RSSCategory: Challenge Info

2011 Challenger: Chris Gladis

| October 29, 2011 | 2 Comments

I found this competition and thought it would work really well with the NaNo project that I’m preparing for this year. At first I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, since I’m already working on a daily writing project, but then I realized that there was no real reason I couldn’t. All I had to do was finesse the definition of a “novel.”

I’m going to go for a single, overarching theme that can be divided into five parts – one for each week – and write stories based on that. My first impulse was the classical elements – earth, air, fire, water and aether. Each element gets a week, and the stories in that week are somehow related to that element. I’ll keep looking for sets of five that might lend themselves to this kind of structure, but you get the idea. In the end, I’ll have a thirty-story anthology that is, if all goes well, over 50,000 words.

This means, of course, that I will need to create at least 30 new characters over the course of the month, across several different genres. Frankly, I have no idea.

Unfortunately, I’m not much of an artist. But I can use those word-things to describe the people in my head, so that will do nicely.

Looking forward to it!

2011 Challenger: Brooke Pettry

| October 29, 2011 | 0 Comments

Hello!

My name is Brooke and I will drawing for this November challenge. I heard about this lovely little activity through a few of my previous professors and decided this would be fun and really awesome. I have no idea what I might create but I know I want to focus on alternating between female and male for each day as well as going with the flow and having some stylized and others more realistic.

I use digital painting programs as a medium and will use this challenge to better myself and to get the creative ideas flowing from my head.

2011 Challenger: Josh Acocella

| October 28, 2011 | 0 Comments

I’m relatively new to the writing game being only a high schooler and my first year doing the challenge, but don’t count me out just yet. Over the next thirty days i want to develop an idea in pre-production and I’m hoping this gives me an opportunity to explode with creativity. Though I won’t be representing my characters through visual designs I hope to articulate them thorugh other ways such as: bios, appearance, and possibly a character interview. My goal is to immerse myself in a world of my design over the next thirty days and come up with 30 new characters and ideally 30 new stories.

2011 Challenger: Patrick Smith

| October 28, 2011 | 0 Comments

Greetings from the apocalyptic wasteland of New Jersey! My name is Patrick Smith and this is my first year tackling the 30 Character Challenge. I’m coming at this as a writer so I’m really going to try and come at each character in interesting ways to make your reading experience more enjoyable. Although if the mood takes me I might bust out the old sketchbook. Pray that doesn’t happen…trust me.

I am a staff writer over at Guerrilla Geek and I hope that working on characters here will be the push I need to get back into creative writing.  I’m also on the twitter @Pathasabeard where I write regurgitated movie Quotes and the occasional snarky comment.

I’m very much looking forward to pushing myself creatively and seeing what everyone else brings to the table. I hope that at the end of this to make some cool new friends and maybe some future collaborators!

 

2011 Challenger: Eadge

| October 28, 2011 | 2 Comments

 

Hello fellow Character Creators!

My name is Eddie Nieves but my friends call me Eadge. Please be my friend.

I’m a freelance artist/illustrator based out of Los Angeles. I’d never heard about the 30 Characters Challenge until a recent post on iFanboy by Paul Montgomery pointed it out to me. I’d heard of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month Contest, which also takes place in November. I was thinking of doing that but this is a lot more appealing to me. That and Paul Montgomery is my hero.

I’m really excited to see what everyone comes up with.

Please feel free to check out my work here:

eadgeart.blogspot.com

http://eadgery.deviantart.com/

http://www.facebook.com/EadgeArt

You can also follow me on Twitter @Eadgery

2011 challenger : Jay Faulkner

| October 26, 2011 | 0 Comments
Jay - Headshot

Jay - Headshot

Hi there everyone, as you will no doubt have already gathered from the subject my name is Jay.  I attempted this thing last year and even though I didn’t finish all 30 characters I LOVED Tyler’s concept for 30Characters so much that I have come back for more even though I am not an artist! 🙂

… I suppose, at best, I would be willing to call myself an enthusiastic sketcher who happens to have a degree in art but, being honest, never has (or makes) the time to draw in order to improve.

That could be because I work full-time as an IT Services Manager, teach two martial art classes, run two indy publishing ventures, write my own fiction and still try to at least let my wife and kids (two boys – Mackenzie who is 4 years old and Nathaniel who is 2 years old) remember who I am 😉

Excuses aside I fully intend to do better than last year and, to that end, will have a piece of creative fiction written for each of my 30 characters and (Flying Spaghetti Monster willing) also some artwork to go with each and everyone of them … that’s the plan, at least but I also planned to spend the last couple of weeks researching and plotting out my characters – instead I spent the last couple of weeks pretty ill with bronchitis and 10 days in hospital being helped to breathe.

Hey – plans, ey!? 😉

Anyhoo, same as last time the honest reason for taking part in 30Characters is pretty simple: to have fun. I don’t have a comic, I am not planning to pitch for a comic, I am not thinking about going back to art full-time. I’m just here to put some of the ideas spinning around in my head down onto paper and see what they look like. I am pretty sure that they will be (mostly, at least) super-hero based, though I ‘may’ attempt to sketch out some of the characters from current and upcoming stories too.

If you want you can find out more by visiting www.jayfaulkner.com

For now though, and try to put something ‘arty’ into this introduction (as well as steal a phrase from all good kid’s TV shows) you can see some of my artistic attempts here – http://jayfaulkner.com/gallery/ – and, to whet your appetite, here are some sketches that I made ‘earlier’ 🙂

Dragon - Ink Motormouth - copyright Marvel UK / Paul Neary Spider-Man - copyright Marvel

The next two images were created for Martin Eden, creator/owner of Spandex (http://www.spandexcomic.com), for a month long theme he called ‘Japandex’. In his own words this was “To celebrate the Spandex team’s trip to Tokyo in issue 2, Spandex creator Martin organised ‘Japandex’, a very special online gallery of Japanese-related art – with a Spandex twist!! The artwork was provided by some of the UK’s top artistic talent and debuted in June 2010. You can see it all here: http://spandexcomic.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/japandex-thank-you-copy-copy.jpg

My contribution was my ‘take’ on Neon and Glitter, inspired by traditional Japanese images:

Glitter - Spandex Comics, by Martin Eden Neon - Spandex Comics, by Martin Eden

2011 Challenger: hwang

| October 26, 2011 | 0 Comments

Hi guys

my name is Huang Chenyang – or hwang for short

I’m from Singapore and is trying out this challenge for the first time

you can find comics i draw on

redmonstercomics.com

tks and cheers

captain amercia fanart

2011 Challenger: Ralph Contreras

| October 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

SHAZAM! Hey everyone!
My name’s Ralph Contreras, I’m an alumni of the awesome 30 Character Challenge. This will be my 3rd time around. The first year I completed the challenge, but last year I didn’t. I’m determined to see the whole thing through this year. It’s a great challenge and I’m really looking forward to it. In past years I’ve made some great online friendships with fellow creators.  I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing characters everyone will create this year.

I’m a huge comic nerd with aspiration of working in the comic field professionally. Comics have always been a part of my life. I even owned and ran my own comic book shop. For the past few years I’ve really been trying to make the dream a reality. I setup a personal blog Comic Book Graphic Design, where I combine my comic artwork with my graphic design skills. I post all my sketches, character designs and comic book resources to help other aspiring comic artists in this journey too. I’ve very excited to announce my first self created comic project will be seeing print in early 2012, Amazing Hero Adventures (website under construction). Several characters in the comic were created during the 2009 & 2010 Character Challenge.

For this challenge I’m planning on getting some characters fleshed out for several comic stories bouncing around in my mind. I’ll be using this as my starting point, the challenge always sends my mind to all sorts of directions during the month. This year my goal is to pencil, ink and digitally color all character designs.

Check out my characters for the last challenges: 2009 Challenge, 2010 Challenge

Samples of some Character Designs.

Let’s be Friends!  Connect with me on my Blog & other sites!

2011 Challenger: Jules Rivera

| October 22, 2011 | 3 Comments

My name is Jules Rivera and this my second year tackling the 30 Characters Challenge.  I am a webcomic artist responsible for writing/drawing comics Valkyrie Squadron and previously Marsh Rocket.  I am also taking up artist duties on Hard Graft in the near future.  As far as published comics goes, I am credited with color assists on Joe Mulvey’s SCAM.

My intent with this year’s challenge is to develop my character reportoire in new, different directions with a focus on character design on production (i.e. turnaround sheets).  I’ve always meant to expand my portfolio and I feel that this challenge helps me to accomplish that.

I met a few cool challengers from last year and I look forward to meeting even more new people this year.  Good luck everyone!

2011 Challenger: Aaron Goldy

| October 21, 2011 | 0 Comments

I quit drawing in high school and only picked it back up a few years ago. To facilitate my attempt to climb the learning curve I launched a website and started this wonderful idea that’s completely original to me called the 30 Days Project in which I draw one piece on a specific topic every day for 30 days. This will actually be my tenth 30 Days series, and my second 30 Days of Characters.

 

Concurrent with my pursuit of the arts I quit my soul-sucking, cubicle-dwelling IT job and my wife and I began traveling.  In the past year we have lived in Los Angeles CA, Tucson AZ, Port Charlotte FL, Boston MA, and Ann Arbor MI.  If we’re really lucking I’ll be completing most of the 30 Characters Challenge from somewhere in Hawaii.

Grand Wanderer

Evil Office Monkey, 30 Days of Characters, GrandWanderer.com

 

2011 Challenger: Saad Azim

| October 20, 2011 | 0 Comments

Self PortraitUhhh… Hi. Like the title states, my name is Saad Azim. I’m a freelance artist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. I have waaaaaay more interest in cartoons, comics and videogames than I probably should. So much so, I spent a decent part of last year understanding the image “format” supported by the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System; because really, if you can’t create artwork that can theoretically run on an NES, what’s the point of creating it?

I found out about the 30 Character challenge from Vito Delsante, and figured it would make for an interesting challenge. I’m aiming for … something different? Weird as it may sound, I’d prefer not to think about this until November starts. I mean if I’m thinking about the characters before November 1st, they no longer fall under the 30-day-30-character rule, do they…?

What else… my single biggest artistic influence is Sergio Aragonés. Don’t know if it shows though. Errr… that’s all.

2011 Challenger: Thaddeus Howze – Hub City Blues

| October 6, 2011 | 0 Comments

Welcome to Hub City Blues, a character database I am creating for the 30 Character Challenge.

This contest is designed to foster creativity in artists and writers to create new character designs. The mission: Create a new character every day in the month of November. Creating compelling characters is a part of either medium, so it’s a skill well worth developing.

I am not an artist, I am a writer. Since this contest was originally for artists trying to experiment with different styles, it works a little bit different for writers. The contest is to challenge writers to create characters with compelling backgrounds that would make people want to read about them. Not as visually satisfying as art, so I suspect it is more challenging to maintain the attention of readers (especially if they are really looking for art).

To help readers (and myself), I sometimes find artwork and create characters inspired by that artwork. It doesn’t mean I could not have done it without the art, its more that the art connects with something in my head and my character makes sense to me. Sometimes the art’s background may inspire an idea or theme that may permeate the work. Unless I commission a piece, it is rare that the work being paid homage to has any knowledge this is happening. So in respect for each work, I will be pointing back to the source of the art and the name of the artist if it can be found. I will give credit and links to artists who have inspired my creativity.

Since I am a working writer, most of these characters will be coming from works in progress, stories I am about to be publishing or novellas whose future is not in doubt. It is likely that each profile will be of different density depending on the depth of the work, and the amount of development I have done with the character in question. I may also make links to stories if they are already in play online somewhere so you can see how they were used.

The website’s name comes from a series of short stories centered in a place called Hub City, a city of the future, whose promising beginnings have been overrun and become instead, a hive of tech-saavy scum and villainy. Hub City’s police force, locally called the Hub City Blues, have done their best to control this recent invasion of organized crime, but is unable to stem the tide.

A year ago, Hub City was under siege by a new monster seeking to establish order; his order. By any means necessary. His name is Hyde. Universally feared, he is death incarnate. Criminals fear him, the police despise him and no one knows who is is or what he wants. All they know is, if you are a criminal and he finds you, you better hope you find a cop first. Otherwise, you’re dead. Hyde, Portrait of a Modern Monster.

Welcome to Hub City. Obey the laws and enjoy your trip.

Thaddeus Howze