Last year I held a contest for folks to color individual comic strips for my book Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. It was so much fun to see everyone’s interpretations of my comics that I’ve decided to do it again!

The terms are almost exactly the same as last time, so get ready for some familiar-sounding description:

I’m inviting you to color one, two, three…up to six of my comic strips. The best entries will be printed in my next collection, Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters (scheduled for release by Dark Horse Books in April 2010), and will be credited to you and, if you like, your website. The best colorists will also receive payment for their work — I’m not looking for free labor here.

You have just under two weeks to participate! I’ll be accepting entries only through Sunday, September 13 (11:59 PM Pacific time) Update: The deadline has passed. Thanks to all who submitted!

Details are below the jump! Good luck to all.
Below you’ll find a link to download hi-res versions of the six comics that need coloring. Only colored versions of these particular comics are eligible for the contest!

I’ve provided layered .PSD files for each of the six comics. You can color the comics however you like, as long as you don’t change or distract from the joke. Creativity is a plus! Use your imagination. (Don’t worry about missing fonts; use the existing pixel data and I’ll replace them later.)

My single favorite submission for each of the six comics will be printed in Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters. (So your odds are better if you choose to color one of the more intricate images that fewer others might choose.) You may submit as many entries as you like. Last year’s entrants and winners are totally eligible to submit again, if you like.

For each comic chosen for publication, in addition to in-book credit the artist will receive their choice of either $25 cash or a $50 gift certificate good towards selected merchandise including Artist Edition books, signed prints, posters, certain styles of apparel, etc. So it’s possible for a single artist to earn up to $150 cash or $300 gift credit. I may award other prizes as well, if there are entries that I can’t print but nonetheless really like.

To submit, simply email me a .PNG or .TIFF of your finished, colored comic. (Flattened is fine, so it’ll fit in an email.) If you win, I’ll send you FTP info so you can upload a layered file. The comics MUST stay at full-size: 400 dpi, 2870 pixels wide. Email your submissions to davidmalki at gmail dot com, with the subject line “Colored #393″ (or whatever number).

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Blog.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

JoeUser

Er, Sept. 12 is Saturday!

Yiftach

September 12 is indeed a Saturday (it’s my birthday even!).

Also, if the new book is to be published in April 2009, it would take some fancy time-space-color continuum fixing to get the strips in it… You mean April 2010?

David Malki !

sigh. you guys and your “desires for accuracy.” The errors have been fixed!