Alex Heberling

October 3rd was 24 Hour Comics Day 2009!  Instead of doing a true 24 Hour Comic this year, I instead did a 24-hour-binge of Garanos; I made it my goal to complete a 2-week buffer of 6 pages.

I’ve been in and out of town for what seems like the last month or more, and with all the commotion and activity, what buffer I was maintaining before got all eaten up, and I was killing myself meeting my deadlines in the last week.  Then I saw a tweet by Scott Kurtz which said he was doing three weeks of comics for PvP on 24HCD, which got me thinking of doing the same.  The idea hadn’t occurred to me before!

Despite how nice it is having new work after a 24 Hour Comic, doing a buffer for Garanos really was a very responsible, practical idea, and I’m glad I went this route instead of drawing something else all day, and then having to turn around Sunday night and do a page of Garanos for Monday’s update anyway.

I started my timer at noon on Saturday, by drawing all the pages of Garanos I’d need.  I managed to stream this live on my Livestream channel, which was pretty cool because then Fes of the Webcomic Beacon rebroadcasted my feed for a few minutes during the 24 hour broadcast that the Beacon was doing that day.  The Beacon’s broadcast was my background listening all day, as well, which was pretty cool.  Almost like having other people there to cheer you on as you worked. ^_^

At about 4 PM, I had all the pages drawn, and I switched over to Photoshop to do the coloring, but unfortunately, Photoshop and the Procaster (Livestream’s in-house streaming application) weren’t playing nicely, and both programs running at the same time were eating up too much processor power for me to get anything done, so after getting frustrated and impatient, I was forced to color the pages offline.

Later on, during a lull in programming, I called into the Webcomic Beacon and chatted with them for a little while, which was pretty cool.  I thoroughly intend to set up a chili swap at Penguicon, so let the record show that the agreement stands!  Sometime in the wee hours, Fes started feeling unwell, so the Beacon went off the air. :(  In lieu of this, I popped in The Office and continued on my way.

One of the many things I learned last year was that I’d need ergonomic support all over, so I tried to sit up straight  for a majority of the time, got up to stretch from time to time, and I bought a wrist brace for my right hand.  I’m SO GLAD I got the brace, because at the end of the 24 hours, my hand didn’t even hurt that much!  It was mostly just tired.  BIG difference from the end of my 24HCs last year.

When all was said and done, I finished 5 out of 6 pages.  If I hadn’t lost 2-3 hours due to the Procaster/Photoshop complications, I bet I could’ve finished all 6.  I’m really happy that I got so much done, and that I have a buffer done!

Perhaps this winter I’ll hole up some weekend to do a real 24 Hour Comic to make up for not doing one this year. ^_^