24 Hours and more…

Just got done with the first ever, FSU 24 Hour Comics Challenge, hoo boy! Been working about the last four months or so at organizing this event for the Art Students League here at Florida State University.
The Challenge: Create 24 pages of comics (graphic narrative, illustrated story, sequential storytelling) in 24 hours.
The Park Avenue Diner on FSU’s campus hosted this event, and they did a tremendous job. Our participants were catered to by some outstanding people, and the Diner also dedicated 25% of their restaurant to us for use as our workspace!
Contestants were waiting for check-in when I arrived at 6pm. At 6:30pm I had registered fifteen official contestants. Of that number 13 showed up before seven.

At 7pm, we were all off and running, stressing, straining over our ideas. Some, like Jodi Chapman, tackled art first and allowed her story to develop secondary to it. Other’s like myself had to grunt to produce even the most fragmented of works.
The hours came, the hours went, we were approached by diners who wanted to know what we were doing. Our servers, (Alex, Teddy, and Hillston!) were all intrigued and kept the coffee going, the snacks coming, and encouragement plenty.
I was attempting a second consecutive night without sleep and as a result, fell hard around 4am. When I woke again, it was 7am and people were still there working. We lost a few in the night, but in the end 10 creators handed in 240 pages of comics collectively.

Now, comes the fun part. I get to take all of these works and scan them in with an oversize scanner, and collate and prepare a collection for distribution! The good news is that it’s all worthwhile! The collected submissions from the event will be sold and all proceeds will go to a charity to be named by the Art Students League.
To those of you who participated in the event, Congratulations! You all deserve it for a job well done! Enjoy the pics!

View the 24 Hour Movie here.