Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?…

Yes, I have.

Long story short, 24 Comic Day is a challenge of continuous comic creation that lasts entire 24 hours, from Saturday noon till Sunday noon. Yeah, I know, insane.

This year I was clever about this and just used this opportunity to start creating my next comic book, Morfolaki 4. I managed to finish 7 pages. I thought it would be easier, because it’s black and white and mostly just drawing, but honestly I forgot how time consuming creating Morphs pages can be. Just look below at some examples and you’ll understand.

Besides drawing I also created a short movie about the whole project and people involved in it. Take a look:

Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?

Well, yes, yes I did. Twice already. Here and here.

My take on this challenge is a bit different than what Scott McCloud proposes. Yes, I did create a 24-page comics in 24-hour span, that was on my first attempt in 2011, and right then this particular challenge lost it’s meaning because of the fact that I achieved it. Since then my take on this whole idea is this: create for 24 hours. The main condition is time, not number of pages. I’d rather create few pages but of high, printable quality, than a 24-page half-assed, rushed through comics that will be good for nothing actually. And that’s what I’ve been doing since 2011. This year I wanted to create a 4-page Rewolucje short, as I was asked by Andrzej Baron for something for his Znakomiks magazine. Last year I learned that creating one Rewolucje page takes about 6 hours, so the timing was perfect. The first page however (shown below) took me 7.5 hours. Luckily, that was the main establishing shot, most detailed opening of the short. Latter pages were simpler to create and I finished all of this around 5:30 A.M. Since I had few hours left I also created a cover for a 24-hour comic book anthology, as asked by the publisher and organizer of the event. You can also check it out below. Besides that I’m posting photos I’ve been taking more or less hourly through entire 24 hours (well, 20, since I split after 8 A.M. when I had literally nothing more to do). So here it is. The insanity.

This week I went straight back into the insanity of continuous 24 hour comics drawing.

I’ve tried that two years ago and succeeded [check it our here], so for me that particular thing on my bucket list was already crossed out, didn’t want to do that all over again. This time the plan was a bit different. Creating a random, 24-page comic mini-album that’s revolving around a given subject is not my thing actually. Instead I made another plan for myself. 24-hours of non-stop drawing, that’s still on, but I took my own material – namely pages from my upcoming Rewolucje album.

But the thing is – those pages had to be triple A, album-quality work, not something created quickly and under pressure. So the plan was – 5 pages. Around four hours per page with some spare time for resting and talking to other artists – last time I was so focused on the task at hand that the whole social aspect of the experience went completely over my head. This time I wanted it to be more of a creative meeting. I already had the story and sketches done, it was just the matter of creating the final sketch on paper and painting. To my surprize the venue was small and a lot of people showed up, around 50 – some of them came to town especially for this event. Those were real troopers. Anyway, due to overcrowding the workplace was a bit small. I spent first four hours preparing final sketches and then busted out the big guns:

This picture was taken around 3 AM, and that’s actually when I was already finishing all 5 pages On this photo there’s the final, fifth page visible. Still lots of work was done on it after the photo though. So plan A took 15 hours to complete (12 PM – 3 AM). After that I went back to sketching. At this point I felt that it’s a good moment to stop painting and just go back to simpler tasks. I started sketching more pages from the album and also designed few characters. I was doing that until I ran out of paper – and that happened around 6 AM. So at this point I literally had NOTHING to do, except for socializing. But there is a fine line between being social and outgoing towards other people and being annoyingly interrupting to people who are trying to run the marathon.

I split around 7 AM with the feeling of a job well done. When I woke up I did a quality check and it all holds up nicely. You be the jugde. Here, or after buying the album once it’s released.

Big thank you to all people taking part – see you guys next year.

the making:

the effect: