24 Hour Comics Day 2010: FINISHED!

I once again completed the 24 Hour Comics Day Challenge using the wonderful tools at Bitstrips. I began at 9:00 am on Saturday October 2 and finished at about 6:30 Sunday morning.

I made a conscious decision this year to avoid the romance/relationship theme of my last two 24 Hour Comics, from 2008 and 2009, and decided in advance to try to do something more action oriented, possibly with a sci-fi or fantasy approach.

I began with no script or preconceived characters, and once again used a random song title from iTunes to give me a title. The first track to play on Saturday morning, Wish I Had An Angel, by Nightwish, inspired the notion of guardian angels. My initial idea was that there are these space pilots aboard a space station and their technicians are sort of like the pilot's guardian angels, keeping the ships running, communicating with the pilots and protecting them from 'the heaven' of the station.   With that in mind I decided that the characters of this tale orbit a planet named Midgard, from a space station named Asgard, and went with Norse naming scheme for the solar system in the story.  This Nordic inspiration was due in part to the fact that Nightwish is from Finland.

Unfortunately I misspelled Yggdrasil, the name of the sun and solar system in the story, in the first caption in the first panel of the tale.  Later I named a moon Mani' continuing the Nose Mythology naming conventions, but a couple of hours later I mentioned the moon again and called it Madi' which it remained through the rest of the tale. These things happen when you're 12 or so hours into the process, not completely lucid and working improvisationally.

As usually happens with these 24 Hour Comics, my initial idea mutated pretty quickly, turning into a friendly rivalry between two techs, and their pilots.  I had decided on the darker aspects of the ending of the story early on, but I surprised myself in exactly how I got there.

Changing genre made for some difficult artistic choices. Spaceships are difficult to do in Bitstrips!  Otherwise, I found the work moving along really quickly.  This is due in part to the advances made in the builders in the last year, and also to a new computer, purchased over the summer.  I did 166 panels total, well within my goals of 144 to 180 panels.  The ability to do more complex art continues to get easier, kudos to the Core Matrix team for continuing to make Bitstrips so great!

I once again had a great time doing this comic, it is certainly not without it's flaws, I tried something different this time, and was pleased with the result.  Here is page one of Wish I Had An Angel: