In the summer during the pandemic during 2020 Imaginary Friends design studios wanted to inspire some local creativity in Yuma, Arizona. Rapidly it issued the challenge to local artists that they would put together a contest for an original Graphic Novel. The contestants would be judged by the Chief Geek at Imaginary Friends design studios, Jon Michael Perry, a Yuma Artist, Lia Littlewood, comic illustrator, Franchesco, and comic creator and independent publisher, Greg Harms.
The rules were simple and brutal: in one month create a graphic novel of at least 40 pages from scratch. Best art plus story wins!
The Reward? To have their book come to life as a perfect bound graphic novel. To be part of the production process, learn about paper types, pricing of printing and material, guided upon some other subtler secrets, and to have 50 of their book printed and sold by Imaginary Friends. All proceeds minus sales tax and credit card processing fees would go to the winner for this initial run!
At the end of the month a few submittals met all the criteria above. With several entries the judges narrowed it down to 2 contestants and gave both of them the opportunity to do any last minute updates. A few weeks later a winner was chosen and work had begun to make the final work.
Today we are thrilled to announce Destructo Boy And Other Exciting Tales by Blake Wilde is for sell on our Merch Site at https://hypeif.com. This custom, perfect bound book is the creative child of our winner Blake Wilde and is printed with a 10 pt c1s cover and luxurious eggshell text body. It contains 3 wholly original stories and decisively deserves to win!
For summer of 2021 Imaginary Friends will produce this contest again and some of the rules will change. It still will need at least 40 pages long, and now there will be 3 months to produce it in. Can be digital, at print resolution, or hand drawn. More details and specifications to come soon.
Once again congratulations Blake! Please don’t forget us little people once you have made it big!
