Part 3: Twenty-Four Hours

At the stroke of 7:00 AM, I was off to the races.

I immediately felt the pressure of the ticking clock. Before I began laying out the first page, I took five precious minutes to design my characters. Just a quick sketch of the girls I'd decided to call "Wendy" and "Mags". This was an absolute must. Body proportions, face, hair, clothing, accessories... everything about how my characters looked was decided with that drawing (see image at right).

I established my method right off the bat with the first page and never deviated:

The red pencil technique is something I'd learned from an old illustrator friend of mine from Columbus, Steve Harpster. It worked great for these purposes, because I didn't have to waste any time erasing. As you can see, my originals looked fairly messy, but all the reds and smudges were taken out in the scanning/print-prep process.

Right from the very first page, I was running behind. I'd hoped to average 45 minutes a page, to give me a little room for corrections and breaks, but that was obviously a pipe dream. Little did I realize that (with the exception of one page - 3), I'd remain behind throughout the entire day, right up to the final page.

Mid-way through page 2, I discovered that something wasn't working. From years of practice, I'm usually pretty keen in the speed department, but my inking was dragging. It didn't take long to deduce that the problem was the ink itself. I'd started off using 100% Speedball and the darn stuff was thickening up on me within the first hour. It hung onto the bristles in globs, making my life miserable. I decided to try the Higgins, which gave me the opposite problem - too watery and transparent, requiring several coats for a nice, black coverage.

Then I had a brainstorm: mix the inks. 50% Speedball and 50% Higgins. Shake it up, load the brush and... perfect. Thin enough to be workable, but thick enough to stay nice and black after one coat. I'm still proud of myself for that one.

There wasn't a stress-free moment, though. With each line I drew, I felt as if I were battling the clock. I simply couldn't get the lines down quick enough. I began to resent the fact that I had to waste precious seconds each minute dipping my brush in ink or whiting out screw-ups upon the completion of pages.

It wasn't long before the regrets started creeping in: why did I set this comic in the forest? Trees take too much time. Why couldn't I have made the characters boys with short hair? Or, better yet, bald? Why couldn't I have had the whole thing take place at the north pole in the daytime? Now that would've been easier to draw. As it was, each leaf, each strand of hair, each freckle was robbing me of precious minutes that I'd need desperately later on when my energy would be waning.

If I had to describe 24 Hour Comic Day in one word, I think I'd choose "frenzy."

After page six, it was time for a seven minute break for lunch. I gobbled like a demon, cursing myself for not eating faster.

Finally, on page 10, I purposed to start cutting some of my losses and made the entire page one big splash illustration. At the time, it felt like cheating, but I needed to do SOMEthing. (Later on, a few folks told me it was their favorite moment in the comic. Go figure.)

After spending over 90 minutes on page 12, I decided it was time to make some permanent changes in my approach. It occurred to me that there were three major issues slowing me down: number of panels per page, percent of ink coverage per page, and lettering.

So, starting with page 13, I made a commitment to myself: no more than four panels on any page unless it's absolutely crucial. Also, cut all dialogue except the can't-do-withouts. Minimize backgrounds. And finally, adjust the panel layouts to make more use of whitespace on the page, which meant less ink I'd have to lay down.

That seemed to do the trick. Slowly but surely, I began to make up the time I'd lost in the first half of the day. Four minutes here, five minutes there. I was beginning to regain my footing.

Then dinner. 13 minutes. Too much time, too much time.

But two other challenges began to rear their ugly heads: fatigue and pain.

With fatigue, there's almost nothing you can do. I began scarfing gumdrops like a fiend, which would give me momentary jolts of energy. As for pain, it was obvious that my hand hurt the worst when using the pen, which was upsetting. Nothing for it, though, but to move almost exclusively to brush, which would slow me down.

My mind began running the gamut: giddiness, depression, apathy, rage, optimism, self-loathing. After some pages, I was convinced it was the most beautiful comic ever written. With others, I promised myself I'd never show another living soul this embarrassing, ugly thing.

On page 19, I'd been at it for nearly 20 straight hours. My head was spinning. I became angry. I looked down to discover swearing in this comic I'd originally intended to be a cute story about children. I was losing it.

In the final few hours, the idea of each new page was agony. Even the brush was excruciating to use. I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and began drawing by holding my right arm up with my left hand, with the ice pack sitting on my forearm. It grew numb, but anything was better than the painful spasms. I started resting my head on the art table, inches from whatever I happened to be drawing at that moment.

Early on, I'd planned a glorious ending: the girls would arrive at a majestic waterfall, the final page being a wide shot of them jumping headlong into the mist, with tropical birds flapping and the sun peeking through a tangle of jungle vines and treetops, a misty mountain vista visible in the distance.

Ha.

It was just too damn much to draw, so I improvised. Instead of a jungle, a beach. Instead of a waterfall, an old wooden pier. At the time, if felt like a sacrifice, but now that I look at it objectively... I don't know. There's something kind of cool and romantic about the pier ending that I think I like better.

With roughly 20 minutes to spare, I found myself writing the words "Jeremy Bear, 2005".

But the job wasn't over. I used my remaining time to blow through every page in a flurry, whiting out the most glaring mistakes, blackening in others.

Finally, at 6:58 AM, I knew I'd done all I was going to do. I recorded my final audio entry, cleaned my brushes, and crawled into bed.

I'd made it.

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