24-Hour Comics Day is an annual international creative challenge where artists each attempt to create a 24-page comic book story within 24 hours. It happens worldwide on the first weekend of October — that’s 3rd and 4th October 2020, across all time zones.
In 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Marco Davanzo, the main event organizer, has announced that all 24-Hour Comics Day events will be taking place online.
If you are taking the challenge this year and looking to join an existing group, the easiest way is to head over the “24-Hour Comics Day Online” group on Facebook and click into one of the rooms.
Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/24hour.comics
For you convenience, this link will take you directly into the “Rooms” section:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/24hour.comics/rooms
Once you’re in the group, look for the top menu and click on “Rooms”. You can then join any one of the available rooms.
Feel free to jump between the different rooms to say hi and see if you want to stay.
Each room is limited to 50 people, so if all the rooms are full, or if you want a room for you and your friends, you can easily create a new room of your own.
Here’s how. Just click on the “Create” button:
Enter the name of your city and indicate your time zone so that people who are awake at the same time can find your room. You can optionally choose an emoji. Then click “Save”.
At this point, you can copy the link to invite people who are not on Facebook. (This should theoretically work, but I have not tried it myself.) You can leave all the other options alone and click “Next”.
Now for the last step. You have to post an announcement about your room, otherwise the room won’t be created. Type in something like “I am Lex Luthor, join my room or die.” Nah, just kidding! Say something friendly about where you’re from and invite people to join. Then click on the “Post” button, and you’re done.
Now, you will see your new room listed among the others, and you can enter by clicking “Join”.
When you are in a room, you will see a row of icons near the bottom. I have added some tags in the screenshot below so you can see what each icon is for:
These icons are, from left to right:
- Share your screen
- See who is in the room right now
- Turn on/off your video
- Mute/unmute your mike
- Leave the room
Pretty standard features.
If you would rather not use Facebook, there are plenty of other options to choose from. I have put together a nifty summary of the major platforms and their available features in this article. These include mostly the free ones but also a paid Zoom option.
All the best for your challenge, and remember to have fun!
JF's Random Thoughts 