Anybody with a daytime job here who also does comics on the side?

[honeyandcreambutter]

So I'm a fresh graduate and I was going to take it slow (by not actively looking for employment) to work on my webtoons. Anyways, I came across a vacancy which was really hard to pass up so, I sent in my resume to that company a few weeks ago on an impulsive whim. I was 100% not expecting to get an offer since I was far from being qualified. Fast forward to today and I got a call from the boss asking if I could come to work mid-November. So yea... now I'm in a position where I totally did not expect to suddenly be employed on such short notice :')

Anywho, my question to all you full time or part time workers on this forum is: How do you juggle your daytime job and making webcomics without sacrificing your mental health? I'm worried cause my job will be a regular 9-5 from Monday to Saturdays and I take like 2-3 days on average to make one page. I was initially planning on releasing episodes on a weekly basis but I can't tell if that's a good idea to do that now. If anyone here has a great schedule or advice I could follow, I would love to see/hear about it!

[KoreanTacos]

Mmm, I have a 5-4 job 5 days a week and if the moon aligns I may actually keep my 2 days off a week. It's a true testament of how much I view accomplishing my goals. I keep a pretty strict schedule on what days I work on comics and what ones I don't, a lot of my comic making days are usually on same days I work. It's a challenge I will give it that, but on the plus side I don't view this as a "career" so I'm not as inclined to feel like I owe it to anyone if I don't work on my comic vs taking care of myself and my family with my real job.

long story short: You'll find a routine on how to do it.

[honeyandcreambutter]

Do you find yourself getting burnt out more often? And what happens on the days where you are too tired after work to continue drawing or working on your comics?

And that's true! I don't see doing comics as a career either but I'm very invested in it since I first started. I don't want to drop the story if I end up being too busy :') how long did it take you to find a routine?

[Legendofgenii]

I’m self employed, married with a four year old and I struggle to keep to any schedule. I think it takes me over two weeks per page (full colour), but my readers are all lovely and I’ve never received any complaints.

I think we are more harsh on ourselves than we need to be. Just take your time or make a buffer like some people do here. Pages will be ready when they’re ready though. Have fun!

[KoreanTacos]

At first I felt burnt out, I'm not a morning person, but the way I looked at it, I have so much open time, and even if it's just sketching out a page it's still an accomplishment in my book. It's a juggle to find the right way, it's hard to really grasp an idea of difficulty until after you experience what work life is going to throw you, and on days where I'm just too tired, just make the right decision and not work on anything, it'll reflect your work if you do.

During downtime at work I also work on rough outlines too. If you have a long lunch break you can use those to work on studies and what not if you have a phone or laptop. Or Sketch Book.

[honeyandcreambutter]

Lucky for me that I'm actually working on my buffer now! XD I'm just worried that when I actually start working, I'll get too tired to work on anything.

Also, taking care of a toddler is basically a 24/7 full time job in itself so I'm totally impressed! Yay for being a super parent I'm at the age where most of my friends are having families and I just don't see myself being able to juggle all that yet :')

[krissyhalo]

I'm a graduate but I still have to finish up my teaching credential. So I'm at a school 5 days a week but I also work about an hour afterward for four days a week. So I work at a part-time job, at a school, and I'm also working on comics after everything is said and done for the day.

It's crazy. XD

[honeyandcreambutter]

I'm not a morning person too so I feel ya :') also that's really good advice! I haven't worked for a couple of years because I became a student but when I did work, I was completely exhausted when I came back home. It's true that when you don't feel like drawing, it'll affect the quality by a ton! Better to save it for a day when you actually want to work on it.

And good idea! I work on my iPad so I can just bring it in to work with me. Thank you so much! You've given a lot of great tips.

[honeyandcreambutter]

Oh hey! Fellow teacher to be! XD That's absolutely insane schedule for you to have. Where do you find the time to squeeze in working on your comic?

[krissyhalo]

Well, the nice thing (actually it isn't nice) is that I had to evacuate twice due to CA fires. So I was able to create a three-week buffer through that because I knew I'd be busy.

But aside from that, I take each step one day at a time. One day I do the sketch, the next day I do the line art, and so on from there. What's also nice is that I limit myself to four panel comic strips.

HOWEVER, this Sunday I'm going to get out a comic that is related to Ink since now I have access to it, due to Inksgiving coming up.

[starry-sea]

^ this is a really good reply

I work a 9-5 too and it's basically about finding a routine and sticking to it the best you can. It's pretty difficult, but it gets easier with time

[teacup_creations]

Oh wow congratulations on the job!

I'm in a pretty similar situation to you. I work full time 9-5.30 Mon-Fri and I also work part time weekend nights (saving up for that house deposit so gotta hustle, lol) I actually made a similar post to this a few months ago and got some good tips if you wanna look at that:

Hi everyone! The question I want to pose to you all is, how do you find time to work on your own projects without burning out? I personally started working full time almost immediately after I graduated, and promptly fell off the face of the earth, abandoning practically all of my projects. I've only recently started getting back into drawing again but have found actually finding time between the full time job and general household chores to be practically impossible and would really appreciat…

I've since managed to develop a bit more of a method of handling everything.
- I now aim for about 1 page a week and split my workload into three tasks, sketch, inking, colours, which I know I can do in one afternoon. By doing that I more or less only have to work three days of my 7 day week and guarantee my Sunday off.
- I'm also lucky to get 21 paid days if annual leave a year and I like taking half days/ full days off every once in a while just to concentrate on non work related tasks, it helps a lot on my end.
But my comic is pretty simplistic so I can finish things with little time. I think something you can do is checking how much you can comfortably do without feeling stressed out and base your upload schedule on that.

[honeyandcreambutter]

Ahh lucky for you then! I technically had 1 1/2 month for buffering which was supposed to be 3 months if not for the sudden employment.

Ooh! That's good advice! So just schedule it one day at a time kind of thing ^^ I should do something like that too. I used to work in steps (sketch > line art > colour > typeset) but I threw it out by working on one panel per day XD

Good luck on the Inksgiving!

[honeyandcreambutter]

Hopefully finding a routine won't take so long :')

[honeyandcreambutter]

Thank you so much! Nervous to start working an actual job for the first time in my life :')

Your schedule sounds crazy! Working Mon-Fri AND weekend nights? I'd be too tired to do anything else honestly. Also, I'll be sure to check that out thank you

Wow, how do you do all sketching, inking and colouring in one afternoon? That's a really fast process! Also, super lucky that you get 21 paid leave days :') I should remember to ask about that when I make my contract this Friday! Thank you so much for the advice! Have you ever found yourself too tired to work though? Like being stuck in that resting phase for longer than a couple days?

[Puck]

I´m a musician, doing illustrations on the side and drawing comics is my hobby.
I define it as a hobby because I have no financial interest, I´m just doing it for the fun of it

[Rhonder]

Yup, I was in your boat a few years ago! It was only after I had graduated and gotten employed that I started to get back into making comics (prior I had done some comics in high school but I mostly took a break from drawing during college).

My advice is to first give yourself some time to just adjust to and get acquainted with your new job. Get a feel for what your schedule feels like with just 1 commitment to start. For me it was only several months after I started working that I decided that I wanted to figure out how to slot drawing back into the formula. For some it might take less time or others more.

When I finally buckled down and decided that I wanted to start drawing again even in my limited free time... I found it useful to actually do a drawing challenge tbh. Inktober of that year was the following month so I did that for the first time, but of course anything would work. In that case it was just building the habit of drawing again by doing a little something each day. The drawings weren't always gorgeous and some days I had to do 2 in one day or something in case I just didn't have time one day after work or other plans, but somehow I was able to complete the whole month and that set the foundation that I needed to begin working on comics. Once you figure out how to draw literally every day (or almost) then finding a few times in an average week to sit down and get some work done is easier!

I don't think doing a challenge is necessary per se, but I think it would be good to try to draw consistently for a period of time like that before deciding to embark on your comic journey because you can then get a more realistic idea of how much time you'll have and thus how long things will take you to complete which is important for big picture scheduling.

Lastly my most important tip for maintaining mental well-being and just juggling multiple balls like this is to be kind to yourself. Part of the above habit-building stage is to figure out how much you can realistically get done per week/month while working, so set your comic schedule accordingly. Don't try to match someone else's schedule arbitrarily, find one that works for you. Whether that means weekly uploads or bi-weekly, or monthly, or whatever. Also allow yourself to sometimes miss self-imposed deadlines and don't beat yourself up over it. When I started my first comic I was fired up, and so I had a really consistent and rigorous schedule of a page a week uploads where I was actually drawing 2-3 per week. But that only lasted for a few months. After I settled into the realities of how that was negatively effecting my other hobbies and social life I dialed it back quite a bit, until eventually settling into week-and-a-half or bi-weekly updates which just worked better with my schedule.

in short, it's absolutely doable So far I've made 1 70-page comic while working full time over the course of about 14 months, and I'm currently working on another one behind the scenes (after taking a like 6 month break xD)

[ninjashira]

Yeah I'm currently in college, and I have a part-time job at a library, and I'm the VP of the Sequential Art Club, and I'm a peer tutor for my department at college, plus I'm doing my Tapas comic that updates twice a week, and I'm in the middle of obtaining a literary agent and pitching a graphic novel to editors. To say I'm swamped would be an understatement.

The most important thing for me, I think, is still making sure to have time for zoning out and watching cartoons or playing mindless video games, to give my brain some down time. And for my comic, having a huge buffer has been my life saver. I draw it in big batches between school semesters and set it to auto-update for the next several months so I don't have to worry about it while I'm trying to keep up with classwork and day job and everything on top of it.

Just remember that, if it's too much and you are too stressed, you can always take a break from your comic for a bit. It's not worth your mental health if it becomes a little overwhelming.

[sartinjacqueline05]

I just got my first job a few weeks ago. Still getting used to it. I took a long break after college and used that time to start my comic. After recovering from covid i decided I was ready to start working and use my earnings to pay my student loans. I figured it was a good time to start that since my comic is on hiatus. Next year in January i will be continuing my comic and that is when I'll have to manage both schedules. But I'll probably be used to my job by then so it should be fine. I work part time morning shifts so that gives me all afternoon to do art.

[krissyhalo]

Thanks, I'll do my best! Working in steps just makes the workload a lot easier but I think it just depends on how much time you have. Working a panel a day works as well!