 minutes. 02:39PM: START PAGE THREE One huge panel, but 4 characters and some perspective. 02:48PM: ~10 minute break + boxing in outer panel border. 02:58PM: Central character outlined 03:02PM: Dialogue outlined, drawing characters around word bubbles. LOVE the technique! Had to spend more time looking up the appearance of a bird's eye for a drawing. In hindsight, I'm glad I did that rather than wing it, I had to draw that bird eye on a helm maybe a dozen times or more over the comic. 03:22PM: Page finished. Finally ahead (ish) but not really: hour 4.5 with only 3 pages Total page time: 43 minutes. Counting the 9 minute break. 03:22PM: START PAGE FOUR Back to a multi-panel page with black areas. 03:34PM: ~12 minute break. 03:39PM: Panels done. Realize my target time (45 minutes) is 4:07. Oh shit. 03:51PM: Roughs done for Panel 1, a closeup of a character's face. 03:58PM: Panel 1 done. Came out rather nice, perhaps the nicest face in the comic. 04:02PM: Panel 2 done. 04:11PM. Panel 3 blacks done. Great music from band "07" is playing over Mission Comic's sound system. 04:16PM: Page finished. Total page time: 54 minutes. Almost on schedule. 04:16PM: START PAGE FIVE More panels, 5 this time, but no black areas. 04:21PM: ~5 minute break. 04:24PM: Pencil panel borders done. 04:27PM: Ink panel borders done. 04:40PM: Panel 1 done. Realize my human profiles suck. So do my full figures. Ugh. 04:49PM: Panels 2-3 done. 04:55PM: Panels 4-5 done. Total page time: 39 minutes. Not sure how I pulled that off. 04:55PM: START PAGE SIX More space vistas! And crosshatching! 05:04PM: ~9 minute break. 05:05PM: Pencil borders done. 05:09PM: Ink panel borders done 05:11PM: Dialogue done - needed adaptation from novella. 05:16PM: Frame 1 roughs done 05:31PM: Frame 1 blacks done 05:38PM: Frame 2 done 05:45PM: Frame 3 done 05:53PM: Page finished. Total page time: 58 minutes. Black backgrounds will kill ya. 05:53PM: START PAGE SEVEN 05:55PM: ~2 minute break ... then pizza arrives! 06:38PM: ~43 minute dinner break. Yum! 06:39PM: Pencil border. 06:43PM: Ink panel borders. 06:48PM: Roughs. 07:10PM: Panel 1 "done". 07:19PM: Further polish (it's a large and important panel that introduces Serendipity, the protagonist). 07:29PM: Panel 2 done. 07:36PM: Panel 3 done. Total page time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. 07:36PM: START PAGE EIGHT 07:53PM: ~17 minute break (flagging a bit?) 07:54PM: Pencils. 08:00PM: Panels 08:08PM: Panel 1 rough / dialogue. Realize we're in hour 10 now. 08:24PM: Panel 2. 08:38PM: Page finished. Total page time: 1 hour, 2 minutes. 08:38PM: START PAGE NINE 08:54PM: ~16 minute break 09:06PM: ~12 minute break (someone came by to talk?) 09:08PM: Panels penciled. 09:13PM: Panels inked. 09:18PM: AAARGH! Blocked. PHUQ IT. 09:26PM: Panel 1. Some of the facial positions are hard. Screw it. 09:35PM: Panel 2. 09:44PM: Page finished. Total page time: 1 hour, 6 minutes. 09:44PM: START PAGE TEN 09:50PM: ~6 minute break 09:52PM: Penciled panels. 10:00PM: Inked panels. Realize it's hour 11 (actually 12, but never mind) and you should be working on page 12 or more. Cut it in half! 10:11PM: Panel 1 done. Damn black space around spaceships again. 10:28PM: Panel 2 outlines done. Was intimidated by this crowd scene, easier than I expected. 5 people and 4 ghostly background outlines - 9 people total! 10:34PM: Panel 2 done. 10:40PM: Page finished. Total page time: 56 minutes. 10:40PM: START PAGE ELEVEN 10:46PM: ~6 minute break 10:47PM: Pencil outlines. 10:49PM: Panels inked. 10:57PM: Dialogue for all panels inked. This really helped, but as I found out later, I was reading in columns but other people read left-to-right, so this was a flaw. Zoned out around here. 11:14PM: Panel 1 done. 11:28PM: Page finished. Total page time: 48 minutes. 11:28PM: START PAGE TWELVE - on a roll, no break. Thought it was hour 12, actually hour 13. 11:34PM: Panels and dialogue complete. Met Google guy, should contact later. Also found out about Mobcomics, a comic publishing platform. 11:38PM: Panel 1 done. 11:44PM: Panel 2 done. 11:51PM: Page done. Total page time: 23 minutes. That seems almost impossible! But it happened, in part because I was skipping pencils or just doing light pencils on certain characters. 11:52PM: START PAGE THIRTEEN 12:00AM: Break. Didn't even realize it was midnight and September 25 now. Did realize it was not hour 12 but hour 13 (not true, actually hour 14 had started). "On Schedule" ... NOT! :-) 12:07AM: Script complete. All those people who are complaining that by adapting a novella I'm "cheating because the script is worked out already" can go jump in a lake. It isn't that simple. That's why they call it ADAPTING, folks. 12:21AM: Page done. Total page time: 29 minutes. This page went fast because it was primarily diagrams and dialogue, no figures - this is the point where the crew of Independence realizes that they're screwed if they don't land. 12:22AM: START PAGE FOURTEEN 12:32AM: ~10 minute break. 12:45AM: Panel 2 done. 01:03AM: Page done. Total page time: 41 minutes. I don't know it yet, but I'm just about to get caught up with where I "should" be to finish on time. 01:03AM: START PAGE FIFTEEN 01:04AM: No significant break, really. 01:14AM: Panels done. 01:38AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. I don't know it yet, but I am now officially AHEAD. 01:38AM: START PAGE SIXTEEN 01:55AM: ~17 minute bathroom break 01:58AM: Panels done. I now realize my hour count was off and this is hour 15. 02:06AM: Panel 1 done. 02:15AM: Panel 2 done. I am digging that it's hour 16 and I'm progressing on page 16. 02:23AM: Page done. Total page time: 45 minutes. We may win this thing yet! 02:23AM: START PAGE SEVENTEEN 02:31AM: ~8 minute break 02:34AM: Panel borders 02:45AM: Panel 1 done ... digging that it's STILL hour 16 and I'm on page 17. 02:54AM: Panel 2 done. 02:58AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. I am now officially a page ahead. 02:58AM: START PAGES EIGHTEEN AND NINETEEN - DUAL PAGE SPREAD 02:59AM: On a roll, jazzed that I have finally gotten to a dual page spread, will LEAP ahead now. Sure, it's a gigantic outer space vista that requires some actual diagramming and thought, but its SO COOL that I'm going to go from just about ahead to way ahead in one swell foop! 03:07AM: Borders and sketch done. 03:16AM: Inks done. 03:39AM: Blacks done. 03:47AM: Page done. Total page time: 49 minutes. I am now TWO pages ahead. 03:47AM: START PAGE TWENTY 04:04AM: ~17 minute break. 04:21AM: Panel lines done. 04:28AM: Page done. First (and only time I had to use whiteout) because I was inking and not sketching. Total page time: 41 minutes. I am now THREE pages ahead. 04:28AM: START PAGE TWENTY-ONE 04:35AM: ~7 minute break 04:43AM: Script done. Repeat note to snarky guys who don't know what "adapting" means. 04:44AM: Boxes done. Wow, that was fast for that many panels. 04:51AM: Panel 1 done. 04:54AM: Panel 2 done. Largely skipping pencils now. 04:57AM: Inks on Panel 3 done. 05:04AM: Panel 3 blacks done. 05:09AM: Panel 4 inks done. 05:13AM: Panel 4 blacks done. 05:26AM: Panel 5 done. 05:31AM: Panel 6 done, page done AND IT'S STILL HOUR 18. Total page time: 1 hour, 3 minutes. 05:31AM: START PAGES TWENTY-TWO AND TWENTY-THREE 05:33AM: ~2 minute break. I am so glad I put in two dual page spreads. And this is my favorite page - a redo of the very first drawing I did of Serendipity two or three years ago, before I even knew her name: a young centauress with her barrel draped in tapestries, bouncing along a field of wheat towards a castle beneath a gas giant floating in the sky. Had to completely redo the drawing, but ultimately this was the point of the story. 05:38AM: Border done. 05:48AM: Sketch done. 06:06AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. Woo woo on dual page spreads! 06:06AM: START PAGE TWENTY-FOUR 06:13AM: ~7 minute break. The last page is a huge single panel "to be continued". Go for it! 06:41AM: DONE and DONE! Total page time: 35 minutes. DONE and DONE! Total comic time: 19:20 minutes!

AFTER THE EVENT

Not timing it. Chilling out. Futzed around for an hour or so, talked to people, texted my wife. Took a nap around 7:40 to 8ish, then read a comic I'd bought during one of my breaks. Chilled out a while, looked at other people's finished and unfinished comics, then when Nathan finished, bought one more book, thanked Leef of Mission Comics and went to get the car. We packed up, had a great breakfast at Mel's, and I dropped Nathan off at his apartment right at 11am - two 24 Hour Comic Day victors.
And that's it. I'm pleased to see that even with adapting the novella on my side, I still finished early enough to absorb the 3-4 hours I took getting the story straight on the previous two 24 Hour Comic Days, so I think the technique would work even if I didn't have a story to tell. Knowing how many stories I have buzzing around in my head, that's never likely to happen - but if you're a 24 Hour Comic purist, it's good to know that preparing ahead, carefully tracking your page timings and shooting for 45 minutes or less per page is a technique that can make you succeed. Best of luck on your own comics! -the Centaur (Anthony Francis) Crossposted at BLitz Comics.

BLitz Comics 24 Hour Comic Boot Camp @ Kaleid

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blitz comics boot camp september 23 2011 at kaleid gallery in san jose Nathan Vargas and myself are facilitating a 24 Hour Comic Boot Camp at Kaleid Gallery in downtown San Jose tomorrow, September 24 from 7pm to 11pm. For those that don't know, 24 Hour Comics Day is a challenge held each year to create a 24 page comic from scratch in 24 Hours. Nathan and I have tried this five times between the two of us, and we've been discussing techniques to succeed over the last year. Then a drunk guy manning a comics booth at the Sub Zero festival overheard us saying that and said we should put on a tutorial. And since we have a policy of always following the advice of random drunk guys when it sounds like they are serving as a hotline for God, we said OK! The Birth of Blitz Comics Our work has produced a pretty nice 24 Hour Comics Day Survival Kit which is now getting distributed to a lot of 24 Hour Comics venues. And it's free under a Creative Commons license! So you can download it and use it on your own. But we're going one step further and providing a "Boot Camp" where we'll help participants create a 2 page comic, involving discussions of comic theory and 2 hours of drawing exercises. So please show up and enjoy ... or at least check out Blitz Comics and our survival kit if you want to survive 24 Hour Comics Day. -the Centaur

Who Am I?

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me in front of the bell bridge books promotional material for BLOOD ROCK Who are you? Good question. I'm Anthony Francis, and I write stuff and make computers jump through hoops for a living. What have you done? I'm most notable for the EPIC award winning urban fantasy novel FROST MOON and its sequel, BLOOD ROCK, which are about magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost and are therefore hopefully both more interesting than my ~700 page PhD thesis on context-sensitive computer memory. Also on the computer side, I've done some exploration of robot emotions. What are you doing next? Forthcoming in the Dakota Frost series is the third book, LIQUID FIRE, and this November for National Novel Writing Month I plan to work on HEX CODE, the first in a spin-off series featuring Dakota's adopted daughter Cinnamon Frost. Are you working on anything other than Dakota Frost? I've also recently completed a rough draft of the first book in a new series, JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. A short story set in this universe, "Steampunk Fairy Chick", will be included in the forthcoming anthology UnCONventional. What are you working on currently? I'm also currently working on a fourth new series with the working title STRANDED, a young adult science fiction novel set a thousand years in the future, featuring a spoiled young centauress who must rescue a shipload of children who have crashlanded upon a world she wanted to claim as her own. This story's set in the "Library of Dresan" universe from which this blog takes its name and which was setting of my very first unpublished novel "homo centauris", which I am now happily milking for its 57 billion year backstory. Anything else? I have a flash fiction story called "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" to appear on the Smashed Cat Magazine. I've also published one short story, "Sibling Rivalry" in the Leading Edge Magazine. I have a webcomic, f@nu fiku, on hiatus. And I'm actively involved with helping people succeed at 24 Hour Comics through tutorials that I and my friend Nathan Vargas have put together at Blitz Comics. Is that enough questions for now? Yes, it is. Please enjoy. -the Centaur

Where is BLOOD ROCK?

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National Novel Writing Month Kickoff Card A fan wrote:
I would like to purchase Blood Rock, but I have not been able to find it anywhere.... Can you direct me to a site which has it for sale? If it is in fact for sale? I am a little curious since your site says it is in Beta release, but the site has not been updated in several months, so I am unsure as to the status of the book.
Well, sorry about that ... Blogger changed their terms of service and the Dakota Frost site is frozen until I can fix it. The answer? BLOOD ROCK is in editing right now - the publisher wanted some big cuts, but I'm in the last throes of National Novel Writing Month right now and had to put BLOOD ROCK down while working on my new series. I'm picking up BLOOD ROCK December 1st and hope to have it to the publisher before the first of the year, so if all goes well it will be out in March. I'm well into the sequel to the sequel, LIQUID FIRE, which I hope will be out the following October. -Anthony

Viiiiictory … A New Series

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Winner's Badge for Nanowrimo 2010Once again, I have completed National Novel Writing Month! This year’s entry is the first in the Jeremiah Willstone series, THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE:
On an alternate Earth, the feminist revolution started a century early, technological progress doubled ... and Mary Shelley's granddaughter Jeremiah Willstone is an adventurer defending the world in a flying airship! She's used to fighting off monsters with nothing more than goggles, an electric gun and the advice of a half-human computer, but what will she do when her own uncle changes the rules of the game ... with a Clockwork Time Machine?
I've posted a few snippets in this series ... let me see if I can find one which doesn't give any key plot elements away.
With Patrick’s blunderblast slung over her shoulder, Jeremiah whizzed through the streets on her autocycle, discharging its cylinder flat out, its teakettle scream and clanking frame adding another layer of mist and noise to the steam and bustle of Boston. Her legs were tensed, her knees bent against the pedals, half to jump the cycle over curbs, and half to keep the juddering vibration from the cobblestones of Beacon Hill from rattling her tailbone clean off. She squealed to a stop before the Moffat’s, pulled the cylinder and tossed it to a street urchin. “Top me off?” she asked, hopping off onto the sidewalk with a whirl and pulling her bag out of its basket in one smooth motion. “Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, taking the cycle. His eyes lighted on her vest, her denims—and on the big brass buttons on her lapels, a steering wheel, sword and airsail overlaid with a stylized V. “Are you an Expeditionary?” Jeremiah smiled. “Yes,” she said, ruffing his cap so that tufts of blond hair showed. “Maybe one day you’ll become one too. Polish the brasslite a bit and there’s a second shilling in it for you. Quick now; I won’t be long.” “Yes, ma’am,” he said, walking the cycle off. Jeremiah turned to the tottering three-story shop, glancing up at the enclosed balcony jutting out from the newer brick buildings around it. Beneath the balcony, carbide-etched into the thick window of carbonate glass, were the words: MOFFAT’S MECHANISMS & MYSTERIES Her mouth quirked; as usual, today she was in the market for a bit of both.
Unlike last year, I didn't have to write 38,000 words in only ten days. But I did do pretty well; I still have a few days of writing left and I'm going to try to push further on the story. [caption id="attachment_797" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Victory Point for Nanowrimo 2010"]Victory Point for Nanowrimo 2010[/caption] Prevail, Victoriana! -the Centaur

National Novel Writing Month Approaches Again

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Once again Nanowrimo approaches ... every November, a collection of insane people around the Earth get together to write 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days. I usually tweak the rules and write 50,000 MORE words on top of some seed of a few thousand words I've already started. This year, I'm doing Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine, what I hope is a twist on the steampunk mythos:
Xenotaur on Nanowrimo.org Synopsis: Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine On an alternate Earth, the feminist revolution started a century early, technological progress doubled ... and Mary Shelley's granddaughter Jeremiah Willstone is an adventurer defending the world in a flying airship! She's used to fighting off monsters with nothing more than goggles, an electric gun and the advice of a half-human computer, but what will she do when her own uncle changes the rules of the game ... with a Clockwork Time Machine? Excerpt: Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine Lightning gouged a chunk of the wainscoting an inch from Jeremiah Willstone’s head and she hurled herself back, bumping down the stairs on her tailcoat, firing both Kathodenstrahls again and again until the doorpanels were blasted into sparks and splinters. Her shoulders hit the landing hard enough to rattle her teeth, but Jeremiah didn’t lose her grip: she just kept both guns trained on the cracked door, watching foxfire shimmer off its hinges and knobs. The crackling green tracers crept around the frame, and with horror she realized the door was reinforced with iron bands. She’d intended to blast the thing apart and deny her enemy cover, but had just created more arrowholes for him-or-her to shoot from. As the foxfire dissipated, the crackling continued, and her eyes flicked aside to see sparks escaping the broken glass of her left Kathodenstrahl’s vacuum tubes. Its thermionics were shot, and she tossed it aside with a curse and checked the charge canister on her remaining gun. The little brass bead was hovering between three and four notches. Briefly she thought of swapping canisters, but a slight creak upstairs refocused her attention. No. You only need three shots. Keep them pinned, wait for reinforcements.
Like last year, I donated to help keep Nanowrimo running, and if it's helped you you should think about it as well. If that's not in your budget, try setting up or joining a local Nanowrimo group. I participate in the South Bay Nanowrimo group, and I'm trying to organize one at the Search Engine That Starts With A G if I can get enough people to participate. Happy writing! -the Centaur

A noble failure

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Well, it was a noble failure, but a failure it was. I had indeed not overcome my food poisoning, not that I threw up or anything but I indeed got gurgly. During Page 7, I started having sleep microbursts during my crosshatching. And finally, as I was recovering from gurgle and looking at Page 8, I realized it was even more complicated than the previous page, and flipping through the remainder realized I needed to finish each page in ten to twenty minutes ... and I was taking forty five minutes per page. There was no way to make it. So that was it. Took a brief nap, freshened up, and started packing it up. What a fantastic experience. I have a complete 24 page story roughed out, 7 inked pages, and a lot more learning under my belt. Two of the five people who were at our site look like they are going to finish. Oh well ... next year! Ad comika! -the Centaur

The Halfway Point

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What you see is Page 24 of my rough layouts - THE HALFWAY POINT: On time, on schedule. 24 roughed up pages complete. For those who don't know my process, the act of putting together a comic
  • begins with some scribbled sketches and notes
  • continues with 24 tiny scribbled panels all one page
  • continues with 24 super rough letter size (actually 9x12, what I had on me) pages
  • continues with 24 "detail roughs" on larger (10x14, what I had on me) pages
  • then I pull out the lightbox and the vellum and trace each page over and over itself until it looks good
Normally I'd scan those pages and screw around a lot with Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter and Xara, but screw that. This time I'm inking, lettering, drawing panel borders by hand. No time. No time. To help me along, these are the tools of the trade, my crutches, and my models ... that and Google Images. We're doing this at Noisebridge in San Francisco, a great shared hacker space I should blog. Later. It's their second, or third, birthday. Huge loud distracting party. I've met quite a few friends from The Search Engine That Starts With A G. I've explained 24 hour comics day like 24 times. More on that ... later. Here's another hardworking comicker: Here's Nathan Vargas, who shanghaied me into this: And here I am, from a few hours ago, looking a lot fresher than I do now. And this is me closing the laptop and getting back to work. Out of time to blog. Page 1 of the roughs becomes a real page now. See you in 12. -the Centaur