John Campbell drops us a note about the second annual Hourly Comic Day, coming up Feb. 1:

February 1, 2007, is the second annual Hourly Comic Day–an event where cartoonists draw journal comics to document each hour of their day. More than 100 participants from around the world took the challenge last year, making Hourly Comics showing how they spent an average day: working, travelling, napping, even going to the bathroom. Contributors showed us the passage of their lives through one rotation of the Earth.

The project began with Chicago-based cartoonist John Campbell. Each January, Campbell painstakingly chronicles the moments of his life in hourly journal comics. The Hourly Comic is viewable on Campbell’s website, http://hourly.stereotypist.com, and updates each hour in January with a new comic from his adventures the previous day. In a webcomic market overcrowded with daily journal strips, Campbell’s work explores the organic rhythms of his life in rigid hourly increments. Moments of joy, tragedy and humor stand out in sharp relief when laid against the tedium of hourly existence.

The challenge of the project appealed to other cartoonists and Hourly Comic Day 2006 expanded Campbell’s project to a global level. All over the world, no matter their time zone, no matter their talent level, professional and amateur cartoonists alike were drawing the sweep of an entire day and showing a panorama of modern life. You can read last year’s entries here.

Now, in 2007, we’re hoping to make the project even bigger. The rules are simple:

1. For every hour that you are awake on February 1, 2007, make a comic describing something about the past hour. Maybe you ate some cereal? Maybe you rode the subway? So if you wake up at 7 a.m., make a comic some time before 8 a.m. Then, after 8 a.m., make another one before it becomes 9 a.m.

2. When you’re done, scan the comics in and post them here: http://www.tencentticker.com/msgbrd/.

Don’t think you draw very well? It doesn’t matter–if you’re awake on February 1, 2007, you’re already qualified to participate. Show everyone how much you hate your alarm clock, what you eat for breakfast, the bland jokes your co-workers make and the song you sing to yourself in the shower. Nothing’s too silly or too mundane on Hourly Comic Day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 11:27 am and is filed under Creators, Events, Internet, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.