Hourly Adventures


Houly Comics Day 2013 Banner

They say third time’s the charm – February 1st has been and gone again, bringing my third entry to Hourly Comic Day!

Still in the same employment and living space as last year’s edition, but it was a Friday, with a house party to liven things up.
Rough notes and scribbles were done in the hours themselves, and neater pictures over the weekend: That makes this more of a Diary Comic than an Hourly one. Some get their chronicle of the hour done at the end of each hour itself. Others do comics in bulk on the day, although this can lead to some of their panels being “drew some hourly comics”. The remainder use “my” method.

Click on this link or the above image to view this year’s submission!

Cardboard Boyfriends

I mentioned previously that I met some lovely people at a comic book convention. Well there’s been a couple of milestone community events that I joined in on!

Around mid-April, My Cardboard Life threw a celebratory “700 comics made” week, asking for people to create something and send it in. For my comic (traditionally drawn, digitally coloured & post-processed), I wondered “what was Cardboard Carl like when he was young?”. Considering he irons his jeans with volcanic rocks and uses wild animals as towels, the answer had to be “still awesome”. Philippa (she who runs the site) loved it, especially the pig, and I made it to day three. Click the pic for all six panels!

My Cardboard Life fanart, panel 1 - Click to see the rest
Note the American Gothic parody with Colin’s grandparents.

Fast forward a month, and People I Know‘s500th comic celebrations show up! Another call for incoming artwork was raised, with the submission theme of potential boyfriends for Toby, a unlucky in love dinosaur who adores cake. I sketched out a whole bunch of boyfriends, then brightened this one up with crayons:

Pin the Psychic
For some reason his hair makes me think of Quavers.

I called him Pin, and he is a psychic. He would know just what kind of cake Toby wants without him even asking! I sent him off, and a short time later he took up residence on day four.

Just to round this out to the trilogy of web-famous people, here is the guest comic I did for Moo & Keo waaay back in 2008. While it was the first (possibly only) guest comic, it was sadly wiped away in one of his site updates. Anywho, something to tell you is that he got published (it’s in Waterstones and everything), and just finished working on book #2!

Hourlies and Sweeties

Hourly Comics Day 2012 Banner

As evidenced by the above, the time came for my second entry to Hourly Comic Day! Since last year’s edition I’ve gained employment and moved house, so it took a few days to finish the sketches. More time passed before a scanner was obtained, but I uploaded rough camera pics for the interim. This link or the above image lead to this year’s submission.

Insider bonus: Panel 2 is basically People I Know fan art.

Boohoo.
Boohoo. Left is mine, Right is Timothy Winchesters.

Puffins, Dogs and the 3rd Dimension

February was a busy month: After Hourly Comic Day (see previous post), I had a project to return to.

The Puffin Digital Prize 2011 is not so much a prize as a contest. Running from late November to February 28th, the brief was to storyboard a children’s picture book… for iPad. At least 2 spreads had to be fully finished, while the rest could be rough layouts & sketches.

The submission guidelines contradicted themselves, there was no hotline, and the hot-email-address server broke. Nevertheless, I persevered and got it done!

The end result is 775 words, with 9 finished images (6 complete pages), 24 doodles, and a pile of digital post-it notes.

No, you can’t see it yet.

…Alright, i’ll give you one image (and not the best one):

Highland Terrier using a kite as a hang-glider
I should explain, it’s about unconventional dog racing.

This contest also reintroduced me to Fineliner pens – I was a fool to ever let them go.
Here’s hoping for a shortlisting!

And now, on to the second item. A man in Hebden Bridge is taking a year out to teach himself and others about 3D filming, and he hopes to get a project going. Here’s his article from the local paper last week.
I went to the first meeting on Tuesday – he’s a thoroughly nice chap who knows his stuff, and you should have seen the test footage!

There's some of this, but it's mainly about the new, better 3D.
There’s some of this, but it’s mainly about the new, better 3D.

I’ve passed his article on to my old uni lecturer (now the Dean of Computing), to see if any undergrads are interested. If you’re interested, give H. Clegg a shout!

A Day of Drawing

February 1st was Hourly Comic Day. Once a year, amateurs and professionals alike draw an hour-by-hour account of their day (ideally as the hour to be drawn is coming to a close). Some people ink & colour their pics later, while others just scan their doodles.

This year, I joined in for the first time. You can click the below image to view it.

Carl Mitchell's Hourly Comic Day 2011
Like Hansel, i’m so hot right now.

The forum for this years event, where you can see dozens upon dozens of hourly comics, is right this way.

In other news, this site’s asthetic was bugging me, so i’ve upgraded it again!
To provide more visual interest and definition I introduced a coffee colour, shuffled things around, changed font sizes. Gradients appeared as I learned the wonders of -moz-linear-gradient and -webkit-gradient. Code’s been cleaned up.

Finally, I added a little Geek-ster egg which is easy enough to find (hint: less than 200 pixels down), but not that easy to figure out 100%. Tee hee.