DOING THE WORK
by Harris O'Malley

"Masochism 101" OR "How to Break Your Wrist in 24 Hours or Less…"
April 24 – 25, 2004

Last year, Scott McCloud issued a challenge: draw a full 24 page comic. In 24 hours. That’s a full comic. Inked. Lettered. The works.

This year, at the urging of the owner of my local comic store and my friends in the Austin Sketch Group, I decided to participate. Because I am just that dumb, and really, I like working under pressure, I really do.

The day was intended to be a fun challenge and to expand the medium beyond its traditional boundaries, but for me, it would be something of a significant undertaking. For starters, I’m a slow artist, at best. Under the best of circumstances, I can draw a full page (inked, lettered and camera-ready) at an average of four to five hours per page. This is seems fairly quick, but my speed is really the result of my tools. I work with an 8” x 12” live area on a computer, so I can skip the penciling and scanning stages. I start in Painter and finish in Photoshop and move on to the next page. Doing a comic “analogue” was going to be a switch and drawing a full page per hour (ideally) would be a serious challenge to my ability.

Also, as odd as it sounds, I can’t really draw in public. Call it stage-fright, which is kind of amusing; since anyone who knows me in person will tell you that I never actually have problems when I’m called on to do something in front of an audience. Whatever the name for it, I just don’t seem to be able to draw in a group. I get overly self-conscious about how I’m doing, I end up losing whatever thread I had been working on and ultimately, I draw like shit. This is one reason why I very rarely show my sketchbooks to anyone.

With that in mind, I decided to keep track of the day’s progress, just for those of you who wonder what goes on in a person’s brain when they’ve decided to take something like this on. For humor value, I’ve also decided to annotate this in parts with what I’ve learned in the aftermath.

Also, please note that I am leaving all grammatical mistakes and errors as they occur…

Hour 1 - 7 AM to 8 AM : The day's just started and I'm loaded for bear. More reference books and supplies than I should need. Famous last words, I'm sure. The room's kind of quiet as everybody is getting started while I'm pecking away at the keyboard. I've decided to adapt my story from climbing Tah Prohm... Now if I can just figure out a way to stretch that to 24 pages...

Time for LOTS of splash pages, I think..

It would also help if I had the vaguest idea of what the printable area for manga paper was...

(Future Harris: Lesson learned here: cheat. Pre-lined, 9”x12” paper, an 8”x12” live area, same as at home.)

Hour 2 - 8 AM to 9 AM: First page was done in a half hour. Of course, it was basically a trace from a photocopy and it's amazing how quick you can produce a page when you're not worried about things like quality or texture or line-volume or...

Anyway. On to the next page where I make my second editorial decision: head-shots. Lots and LOTS of head shots.

(Future Harris: Because God knows thatwould be different for me…)

I've also decided to go super-cartoon-y a la Tom Beland or Brian Micheal Bendis' self-caricatures.

Hour 3 - 9 AM to 10 AM : Wow, I'm only on my second page and I already hate everything I have done and will do in the immediate future. Yay. This does not bode well for the rest of the day.

Still on my second page. Got to speed up. Stream line even more. Also: NEED TO SUCK LESS!

Hour 4 - 10 AM to 11 AM: OK, so it's going to be a 23 page comic in 24 hours... I'm already two hours behind, and one of the two was just too crap to continue with, even for a 24-hour comic. I really need to let go of my standards, but it's kinda tough when I've got insanely talented people cranking out GOLD around me.

(Future Harris: It also doesn’t help when it turns out that one of my table-mates has been doing 24-hour comics for several years now and another is just really, really fast…)

I'm also realizing that once again, plotting as I go doesn't really make for good comics...

Hour 5- 11 AM to 12 PM:

Finally finished the second page. Getting ready to start the third even though I have no idea what the heck I'm going to do to pad things out. I've already decided that I'm not lettering anything until I get home and can scan everything. My handwriting sucks under the best of circumstances, and this doesn’t seem to be making things better.

I also hadn't anticipated just how much my wrist was going to kill me as the day went along.

(Future Harris: This will, in fact, become a recurring theme through the day.)

Hour 6 - 12 PM to 1 PM: A quarter of the way through and I'm three pages in. I think I've found my rhythm, though. Like I said, lots of headshots, minimal backgrounds and a cartoony style. I wish I could letter decently. I also wish I had half the talent of the folks around me. One guy, affectionately nicknamed Goatboy, is already 10 pages into his comic.

On the plus side, I think I've figured out a nifty cheat that will help me get back some lost time.

Plus, the dialogue in my head is cracking me up.
"LIGHTSPEED, BITCH!"
"TREE, ASSHOLE!"

...

OK, so you have to be there.

(Future Harris: You still do, actually. I never bothered to letter the damned thing.)

Hour 7 1 PM to 2 PM

Wrist is freakin' killing me. I'm starting to have more of an idea as to where I'm going with this. Getting there, on the other hand, could be tough. I've been sticking to a three-panel-per-page layout, and I'm beginning to think I need to vary it some.

Also beginning to debate the wisdom of making a sandwich run.

'Four pages in. A couple people have been dong this for a while, and are just cranking out page after page after page. And they look GOOD.

There've also been a fairly sizable number of people around with video cameras. No clue as to whether they're media, friends or making documentaries or what...

(Future Harris: Actually, they were friends of a couple of the participants who decided to film the day. There was also at least one would-be documentary film-maker in the group.)

Hour 8 - 2 PM to 3 PM: Blue Warrior Needs Food. Badly. Time out for a sandwich and chips. Everyone can expect to start incorporating Cheet-o dust into their project now. Who said these were going to be black and white?

We're getting qutie the crowd wandering around and looking in at everyone's stuff... As if I weren't insecure already...

Hour 9 - 3 PM to 4 PM: And it's minor-celebrit-hour at Austin Books. Harry Knowles put in an appearance, looking at a couple people's prokects and chatting with some friends who're participating. I've got a couple more pages in me, I think, before I'm going to be forced to take a break if I actually want to be able to use my hand for the rest of the day.

(Future Harris: And please notice that you can track my wrist pain by my typos and spelling mistakes.)

On an interesting note, a photographer from teh Austin-Statesman took my photo as I was working, photo referencing a temple wall for the story. Then he bought a mini from Bryan, sitting opposite from me and interviewed him briefly.

I refrain from trying to (and likely failing to) charm my way into my own interview. I'm such a wanna-be publicity whore....

Hour 10 - 4 PM to 5 PM

Getting closer to the half-way mark... still less than half-way done.

Dammit.

The majoirty of my Sharpies have run out. Odd... I haven't been spotting too many blacks on this one...

I've just realized that I've been averaging one Diet Dr. Pepper per hour... considering my usual consumption tends to be three or for per day, this will represent a major spike of blood in my caffeine system. I predict that I won’t be walking out the door so much as oozing in a generally down-hill motion. I'm also not entirely sure I want to know what myh eating habbits have been oding to me. Semi-constant grazing on dried fruit and animal crackers isn't that bad in the greater scheme of things, but couple that wtih 24 hours of relative inactivity.... Yow.

On the plus side, we've got someone doing an art supply run, which will help.

Hour 11 - 5 PM to 6 PM

Had to take a half-hour break to let my wrist rest... took the time to read Kevin Smith's Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series. Suddenly, I can't say I'm disappointed that he never finished it.

In the interest of making up for lost time, I'm using my cheat to get some what back on ntrack. It's fairly simple: I'm drawing one splash-page and using it five times. Just need to use the store's Xerox to make some copies.

Back to work, back to work.

Hour 12 - 6 to 7 PM

Got the multi-purpose cheat/splash page finsihed and had to take another break. As much as I hate to admit this, I may not be able to make the full 24 hours... While I'm up to 13 pages (or so), I'm beginning to wonder if my wrist is going to be up to it. My fingertips are tingling, which is not a good sign to me....

(sigh) Guess I'll just have to go slowly.

Hour 13- 7 PM to 8PM

Took another break to rehab the wrist. Whill have to wait and see how things go, I guess. Impresively enough, one guy seems to be done already....

(Future Harris: Yup. By this point, Goatboy finished his first book and was three pages in to a second one. And his was really freakin’ good. The bastard.)

Up to page 13, after I got lazy and did two blacked out pages with nothing but dialogue..

(Future Harris: Actually, I just drew a box around the live-area and wrote “fill with black and add dialogue”, with the idea that I’d actually clean it up in Photoshop later...)

Now I actually have to finish this damned thing if I can. At this point, I think I may have to dsee which comes first: finishing the story, the page count or my wrist giving out..

Also: the pizza just arrived. My artieries are trying to kill me and I must punish them with grease.

Hour 14 8 PM to 9 PM: Beginning of the end. I'm up to page 14 (technically... I've got 17 pages, countiing the extra splashes.) My friend Trish called to offer support and threaten my physical safety should I not stay the course.

Other than the physical problems (which I should really just quit whining about.), my biggest problem so far is the understandable fact that it barely resembles my normal style. Or at least, it should quit looking like I drew it when I was 17.

Ah well. I'm starting to get a quasi-Mike Weringo in my faces, which I kindn alike. Now if I could just get the rest of it to follow suit.

Hour 15 - 9 PM to 10 PM: Now we're getting into it. Obviously, the caffiene has kicked in en mas; everyone's fairly lound and boisterous just now. For me, teh end is in sight. I'm on page 17 (page 19.... Oh skip it...) and I'm entering the home stretch. I hate to make concessions to my work, but I'm planning on using the cut-and-paste feaure for a couple pages, rather than agrivating things even more by trying to draw the same scene three times. Call it lazy, call it breaking the rules.

I call it "I can't feel my goddamn fingers."

The creative energy is staggering.

Or is that the caffeine buzz?

Hour 16 - 10 PM to 11 PM

**sigh**

Fine motor control has gone out the window. I've now drawn some of the ugliest panels I've ever done. And I've still got four pages to go.

I'm going to knuckle down and finish drawing them as quick as I can. I've basically given up on them even vaguely resembling "good". Or even "mediocre".

The place is still fun, but jeesumcrow I am having a hard time admitting I actually drew this...

Hour 16 and three-quarters - 11:45 PM

I’m out. I literally can't hold the damned pen. My right hand is almost completely useless at this point. I’ve handed my pages to Brad to Xerox and send off as part of the documentation of the event, but I’m fairly well resigned to not finishing this. After I've finsihsed Berserker and burned my way through a few pages of Masquerade, I’ll come back to this and re-draw it for public consumption.

Right now, I’ve got to get my stuff back in the car and try to make it home in one piece.

* * *

And there you have it. Almost to the three-quarters mark, and I’m downed by physical necessity. 10 hours sleep, a day’s rest, six Advil and several ice-packs later, and it was back to work for me. I’m rather disappointed that I didn’t manage to stay the entire time; for all my complaining either about my wrist or my work, it was an absolute blast and people were kicking out seriously prime material, especially when the time constraints were taken into account.

Next year, I’m coming with a wrist brace and a bottle of Alleve.

* * * * *
Work on Berserker: The Wild Hunt continues. The first six pages of the book are available on my site at http://www.studiounderhill.com/comics.html. Give them a look-see, and let me know what you think. And as always, if you want a free mini-comic-slash-coming attraction, drop your e-mail address at berserker2004@web.de, and either Jens or I will hook you up.

Harris O'Malley is a writer/artist/publisher of BETWEEN THE CRACKS and artist of the upcoming OGN Berserker: The Wild Hunt. Find out more at http://www.studiounderhill.com


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