SAWGUST is just around the corner!!!
SAWgust is coming!
SAW + August = a whole month of comics-making fun! Come join for community, a goal, encouragement, and art excitement!
It's free, welcome! SIGN UP HERE:
Here’s some info courtesy of first SAWgust regent Susan Marks!
What exactly is SAWgust?
The idea for SAWgust is based on NaNoWriMo—a longstanding challenge for people to write 50k words, a novel, in the month of November. People declare their goal, write their words each day and write a novel in the month.
How do I choose a goal?
Translating this kind of challenge to comics is interesting!
Pick a Goal that’s a Stretch
The idea is for you to pick a goal that’s a “good stretch”, a challenge: maybe more pages, panels or hours spent working on your comics in a month than you usually do. But your challenge may be realistically way bigger than mine, and that’s ok because we are a supportive and inclusive community here at SAW. My goal might be bigger than yours but then I’m retired and have no dependent humans and pretty reasonable pets. But I’m helping coordinate the event so I need to take that into account. You may have a vacation scheduled with your family for a week in August so you need to take that into account.
Choose a goal that you can succeed at
We all will be winners. But meeting your goal feels particularly sweet.
Even if you don’t quite make your target “at the end of the month you have comics created that did not exist on July 31st.
2 levels of Goals:
We’re offering INTENSE goals or CYOG (Choose Your Own Goal). Two flavors.
Intense we ask that you set a goal of >=32 pages or 100 panels.
Examples:
30 pages of a brand new comic
30 pages fully colored and inked
20 pages of a Daily Diary Comic
60 scripted and thumbnailed comic
Choose Your Own Goal (CYOG):
Examples:
2 hours/day (60 hours total) writing a new comic
10 Diary Comics
Want to work for the next FLOW Anthology?
Our next FLOW + PUBLISH anthology will be called THE DIVIDE. If you are in FLOW, the dates are JULY 31- pitch, with SEPT 15, first draft. See more here: https://members.sawcomics.org/posts/next-flow-anthology-the-divide
Do I have to start something brand new?
No. You can finish up something you’ve started. You can do one entire pass (script, or thumbnail, or ink, etc.). You can revise something you’ve done before. While lots of people get real satisfaction about starting and finishing something brand new, others like getting one of the languishing monkeys off their back.
Do I have to finish something in order to “win”?
You get to decide what winning looks like for you. Depending on the overall size of the project you’re working on, finishing it in a month might not be possible (e.g. a 300 page graphic novel), or if you work in batches (like thumbnailing that 300 page graphic novel before you start inking), getting through that full pass might be herculean. This is where translating the 50k words in a month into comics-land gets challenging.
I can’t think of anything related to a comic that you couldn’t turn into a SAWgust goal.
Checklist for considering your goal:
Is it a bit of a stretch for you?
Do you feel 90% confident that you can meet this goal?
Are you excited about this goal?
You can do it! Let's go SAWGUST!