What is This?
The Annual International 24 Hour Comic Day
One Crazy Day to Create a New Comic Book
Some definitions:
- 24HCD is short for 24 Hour Comic Day, an annual event hosted all around the world attended by aspiring and seasoned comic book artists alike.
- Blitz Comics is our honest attempt at taking our own failure experiences and turning them into something useful. We want to inspire and encourage creators of all ages to CREATE STUFF! We won't rest until comics get the respect it deserves as an art form.
This whole challenge is based on an idea by Scott McCloud. In 1990 Scott dared his friend Steve Bissette (of Swamp Thing fame) to create a comic book in only 24 hours. They both succeeded and a new phenomenon was born. Read more about how it all started...
Then in 2004, Nat Gertler (a comics writer and publisher) took it a step further and organized the whole challenge into an International Event. Now THOUSANDS of people participate every year at venues all over the world.
Ok but, why are we doing this?
Me and my buddy Anthony have attempted 24HCD every year since 2008...both of us failing miserably for the first 3 years. For those years we left exhausted and carrying a half finished comic book stained with our tears.
On the bleary eyed ride home we kept asking ourselves, "Why are we doing this? How come we keep failing?"
We loved taking this challenge but pushing ourselves to the creative limit and walking away with hardly a completed comic book was hard to handle. So we decided to take a serious look at our experience. Tired as we were we swung a detour and got something to eat, so we could talk about it.
As we sat there across from each other, we knew we couldn't lie to ourselves. It's not true that we never thought about quitting, especially after staying up for 16 hours straight and having only 4 pages done. But we knew that we, along with thousands of other ambitious artists around the world, go into this challenge with high hopes and very strong wills but along the way, we falter. And we fail....
That year, stuffing pancakes in our face holes, we decided to doubled down. I banged the table and shouted, "Next year we succeed! Next time we GET DONE!"...without really knowing exactly how to do it.
And then it hit us...
Huzzah! It's the Start of an Idea!
Why don't we write a survival guide?
And we did. We gathered up all our failures. We looked honestly at our results and asked the hard questions.
It took us a few months but we eventually did it! We'd compiled 8 pages of a really great Survival Guide. [Editor Note: The newest guide is now 74+ pages and 13 new exercises!]
This thing is packed with our advice and tips from years of experience. We'd fail no more and it was true (now we consistently succeed).
So take a look. This guide is packed with advice and real time exercises that help you get your comic book DONE! There's very little thinking needed. In fact, the kit is designed for ages 5 years and up and we've strived to make the major bits of comic book creation come together much faster. And if you use it at 24HCD you've got a much higher chance of success!
But, we didn't stop there.
Woah... Another Idea! Why don't we share what we've learned?
The birth of the comic creator learning labs!
This is so cool!
We take a group of aspiring artists/creators and guide them on how to use the Survival Guide and Creator Kit. We focus on simplifying the process of comic book creation, coming from a creative perspective.
We focus on using thumbnails, story, character creation and more, with exercise templates that narrow each step into one clear result. Our quick exercises help to put creators into the mind frame of what a typical 24HCD hour might be like.
Hopefully we'll be coming to a city near you and we can build comics together! Keep an eye on the events page for details drop us an email.
So are you ready to take the next step?
Why don't you download the kit and guide and let us know what you think? Did we totally bomb it and get things all wrong? OR did we help you succeed this year? Let us know!
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