Frank came to realize that you can’t do a favor for ONE Little Vampire without having to do a favor for all of them.

That’s the end of the Learning to Fly arc. Hope you enjoyed it! For my next trick, I’m going to need some volunteers from the audience.

Send-a-Word to the Top Hat of Random Topics

I need words. Normally, I bake them myself (always with extra chocolate chips). But I want to try YOUR delicious words and see what I can cook with them.

Here’s the background … I’ve been watching Penny Arcade’s Strip Search, a competition for web cartoonists. It’s often terrifying to watch, especially when I imagine myself in the scenarios that the contestants are put into. The elimination challenge is especially hard for me to sit through without needing to barf. The two artists choose a topic from the Wastebin of Broken Dreams, and have 90 minutes to create a comic based on those topics. That is like my worst nightmare on a stick (grilled without butter and served with balloons and spiders).

This nightmare scenario has, oddly enough, inspired me. Things that scare me tend to do that. That might be an artifact of my Brooklyn-upbringing or something. “You scaring me? I’ll show you.”

So I’d like to challenge myself by enlisting YOUR help to create my own collection of topics. I’ll be using a top hat instead of a waste bin, though, so I’m going to call this challenge the Top Hat of Random Topics. I want YOU to send me the topics!

Here are the guidelines:

The comic is all-ages, so keep the topics all-ages. Don’t send anything that Bugs Bunny and The Muppets wouldn’t do. The topics can be:

• Scenarios, such as BEING LOST (a topic from Strip Search)
• Time periods, such as THE FUTURE (a topic from Strip Search)
• Places, such as CIRCUS and COUNTRY FAIR (topics from Strip Search)
• Specific places, such as MONKEY’S EYEBROW, KENTUCKY (it really exists, look it up)
• People, such as CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS (they really exist, look them up)
• Specific real or fictional people, such as MILLARD FILLMORE (not sure if he really existed)
• Things, such as SHOWER CURTAINS (know those are for real for sure)
• Specific things, such as THE EIFFEL TOWER (l’exists pour real)
• Actions, such as DEFENESTRATION (stay away from windows ‘cause this one is scary for real)

The topics will go into the top hat, I will choose two at random and then create a comic based on those topics. Then it will be up to you to judge! Even if I come up with a truly lame comic, it should at least be entertaining to see what I did with the topics given. You know, in that train wreck kind of way. Will I be drawing these comics in 90-minutes? Not at first. But I do want to try at least one with that time-limit. I’ll warn you ahead of time. 🙂

So send me your nouns and verbs! Feel free to throw in some adjectives! Send as many as you can come up with! The more I have to choose from, the better.

You can send them to me in the following ways:

• E-mail them to rhicks@lunasea-studios.com with the subject line Top Hat
• Post them on the Little Vampires Fan Page on Facebook with the words Top Hat at the beginning of the post
• Post them on my Google+ page with the words Top Hat at the beginning of the post
• Message them to me on Twitter @RHicks with the words Top Hat at the beginning of the Tweet

Please include your full name so I can credit you for your idea should I choose it.

I hope this will be as fun for you as it will be challenging AND fun to me!