Tag: event

Sketches Abroad: Hourly Comic Day 2023

I present to you this year’s diary comic, chronicling the 1st February 2023 in celebration of Hourly Comic Day (in spirit if not timeliness*). It features a nice change of scenery (and excuse for the delay), as this year I was on holiday! South Africa, visiting family and seeing the sights!

After last year’s rescheduling, cancellations, and test requests, it was nice to actually get out there in the sun! Until the flights were delayed, and our luggage went missing for a few days… it all worked out in the end! *forced grin*

This year’s diary comic can be viewed through the link below.

Hourly Comic Day 2023 - click to read

Diary Comic – Hourly Comic Day 2023

*Usual HCD disclaimer: These are not drawn on the hour, every hour, on the day itself. I don’t know how some people ever do that.

Instagram: #HourlyComicDay

Footnotes

  • This is the trip that I was supposed to be going on last year, (to see Ex-Pat family), before all the semi-Covid delays, cancellations, tests and rules broke me down.
  • Dassies (AKA Rock Hyrax) are little Groundhog / Meerkat / Guinea Pig things.
  • The gallery paintings / sculptures were by Ken Maloney. While very impressive, they wouldn’t fit in my suitcase… especially not when many of them cost four figures.
  • “Load Shedding” is their term for “scheduled power cuts”. Not great, but you get a schedule app so you can prepare around those couple hours a day.
  • I read Anansi Boys in ‘record time’ (under a month)! Set in the world of American Gods, but with more levity and less road trip padding. They’re making a TV series too… let’s hope it actually gets finished, unlike the American Gods show.
  • Peppermint Tart is a delicacy that’s hard to come by outside of SA, because primary ingredient Peppermint Crisp falls foul of the dairy export ban.
  • Yes, Midsomer Murders ended with a big explosion. The Lions of Causton. Look it up.
  • Post-credits reference: I’ve still not watched Wednesday yet. Oh, and you’re welcome.

Doodling Day

This is my sixth Hourly Comic Day comic, and the first one featuring me at my Graphic Design job! I actually started there in 2014, but as the last 2 years have been weekend comics, you didn’t get to see owt.

Click the image below, or this sentence here, to read the full comic!

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The Hours

Carl Mitchell's Hourly Comic Day 2015

Another year brings another February 1st. I’ve completed Hourly Comic Day 2015; my fifth. It was quite eventful considering it was a Sunday.

Continue reading “The Hours”

Thought Bubble with a Vengeance

This was my third year visiting the Thought Bubble Leeds comic art festival. Usually I will do a lap to see what’s there, then second time around buy items and get them signed. It took longer to get around this year: Firstly, they’ve gone from two large rooms to three. Secondly, I was taking notes…
This year's haul. All names and artists noted through the link. Picked up a heap of stuff. Click that photo for artist names and details!

There’s the old stereotype of guys who are always ‘working on their novel’. For me, it’s a comic book. Three short comics, actually. There are plans to get them done, self-published, sold. Those plans are currently like clay plonked on a mat; going though a lot of moulding before they’re stuck in the oven. So I talked to the experts attending and selling at Thought Bubble. The guys with book deals and large hardback editions, and the new starters, their baby fresh off the work photocopier. Picking up tips on process, production, contacts. Here’s a few simple pieces of advice gleaned…

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Inking All Month Long

There’s a chap who calls himself Grickle, who I discovered via his work on the Puzzle Agent games. Have you heard of recent film The Boxtrolls? He helped create the titular creatures.
One day, he tweeted the below swamp creature, with the hashtag #sketch_dailies.

Grickle on Twitter

Sketch Dailies (website / Twitter) tweet out one drawing suggestion every weekday, around 5:30pm UK time. They help lead an event called Inktober, where you do one drawing every day for a month (or you can do one every two days, etc.). You can take on Sketch Dailies’ proposal, or do your own thing. Despite the name, it’s not strictly limited to ink – People use their tablets, watercolours, whatever they please.

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Caravans and Bicycles

In February I started working for Caravan Guard (and it’s sister company Leisuredays), a medium-sized, family run insurance company. It’s no secret: My CV’s available on this website, after all. I’m in the Marketing department… as a Graphic Designer. Last month I moved to ‘Permanent contract’ status.

Success Kid and company logo
Success Kid approves.

I’ve been doing a huge amount of wonderful stuff, both straight-laced and silly, for both the Leisuredays re-branding and more general tasks. Making the sky blue on overcast photos. Adding and removing signs. Removing people. We’ve got new and updated booklets, flyers, folders, tiny stickers and big banners into production. I’ve made a truckload of icons, graphs and graphics, while correcting and refining the existing sets. I even got talking cows into a milk-bottle shaped mailer.

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The Opera Post, Act 2

In my last post I mentioned that I had many tasks for the New Bradford Playhouse’s in-house production of Maskerade. Last time we talked posters. Today, we focus on the programme.

A 12-page booklet, the whole thing was designed to be printed in black and white on ordinary office paper. The audience got such a version, while I gifted some cast and crew members this borderless, colour cover variant. It contains the usual suspects: a synopsis, cast list, crew list, rights, a word from the director, a bit about the theatre and what’s being performed there next. A nicety is that being an internal production on a shoestring budget, there’s no advertisements. The cast pages ended up being the centre spread, which was ideal.

mask-prog-cast1

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The Opera Post, Act 1

This month The New Bradford Playhouse put on an in-house production of Maskerade, adapted from the Terry Pratchett book of the same name (think Phantom Of The Opera with humour and witches). I haven’t been on that stage in a long time, and love the works of Pratchett, so I signed up.

My main role was one of the stagehands who are actually part of the play, so as well as spouting lines i’d shift furniture, in sight and out of sight of the audience. I had two other bit-parts in one scene each, with quick costume changes. Along with learning script, stage directions and set mechanics, I also made the show’s programme, some posters, two Papier-mâché masks for the cast, and one mask for myself. In 4 weeks. Oh, and I started a new full-time job at the same time.

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Sixty Minutes in 2 Panels

Hourly Comic Day 2014 Title Image

This is my fourth year of Hourly Comic Day: As with previous years, I got sketches and notes done at the time and sat down to draw them the next day (otherwise i’d get funny [funnier] looks in the nightclub with pencil and paper). Stuck with 2 panels an hour.

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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!

Continue reading “Hourly Adventures”