Last Friday I had been to a Book release party in Denver. The party was in a small but lovely book store, Miss Prothero's Books. The book released was, 24 Hour Comic People Anthology - an competition that was held sometime in September '07; where the participants had to produce a 24 page comic story, in 24 straight hours. Reminded me of the NaNoWriMo, where Vyoma participated an year back; Where they had to complete a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Well, prize for both the competition were similar, if not the same. Everyone who completes the assigned effort is an winner. And in addition to that, you are left with an amazing sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, satiating the passion of the artist in you. Well, for the 24 hour Comic, there was a perk too. The work of all the winners was published in a consolidated format.

Lets get back to the release party now. Though I am not an artist, was invited to the party courtesy my friend Vyoma. It was nice though to meet, the people from "a different world". Well, how many commoners have understood artists, ever!! But the relief was, they were not talking all in alien language (comics...art!). They had their frustrations about, not putting enough effort and time for their art work. They had to crib about their daily jobs if they had one, and kids - how demanding and time consuming they were. There were refreshments, and then started the actually ceremony - the book reading part, artists reading out their own work of art. There were artists of all genre; beginners, amateurs and veterans. The ideas and the work was of all diverse field. Subject varied from aliens, politics, travelogue, real life and even abstract. The art work again was from stick figures, westernized Manga, and very detailed figured (you cannot imagine 24
pages of such work was drawn in just 24 hours). The book reading was so intriguing that, we stayed there till the end, though we had planned earlier to leave in an hour and half (because of the snow shower prediction for that night).

Well, at end of the party I was happy, content and inspired. By just being there and appreciating effort, idea and work of people who take their hobbies to the next level. This morning when I got up and thought of writing about this (something else was on my plan earlier), another thought crossed my mind; may be I can try out my hands in cartooning. It is not as difficult as I thought; I love stories and many times have build up one. I am not very good with drawings though, but can start with stick figures.