Finished

Well, I finished. But I guess that may depend on your definition of finished.

Let me first apologize for the lack of webcam. I was really disappointed about that. It would have been fun to see me wigging out at 3am.

The wireless internet was working when I first got there. Well, mostly working. I was seeing low signal strength and my connection was dropped a couple of times. When more people showed up and started connecting, the connection dropped for good.

If you logged on to check me out and didn't find me, that's why. Sorry.

So... the effort was much more difficult than I anticipated. Between 1:00-5:00 AM I had a really tough time. I was feeling horribly tired and I was also feeling light headed and dizzy. I'm not sure why that was. I've pulled all-nighters for one reason or another plenty of times. I've never had a sick feeling like that before.

Ask Danny (who showed up at 4am to help keep my spirits up). At about 5:00 AM I almost vomited. I went outside and dry heaved. But I did feel a little better after that.

In addition to feeling horribly tired and nauseous, I was also feeling a lot of pain in my back and neck. My muscles were so stiff and sore.

It was really tough to keep going at midnight when I was so miserable and realizing that I was only half way finished. What kept me going was the thought of Jill and the kids, who were looking forward to a finished comic. Especially after their visit at 7pm when they read the first 8 pages.

The story was, of course, about Anna and Grant. After reading the first 8 pages, which ended with the appearance of the dragon, they were very excited to read the rest of the story. I told Anna she would have magic and Grant would be a knight.

So not to disappoint, I managed to struggle through one hour at a time.

I'll post the full comic when I get it back. Participants are required to turn their work in to be scanned and submitted. I'll get the original back after Brad scans it.

The story is basically about Anna and Grant getting lost in a maze that suddenly appears at the comic book store. The maze leads them to a village where they meet a man and woman who tell Anna that she must become the Magical Princess and Grant must become the Valiant Knight and together they must defeat the Evil Dragon.

Of course, they do. They then attempt to leave the maze and find their parents. But they discover that they are still in the maze. It's a perfect setup for issue #2. :)

My drawings are awful. I can't draw people. The comic is filled with ridiculous drawings of Anna, Grant, and other people who look like deformed aliens. Even my dragon looks ridiculous; it looks more like a cross between a seagull and a bat than a dragon.

While working on page 2 I had a mini nervous breakdown. My drawings were taking forever... and they were awful. I realized I was never going to finish. I started panicking; I was sweating, nervous, and cussing to myself.

By page 4, I accepted the fact that my drawings were going to suck and I decided that I wanted to end up with a full 24 page story, even if the drawings sucked.

I got into a mode where I was doing a page an hour. After 10 pages, my drawings were so lame that I was finishing a page in about 40 minutes and then resting before starting the next page. After about 18 pages I was two hours ahead of schedule and my drawings were even more lame.

I finished ahead of schedule at about 9am. Jill showed up with the kids shortly after I finished. We left at about 9:30.

Most people ink over their raw pencil drawings. I never got to inking. So the whole comic is raw pencil sketches only. I could have used my remaining 3 hours to start inking, but it would not have been enough time to ink all 24 pages. I decided I preferred no ink to partial ink. With no ink, it looks like I just went with that style. If I inked it partially, it would have looked like I didn't finish.

I did ink the lines around each frame, to give the comic a little organization. But I didn't ink any of my drawings.

I have a few more comments, but I'll make those in separate posts.