An Elf, Speed, And Blown Deadlines! Oh Sh*t.

No, not speed the drug, speed in the sense that I drew my ass off and nearly f*cked up a promise made to a fan.

Me and the the first comic group I worked with (Helock Comics) would attend a yearly Comic Con held in Cape Girardeau, Missouri called Cape Con. It was the first comic show that we all attended when we started out and it was located in my friend's (and writing partner's) hometown. So we would go every year to peddle our recently scribbled comics and hang out with some friends.
As we started producing more work and slowly honed in our craft we started to gain a bit of attention from local Comicon goers. A few years ago the head of the publishing side of our group decided to hold a contest to try to get Cosplayers involved with comic creators (Cosplayers and Comic Creators have a history of being rivals). The contest was simple, we would do a raffle with Cosplayers who dressed up as their own original characters and whoever won would get to have one of our artists draw them a decent sized illustration of said character. It was a quick, first day of Comicon adrenaline induced idea. A fun one, but not one with a lot of thought put into it.
Needless to say, at the end the show only one person entered the raffle. There was also, somewhere, a miscommunication that we would draw and ENTIRE comic based on their character and not just a single image.
This was not the fault of the person who entered the contest, this one was on us.
The winner of the contest was a young girl who always cosplayed her own original characters and her family was really excited about this idea. This year she had created a character who was a wood elf, and as the head of our group did not want to disappoint her he said we would have a comic made about fher character by the next show.

Well.... uh...... we kinda f*cked up.

Everyone in our group works full time jobs along with making comics.
I'm not making excuses and I'm not proud of this, none of us are, but we completely forgot to do the comic.
To be completely honest everyone's best intentions were there, but we really didn't think anyone was looking at us as legitimate comic artists, nor did we think they expected us to actually product something of substance. If there is a lesson to be learned in this story today it is to ALWAYS follow through on your promises. Reputation is a big deal in this industry at any level.

So the next year rolls around and we are setting up our booth. The first person to walk up to our table is the girl and her family, faces glowing, ready to check out the comic that we had been working on all year!
Our lead dude's face went white... we had no comic for her.
We all felt horrible. We all screwed up by not taking this on, or designating it to anyone. We all though someone else in the group would take care of it. Well, we were honest with the girl and her family and told her what had happened.
Luckily, they were incredibly understanding of the situation. So we promised them again that we would have the comic ready by the following year.

Me and my writing partner decided we would take the responsibility and do it. He decided that it may be a better idea, to ensure that we actually COMPLETE the damn thing, for him to write it as a short story and include some splash pages of art within the book.
So we set to work. I really gave some thought into the first few pages I was drawing. I wanted them to look REALLY good for this family. Well, the first two pages turned out fantastic. I was really pleased with them. The problem was... they took me months to do....
That's the thing with a deadline, it just sort of looms overhead until all of a sudden there it is! 4 days away and you only have two of the eight pages finished.
Well sh*t, there is no way in hell that I wasn't going to have this finished in time for the show. So, I drew and inked six pages in four days. This was lighting speed for me considering the first two pages took months to finish.
In the end we finished the book.
We actually got three other artists to do some fantastic splash pages of this girls character. The con came, the family showed up, and they were ecstatic about the book. We were also able to give the girl the original art to ALL of the splash pages the other artists had drawn for her (including my cover drawing).
We were really happy that we made it all come together. The girl and her family were incredibly excited, and we finally came through on our promise. Not only that, but I learned that I CAN draw fast if I have too.

Below are the pages of the book. You will notice that the first two are much more thought out than the rest, but thats what you get if you give yourself enough time to do the work you need to. Though the rest of the pages are drawn more quickly I was pleased with the fact that I was able to finish them. They really aren't too terrible now that I look at them again. Remember kids, KEEP YOUR PROMISES! You only make yourself look like an ass if you don't follow through, and if you can't (or don't want to) do something within a promised time frame, then don't take the gig.

Again, the first two pages shown here took a total of about one and half to two months to do. The other six pages were drawn and inked within four days.