That was interesting.

When I started, I went to great lengths to set things up just so, so I bought a bendy phone holder that could clamp onto my drawing board and hold my iPhone for recording the drawings.

This way, I could show a realtime video of the process of each drawing, complete with commentary. Also, thanks to the iPadPro, I could also share the time lapse of each drawing each day on the blog. 

Depending on the day, I usually had something interesting to say–usually. 

Then, I’d load the video up into my YouTube channel, and I’d load up the time lapse as well, so people could check out both versions. 

By day nine, it became very apparent that no one was interested in the long videos with my commentary. Not that they were even that long– I think the longest one was maybe 18 minutes tops. The shortest was maybe seven minutes. 

But why watch the process over an excruciating 15 minutes when you can watch a quick minute or less of a time lapse?

Point taken, so by day 10, I stopped the videos and just did the time lapse. That was actually easier for me anyway.

It also proves that I’m not the guy to do presentations or draw in front of people in this set up, teach an online class or do commentary, I don’t think. Drawing yes. Talking while drawing? Not so much.

The next bit was probably the prompts. You had the regular Inktober prompts and then the specialized Jack Kirby themed Jacktober prompts featuring his creations and co-creations. 

I thought this was great because I figured that if I didn’t like the prompt from one list, I could slide over to the other one. Oooof. 

What I didn’t count on was the Scioli guy, who put together the Kirby list, front-loaded the vast majority of Jack’s good characters at the start, leaving us a whole load of 7th rate characters scattered on the back half, with only a very few highlights. If this guy wrote an “informative” book about Kirby, I hope it’s better formulated than the Jacktober list.

Between some of the “eh” prompts on the regular list and some of the Jack prompts, there were some low rent days. “Coral” might have been rockbottom. Or Turboteen. Or Mr. T.

Finally, there was the time factor. I never know how busy I’m likely to get on any given day, week or month, work-wise, so I figured it would be smart to work a little ahead, so if something came up, I could stay on schedule putting up the appropriate drawing for the appropriate day. So, I got a couple days ahead. The first two weeks turned out to be very quiet even with my folks here for the second week. So I got farther and farther ahead. Definitely wasn’t rushing.

Yeah, so I was done with all 31 days by October 15th. Hell, I’m writing this whole recap of the month on the 18th!

Now some might say, “oh, you broke the rules!”  Yes, well most people do in one way or another with this exercise. I know people who get busy and just skip days, or if they don’t like the prompt, they do something else. 

The whole point is to draw and learn. I usually end up drawing all the time anyway. It’s what I do. 

But as far as *presenting* 31 drawings in 31 days based on available prompts, now I’ve been there, done that, and I need never do it again. It was an interesting exercise.

Maybe next year, I do the NaNoWriMo or the 24 hour comic book challenge.

Or not. 

I won’t have to strictly maintain this blog every single day next year. That was the big impetus for me doing Inktober this year anyway.

So, we’ll see.

“Turboteen”. Guh.