200-hour comic FAILED

This was meant to begin on Sunday before 4pm.
Unfortunately, I'm a very disorganised person and didn't get my shit together until over a day later.

Send words of encouragement or disdain to: 200@aciddica.com!

12:35 Sat. 20th Oct. 2007

Im sorry. I'm a failure.

FAILED

Dear everyone, I'm a failure. With regards to this particular challenge.

Thanks to all the friends who sent words in support. Sorry to have disappointed you. Frustrated at having failed to complete what I said I would and thought I could.

I'd like to be able to say I was captured by aliens or had an emergency or was seriously ill. The truth is more boring and yet harder to explain.

I wish I could sweep this sorry affair under the carpet.

Suffice to say that I haven't drawn for over 24 hours and as such failed my original intentions whatever may happen now. I couldn't (didn't?) handle dedicating my brain to one single thing at this point in my life.

This attempt has long ended.

18:51 Thu. 18th Oct. 2007

Title: 'C__ amongst the P_____'

The word "encouragement" is the word "courage" surrounded by "en...ment".

"en...ment" is an anagram of "ten men"

Have the courage of ten men (preferably ten brave men) and just follow your gut.

- Barry

Went to bed last night around 3am, still unhappy with the plot. Woke up by 10 and other than a break to eat lunch, I basically just copyied reference pics of pigeons/policemen from the internet for a while (full-length body-shots of real policemen are hard to find! Note to self: may be a niche market to develop) and then started drawing some actual comics.

I thought that roughing out the whole story first would help, but I find it hard to actually improve upon any original intentions.

I did get a list of random sentences from someone, which I'll try to implement at some point in the story. Thanks to all who sent words by the way.

I'm feeling kinda braindead at this point, a fact that may be a result of me doing fuck all physical exercise today? Time to put that skipping rope to some better use...

23:02 Wed. 17th Oct. 2007

The rush before I start drawing.

Around 100 of these story-bashing pages have been drawn.

Dear diary,
Since I last wrote, I had lunch, went for a quick cycle, then spent around 8-9hours trying to improve the story so it doesn't feel clunky.

I'm slightly concerned - 33 pages a day is no problem, but I really should start the final drawings tomorrow so it doesn't get into a more ludicrous situation.

Doing these quick comics, specially when striving to do the best job one can within the time, really opens one's eyes to their weaknesses. I need to spend more time doing ridiculous things in order to see the 'realistic' way people react. I feel torn - I'd like the story to be fun and zany but the plot jut doesn't feel 'believable' at the moment. Something's wrong but I can't put my finger on it.

Just the way people act and stuff I guess.

Maybe if I'd started with some random page and just kept drawing, I wouldn't have felt so self-counscious and wouldn't have had time to worry about these things? Maybe being 'stream-of-consciousness' makes it more natural - to me? But would that have resulted in a better comic to others?

As it's 8 days, 8 hours, I need to finish by 5am Wednesday. Maybe a sensible move would be to just have dinner, stay awake for 5 or so more hours, continuing to make changes to these comics, which I've laid out like a big jigsaw puzzle. Then I'll have a few hours sleep and commence the final art.

12:02 Wed. 17th Oct. 2007

GO-GO-GO! Working it out...

I thought a bit of blue was needed...

After 8-hours of sleep, I bolted down some food then commenced drawing pages of strip ideas and diagrams sketching out possible motivations etc.

I feel bad that I've never worked in a porn shop.

Also, I've never actually forcibly taken a cat home.

I wish my life was as interesting as this story. Then I could say it was totally true to life.

00:52 Wed. 17th Oct. 2007

I'm getting tired...

At 12:01 PM, Paranoia wrote:
Really? Because... you know... spending more than a week or so without sleeping can cause you to become... Well... dead.

At 12:18 PM, Siggy0501 wrote:
11 days, I believe, is the record. I saw it on House =P

At 03:17 PM, TheCriminalDuder wrote:
27 days is my record. A man can go without sleep for a long time. He just needs the right motivation and a never-ending supply of coffee. :)

Man, I really want to see how the showdown between C-girl and P-man (as I'm gonna call them) will end. I'm gonna get some sleep first though, then spend tomorrow rewriting this all and trying to get it to make a bit of sense.

My ambition - in case it wasn't obvious - is to improve upon the quality of the 100-hour comic I did.

Or at least match it.

23:32 Tue. 16th Oct. 2007

These are some things I didn't know 5 hours ago and won't ruin the plot.

"200 hours??"

- boxbrown

* In the story, the arch-nemesis is called 'P-man' for short.

* The comic will be (very mildly) schizophrenic.

* Dogging is involved.

* The frozen chicken-and-mushroom pies I bought taste fairly decent.

I'd planned to have the whole story written as a sketchy comic by this time, complete with writing illegible to anyone other than myself and pictures you may not immediatedly understand but ready to be transcribed into a more pallatable form. Unfortunately, that didn't transpire.

I've gotten sections that I'd like to totally change, sections I still need to connect and a bunch that I'd like to ignore and pretend never happened. I still feel it'd be good for me to work the story out more precisely - I'll give myself until 21:00 tomorrow before I actually start working on the final pages.

18:22 Tue. 16th Oct. 2007

Trying to improve the story.

I'm glad I started sketching this all out first! The story got kinda depressing, so I was torn between making it even more so and filling it with crying people, or just making it a bit sillier.

I decided to go the latter route.

I really like the personality of the superheroine. She still doesn't have a name. Notice that her symbol is a cat and it also looks a bit like a nun's outfit. More words used!

Names that I may or may not use: Supernun, Catgirl, Supercatgirl, CK, Jennifer, C-Girl... does a mysterious super-heroine even need a name? I mean, unless you're all about the fame and recognition, why do you even need a handle to be known as? If it was all about the crime-fighting, life-saving and adventures, you wouldn't actually bother with a name or flashy outfit, surely?

Maybe I'll scrap the costume too - who'd actually go to the bother of stitching a logo after getting super-powers? You'd be in too much of a hurry to use them! Hrmhhhh...

13:12 Tue. 16th Oct. 2007

Sketching out a panel a minute.

Fact of the post: Dildo is a location in Newfoundland, Canada. Also, it's been a type of cactus since before Dildos were invented! I learnt a lot, last night!

Regardless, I think the pigeon fancier will have a history of working at a porn shop.

After my 4 hours of sleep, I started sketching, ate, continued sketching, felt my brainpower waning, went outside to skip (I think it's called jump-rope in America!) then ate pizza.

I'm now resuming sketching out ideas. I still don't really understand the story. I mean what's the cat-saving superheroine all about? I, of all people, should know.

03:50 Tue. 16th Oct. 2007

I'll finish planning it tomorrow. Today?

This represents all my paper interaction thus far.

Did you know that a nun is also a type of domesticated pigeon? I think that's the best possible willful misinterpretation of a word ever. For that reason, the story will involve a pigeon-fancier.

Until now, I've just been checking online dictionaries for possible inspiring meanings. And noting ideas and playing with thinking and line-drawing.

I still don't know what it'll be about, but that's cool. I've got a gameplan. The plan is to draw out some ideas tonight, then sketch out the whole thing tomorrow. Then I'll redraw it all at the rate of 30 pages a day, improving the story as I go along.

Let's see how that works out.

16 minutes gone!

I have little idea what I'm gonna do.

"You son of a whore."
- Mr. Ladyboy