The Section Comics

An experiment in comics

Category: 48 hour Graphic Novel

  • Writing tips: Improv

    I took improv classes for quite a while around Amsterdam, and did a bit of improv performing (that one time). It was important to me to have writers with an improv background in the first graphic novel weekend, and I sincerely recommend to anyone else attempting a 48 hour graphic novel that you seek out improv experienced people. 

    Creating within 48 hours means that things will change and shift, and you need people who are ready to go with the flow. The foundation of improv is taking any idea and saying yes to it, and building on it. It is essential to have that feeling in mind. 

    Why? Because you do not know how things will go. If you get to stuck in the idea of how things are supposed to be, you will find that the pages don’t get drawn that you need. Or there’s a subtle difference in them that leads you in a different direction. 

    “Yes, and” will keep the story moving, and in a direction that will benefit everyone. 

    As a writer in a 48 hour graphic novel, you are not trying to build the detailed plumbing system for a house, and determine where the water will flow. You are riding a river of creativity in a raft that you have to continuously rebuild – so keeping loose, accepting what comes along, and looking for new directions that will be more fun but still keep you heading in the right direction (while avoiding sharp rocks) is the best plan you can have. 

    How to say “no” in improv

    Saying “yes, and” doesn’t mean you can’t say no within the story, it means you have to embrace the idea, and the character has their perspective and feeling within that idea. On stage, for example, if someone turns to you and says “look out there, the sea looks rough tonight” and you reply “that’s not a sea, it’s an audience” — you might get one laugh. But the scene can’t move forward, because you would destroy the story of it. And you would ruin the connection with your co-creator.

    But you could say “I’ve seen rougher seas,” as a way to stay in the world, and build it, but argue within it.

    So, the key is to embrace the idea and the world, and react to it.

  • Starting points

    As I mentioned, coming up with a beginning point for the story was a bit contentious for us in the first graphic novel, and so it is worth discussing. 

    There are many ways to come up with how to begin the story, but the point is that we have a bunch of artists and writers ready to begin work. Writers can argue for months over an idea, so it’s essential to find a way that you can bring everyone together quickly. 

    We definitely knew that we wanted to set the story in the city we were in, as that helps ground that event as being about the town, and means that if you need inspiration you just have to go outside to see it. 

    I personally felt that we needed a single image concept that could allow writers to get their artists started, and then figure out the story. Others felt that we needed to let the writers find something as a start point among themselves. 

    There are a few ways to work this out, and by no means is this list everything, but at the least it should get you thinking in the direction of how you’d want to find your beginning. 

    A single concept to begin

    As mentioned, this is what we did in the first graphic novel weekend. I came up with an image of astronauts in a Dutch city even before we knew where we would set the event. My reason is listed in the recap of the first GNW. 

    But basically, I wanted a single image that could be drawn by everyone and which wouldn’t require writers to know more than how many characters they were writing for. And you could do this. 

    An improv game to come up with the concept

    As the rules of improv are already very important to this concept, why not steal something else from them? 

    In improv it’s often the case that a call will be made out to the audience to come up with a location, a profession, an object, whatever. You could use this here, and just throw out to the whole crowd to come up with something you wouldn’t expect to find in your city, or a job, or an object. And then vote for the best combination. It would take a few minutes, and get you started. 

    A pre-meeting

    This was a topic that kept coming up. The idea was to have the writers show up in advance to figure out the story. There is a lot of benefit to this. Personally, though, I was hesitant because I feel like the artists need to be involved from the beginning, but that might just be me (and an argument could be made that my chosen method didn’t allow anyone present at the stage of coming up with a concept) and at least for coming up with a concept, it’s definitely a good plan. 

    Tie it to an event or a cause

    One of the real hopes of Doe Het Niet Zelf was to make these graphic novels about something. And so events and charities are a great way to go. Put a focus on a cause and let the story spread from that. 

    Don’t be constrained by your beginning

    Once you have an idea, that’s just the starting line. Plan to go beyond that and do new and different things. To prove this point, during the first event, I put up a slide with this on it:

    What do these specific things have in common?
    The Beatles
    The Crimean War
    The Hulu hoop craze in America in the 1950s
    Doing your taxes
    Lodewijk Napoleon
    The Stegosaurus
    Japanese Calligraphy
    The Computer Language Fortran

    The answer is that all of these things relate to our world. As unrelated as any two of them are to each other, you could write a story connecting them fairly easily. Because it’s all within our world and our knowledge. So treat the beginning point as what it is – point A on a journey, nothing else. The journey is to the end point.

  • Why did we set the initial story at night?

    We began the initial Graphic Novel Weeknd story at night/evening for a reason.

    In addition to setting a tone for the story, darkness gives a lot more possibilities than light to cut corners. As a writer, you’re given the ability to hint at something that would be difficult to draw quickly multiple times, and as an artist you sometimes only have to hint at things happening in the story.

    Filling in the black sections can be time consuming, but this is a great use for digital inking, which can allow you to quickly fill in large sections of pure black. This allows the artist to focus the hard inking for detailed work (this can also be done digitally, but for fill-in work especially, it will save so much time). Of course, markers or other tools can also be used.

    Now, the artists may not need this, and may want to draw fully detailed bright images, but having the option of using the darkness to fall back on opened up options.

    So, consider it as an option.

  • What did we try the first time around?

    The first graphic novel weekend was held in Utrecht in May of 2019 – here’s a nice video of the event.

    We held this event over 3 days: a short period on Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday Morning and afternoon.

    Our goal was to give as much flexibility to everyone, while also providing limitations that help focus the amount of work that needed to be done. We stated the rules as being:
    – Work together
    – Go with the flow, and keep moving
    – Produce black and white comic pages in a single standard format that you have agreed as a team. For us, it was in 11x17in proportions, specifically because we were providing US comic standard artboards, but the only thing that’s important here is that there is a standard. It also important that everything be at a high enough resolution for digital printing (The industry standard is is 600dpi tiffs whether the art is scanned, or if it is made digitally, but I believe we went with 300dpi).

    We gave a lot of other advice, but each team decided together how to achieve what they wanted to achieve in those parameters. They picked the tools they wanted to use – we provided a number of supplies, but anyone could bring their own tools and many did.

    So, naturally, in the end everyone decided together what their final product would look like. And this was important, because the goal was to use the best skills of the people involved. Interestingly, because everything is in black and white, it does kind of all work together, even with the wildly different styles.

    We also started with some specific ground rules for this story as a test:
    – The story will be set primarily at night, so we can use darkness to limit how much needs to be drawn
    – The story will be set at a specific location (the city which we are in)
    – The story will have a specific start, provided by the organisers

    Starting image:
    The starting image was one that I came up with, and I gave it a lot of thought, though it was somewhat contentious amongst the organizers. The image was that the city of Utrecht was empty except for people in astronaut suits.

    The reasons for this were:
    – It’s weird – Even if all of the writers are focused on telling grounded, down to earth stories, it’s important to give the artists ability to draw something weird.
    – It’s an easy metaphor – Maybe this is a story about people who feel isolated. Maybe this is a story about people just moving to a new city. This is of course in addition to the possibility of something science fiction related. (In the end, the writers decided that it would just be astronauts, and went for a surreal feel to the entire story, which featured people in astronaut suits smoking and drinking).
    – It allowed the artists to start before the writers knew who or what the characters were to that everyone could start at the same time – It’s impossible to tell the race, gender, sexual orientation, height, weight, species, planet, etc. of anyone in an astronaut suit. It obscures everything.

    In the end, the reason it was contentious was because some of us felt like the beginning should be determined during the event, or that there should be a meeting before hand among the writers. I’ll create a separate entry on this blog to discuss this topic, but there are many ways to go about beginning. In my view it was important to have everyone working together from the beginning, but you may feel differently and you might have a better idea.

    It is definitely true that giving an opening image like this did end up pushing everyone to stick with that opening image, which was not a goal we had initially. So, definitely consider the pluses and minuses to this approach.

    Location and Food
    We got a location in a space that was specifically for artists, and that was very lucky. We also had an amazing caterer, and that was great, because it meant no one had to go and figure out food.

    Having a space to get together is definitely necessary (whether physical or virtual) – this is about working together, but whether you do your own with catering (which can be quite costly) or in a bring your own food sort of situation is definitely worth considering and discussing with the participants.

    “Do I need to be there the whole weekend?”
    This was a big question for everyone coming to join the event, and initially we said “yes, absolutely.”

    But because of how the funding and planning came together, we had 6 weeks to make this event happen, and we needed to find people to join us.

    So we ended up letting people come for just one or two days of the event. There were drawbacks for this, but also benefits. It meant new blood came in throughout the event, but it also meant that we had fewer writers at the end than at the beginning.

    Balancing these benefits and drawbacks is worth considering.

    Did it work?
    We ended up with a 79 page story. There was a lot of post production work involved, some of it quite challenging, but we ended up with a beautiful product that managed to meet the goals laid out. And the people involved made connections, and had this book to show off. So, yes, I think it did – but I also think there’s a lot more that can be done with the concept.

  • Team Structure

    An example of an overall team structure

    The basic structure for a 48 hour graphic novel team is based around making sure everyone has a clear role in the process.

    The writers work together as a team. They plot out the story, and plan together. 

    Each writer has a team of 2 or more artists. In fact, the writer might also be an artist. The writer is in charge of that group of artists, and they all work together to get the story told that the writer wants to tell (though the writer should also attempt to tell a story that utilizes the skills of the artist).

    Throughout the 48 hour period, artists should feel free to trade to other teams. This might not be good for everyone (especially if you get into a good flow with your team mates), but it’s a good opportunity to work with different people, and to network. Writer’s would do well to watch out for artists who are drawing in a style that would work well with your story, too.

    Head writer

    I advise you to pick a head writer in the beginning of the event. This person can still tell their own part of the story, but will be tasked with keeping an overview on everyone else’s strands of the story. It’s especially good so that you have one person in a position to say what’s needed in the story to fill gaps and connections between stories. 

    This head writer concept comes from TV writing, where you have the showrunner for a TV show, with a room of writers putting together the overall story. The showrunner’s job is to make it all hang well together and fit as pieces of a whole. 

    Different styles of working

    There are many different styles of creating comics.

    • Single Artist “teams” are the norm in the EU and sometimes in the US. What this means is that everything is done by one person. 
    • Pencilers and Inkers are common in US comics, where the work is more of an assembly line of creators. The two creators split the work, with the penciler drawing the image and the inker applying ink to make it ready for printing. 
    • Roughs and Finishes are also often used in US comics, taking this idea tot he extreme. In it, one artist provides rough sketches of what they want, and the finisher fills out the art completely, filling in all of the details.
    • Background and character artists. This is how things work in animation usually, but also often in Japanese Manga where backgrounds might be drawn or purchased separately. 
    • Whatever method works for you. Honestly, while people will tell you there are rules, all anyone ever cares about at the printed pages. 

    With the first GNW, we wanted to have 2 person art teams to allow for the USA Penciler/Inker, Roughs/Finishes, or backgrounds/characters methodology. And while these are designed to each be a time saving process, you can also always just use the two person teams to get more art done by having two people drawing. In any event, part of the value of the event is getting people working together, communicating, and making connections.

    The goal is to allow every team to produce as many pages as they can – but unlike 24 hour comic day, you’re not expected to each do 24 pages on your own – Actually, so far as expectations go, some people work fast, some people work slowly and highly details. At the end of the day, you hope to have a mix of the two working for every writer. 

    Post-production during the even, where possible

    It’s really very useful to do the post-production on site during the event. This gives the chance for writers to have more control over their dialogue, and for everyone to see the project come together. The minute you get away from the event, everyone has to remember their intention, and meetings have to be pulled together.

    This is why it’s very recommended to have a team well versed in printing, layout, and all of the digital processes that will be necessary. This is a full time job, and so I recommend (from experience) that you plan for it, and accept that it will take a lot of work.

  • Introduction to the 48 Hour Graphic Novel

    Hi, I’m Dave, the co-creator, and idea man behind Graphic Novel Weekend or the 48 hour graphic novel. Admittedly, other people may have come up with this before, but I haven’t found any record of it – if you know of anyone, please let me know. 

    In this website, I’m going to bring together as much information as I can related to the concept, the goal, attempts that have been made both successful and otherwise. 

    If you want to contact me directly, I’m available at 48hourgraphicnovel at gmail dot com.

    What is Graphic Novel Weekend?

    Simply put, Graphic Novel Weekend, or a 48 hour graphic novel, is a single story graphic novel created by a combination of writers and artists over the course of a 48 hour period. 

    This is a serious challenge, because multiple voices and styles have to come together in a limited time and still manage to create a single coherent story. Communication has to be managed, corners have to be cut, and coffee has to be made. 

    How is this different from 24 hour comic day?

    The idea for the 48 hour graphic novel came from 24 hour comic day, and trying to find a way to make it a more collaborative process. The main differences are resources, time, and sleep. In 24 hour comic day, 1 person has to write and draw 24 pages in 24 hours. 

    With 48 hour graphic novel, groups are put together with one dedicated writer and several artists – and over the course of the weekend people may move from one group to another. 

    In addition, there is additional time – we have 2 or 3 separate days to work on the project (it depends on how the event is planned), and time to sleep is planned in. Sleep helps keep the mind sharp, and coherent, but also gives the ability to sleep on ideas and come up with new ways of doing things. 

    In a 48 hour graphic novel, some creators will create many pages, and some will work slower but with more focus – with this we balance the end project, but still finish it in one time, in one place, over a 48 hour period. 

    Why Create a 48 hour graphic novel?

    There are three reasons to create a 48 hour graphic novel. 

    First, the least important of these reasons is to have a finished graphic novel. If you’re joining into this project, you should really like comics, and that being the case, having more comics in the world is a great thing. And having a well made final product is great. However, the final product is the least important goal of this project – and it’s important not to lose sight of that fact.

    Second, of higher importance is what that graphic novel represents – this is a calling card for the creators involved. Credit is essential – and it must be 100% clear what was done by who. The creators will have something published that they can use to show off their capabilities. Sometimes it’s hard to create an entire project by yourself, but in a group, you can, and in the end to show this off it must be possible to see who did what in the book. 

    Third, and most important, is learning, networking, and connecting with others. The art world, and the world of an independent comic creator anywhere (or a European comic creator, in general) can be one of solitary creation. This is a situation where newer creators can learn from seasoned pros, and vice versa. Everyone has something to bring to the table, and something to learn as well as to teach. Really, the event should feel like a collaborative party in some regards. A time to learn and experience. 

    My own history

    Truthfully, I came up with this idea because of two separate events. First, I did a 24 hour comic day, by myself, shortly after moving to a new country. It was depressing and lonely. I craved a sense of community, but I thought about the process itself and realized that while I could go do a 24 hour comic day with a bunch of other people, I lived in a country where (at the time) I didn’t speak the language. I would have been alone in a crowd, and I wanted to be with people.

    Second, I realized that I’d had a half finished graphic novel sitting in my computer for years. Finding the time and energy to work on that was just not happening. I wanted to find a way to force the creation process. Not necessarily with that project, but with a project. And setting a time limit seemed like one way to do that. But an aggressive time limit had some requirements and we’ll discuss those and lessons learned in this website.