Spark Comic 34 - 24 Hour Image Arts Competition

March 14th, 2012
Spark Comic #34 - 24 Hour Image Arts Competition

Hello, Sparky Fans! My appologies for the late comic and last week's lack of one, but I've been super busy lately. Also, Happy Pi Day!

This past weekend, I was in the 24 Hour image Arts Competition at Ryerson. I'm enrolled in Ryerson's Image Arts New Media program and did the competition last year as well, so I had the urge to do it again this year, especially since something unfortunate happened last year that kinda hamppered our project a bit. Unlike last year, when circumstances ended up putting us in a big group, I entered with my friend, represented by my Lex Luthonde character. This comic is pretty much a summary of how the 28 hours I was up during the 24 Hour competition went as the longest comic I've ever made so far. It was a great experience, however given the fact that not nearly as many people competed this year as their were last year and a few other reasons, I'm not sure whether or not I'll compete next year, especially since the turn out was disappointing. Still, those that did participate this year ended up making amazing projects and deserved to win. After the competition, I died on my bed and have been trying to catch up on my sleep ever since. Staying awake for 28 hours straight is no easy task.

You'll notice the comic is a bit sketchy, pun intended. This was done intentionally for 2 reasons. First, because last month apparently there was a 24 Hour Comic Day I didn't know about where Webcomic artists did a comic about their day in 24 hours. Not sure if I would've participated if I knew since my day can be either super boring or super busy depending on what happens, but I figured this was a good time to at least try the concept since I certainly had an interesting weekend... Plus the competition makes it impossible for me to work on a comic. Second, I wanted to use it as a personal test. I said last week that the comic was delayed due to me not having a lot of time to work on it, but also quality issues. While this may look like taking about 10 steps back in terms of quality, I made a condition not to work a lot on most of the panels. Reason being that I wanted to see how far I've coem with both illustration and drawing in this style and how fast I can draw all these things and not make it look terrible. After doing this, I think I've improved a lot since I started doing Spark Comics regularly, though I see I have a long way to go if I want to become an expert, both at illustration and at drawing in the Spark Comics style. Not a bad thing, now I know what to improve and I can draw competently faster.

Next week will be a regular comic which I've been holding back for a couple of weeks. I should hopefully have the time to do that since it's about 70% done at this point. In the meantime, like our Facebook Page! [link]

See you next comic!