Hourly Comics Day has come and gone! I’m lazy and I haven’t scanned my comics from yesterday in yet. And Colin Tedford will hopefully be posting his soon too. Until then, here’s a few hourly comics from Trees & Hills folks and a few other we like a lot.

(The art above is from Tim Hulsizer’s comic this year)

Tim Hulsizer (NSFW)

Lucy Knisley

Dean Trippe

Box Brown

John Campbell

It’s time once again for Hourly Comic Day! On February 1, cartoonists around the world will draw a journal comic for each hour they are awake. Here’s the skinny from Hourly Comic inventor John Campbell:

“THE GUIDELINES:

-for every hour that you are awake on february first (that’s february first for whatever time zone you happen to be in), you make a comic describing something about the past hour. maybe you ate some cereal? maybe you used the restroom?

-say you wake up at 7am. make a comic some time before it becomes 8am! then after 8am, make a comic before it becomes 9am! it is pretty simple.

-when you are done, scan the comics in and post them on the message board (this year’s will be HERE, and previous years went HERE and HERE.) , so we can all look at each other’s days. i think that will be neat!”

I just wanted to post a few FREE tools that have come up recently, since they might be of use to hard-working (penny-pinching) comics creators:

• http://bananalbum.com/ = A graphics portfolio tool currently in vogue with the Cowboy Orange gang. It gives a lovely smooth presentation of your graphics, but is it searchable by other sites?
• http://www.digication.com/ = Online portfolios, mostly used by art schools and for some other educational applications. Potentially good for clear, simple, easily navigable graphical presentations.
• http://www.google.com/analytics/ = This is some really cool site traffic software! You sign up, add some code to your site’s pages, then sit back and watch your visitors crawl around… They’ll also help you set “goal” pages that you want to make sure people tend to visit. Intriguing for the online promotion biz! (Alec Longstreth blogged it recently, so you know it’s the real thing.)
• http://www.google.com/calendar/ = I just have to mention this, too. Colin’s right. It’s awesome.

I’m interested in these sorts of tools, because they could be really useful for community groups and schools and kids who want to promote and publish their grassroots comics efforts.

What are some other tools out there that we should know about?

Western Massachusetts cartoonist Hilary Price will present her new book Pithy Seedy Juicy Pulpy at Broadside Books in Northampton, MA at 7pm on Tuesday, January 22. The book compiles many of her syndicated Rhymes With Orange strips, along with a mighty multitude of extras.

The Trees & Hills Comics Distro is under reconstruction; unrelated troubles caused some delays, but I’m hoping to have it finished and up to date soon (maybe within a week or so). When that’s done, I’ll begin work on the main site. Marek Bennett has been bubbling and frothing (so to speak) with blogging ideas, so the new, not-yet-entirely-settled-upon look will be more of a change than originally planned. If you have any suggestions, send them to treesandhills at gmail dot org.

Megan Baehr also recently redesigned her website, hopping on the WordPress bandwagon. Where will this madness end?!

I hope everyone is having a nice 2008 so far. Marek Bennett has redesigned his website around the popular Wordpress blogging platform, and now has individual feeds for Mimi’s Doughnuts and his comics workshops. You may notice several of those entries in the trusty T&H Blogwatch Box right here; that’s because sometimes when you add a new feed to Google Reader, it treats all the existing posts as brand new. C’est la vie…

The Trees & Hills website is due for a makeover as well. I’ll be working on this, also using Wordpress, and hope to have it done this month. I think I am going to convert the distro first, then the rest of the site. As with any construction project, things may go wonky for a little while, so please bear with us. It’ll be much nicer in the end, though!

The Stars & Skulls Crafty Craft Fair (in Holyoke, MA Dec. 2) was fun, and I sold a decent amount of comics. Nice people fed me weird chocolates, and other nice people fed me soup. I saw three mohawks, two of which appear below (the little kid wandered off too quickly). Here are some sketches from that day, for those of you who weren’t there:

I don’t have a camera, but I’ve finally starting sketching from life somewhat regularly, so here are some drawings from the New Stars release party at Comic Boom. We have: pastries Dan Barlow brought (sent by Phayvanh Luekhamhan), Marek Bennett making music, the Sputnik pinata, and Comic Boom owner Corey Milotte doing important work.

Presenting some unofficial PHOTOS from the event!

Here, Colin & Megan deal with a big crowd around the display table…

And here, the chief architects of the Trees and Hills Sputnik Project reveal their handiwork to the press. The elegant basketball-sized device boasts a gleaming aluminum coating, and a core of unknown composition, possibly enriched candy.

Thanks to Keene’s own COMIC BOOM for hosting the event!

Moving on from the release party (though photos & sketches should appear at some point), Trees & Hills will have a table at the Stars & Skulls Crafty Craft Fair Saturday, December 1 from 10am-5pm at the American Legion Hall, 162 Russell St., Hadley, MA. Anne Thalheimer and (I think) E.J. Barnes will also have tables.