Comic setback tragedies. Coping with loss

[epiale]

So, I think everyone has some horrible tale of losing work on their comic.

Maybe, like me, you accidentally threw out an entire binder full of early concept art along with the entire first three rough drafts for the story a few years back.

Maybe, also like me today, your computer royally screwed you and you lost a finished page before it could be posted.

Maybe it was something else entirely.

This is a thread for telling these tragic tales, and comforting each other. Also for tips on how to deal with loss like this. Because, let's face it, losing a page you spent forever on is a nightmare, and can be incredibly disheartening. (especially the day you were supposed to upload it like, GD)

Misery loves company.

Share your tales of woe, haha.

(also inbf "back up your stuff", I do, in fact that's the only reason I still have the sketch for the page to rebuild off of, but my only backup method is clunky, and I don't tend to back things up every single time I update them. DX)

[hades]

I had to completely restore my laptop and lose a ton of early concept work, pages, scripts, commissions, refs, etc........twice in one month.

That was a rough month.

[epiale]

Oh god, that's nightmarish. D :

I'm sorry to hear that, but impressed you kept pushing through!

[Nat]

Oh gosh @epiale I'm so sorry this happened to you!

Losing my comics on my computer is my biggest fear. It happened once but luckily I was able to retrieve everything (I have a computer wizard for a brother).

But hey you can also see this as an opportunity? (if you squint reaaaaally hard :D) No seriously, the more you draw the better you get. If you end up redrawing all the work you've lost it will be at least twice as good as it was before
YOU CAN DO THIS!!

[TAMAnnoying]

First off huggles for you for having to deal with that,

second i live in Florida so before I got a lap top I worked on a monitor and whenever even the slightest amount of rain started poring there was always a chance of the power going out (even for just two seconds) and me loosing everything I worked on. It got me used to saving at least once an hour or so.

sometimes theres a silver lining, sometimes when you start over it can be better then the first time. :v either way it sucks but take care and try not to let it ruin your day.

[noctuidae]

back in september a robbery caused me to lose ~7 years of artwork as well as the .psd's to the first chapter of my comic. it didn't deter me from continuing to draw, but it's a bit of a bummer to not have the original files/concept work anymore. :\ At least I keep the basic outline in my notebooks!

I store my stuff in the cloud now, lol.

[DynamoToon]

It happened to me. Episode 14 of Room for Improvement was a catastrophe. I literally rage quit I was so mad. I think what makes you most angry is the realization that you've spent hours on your comic for nothing. One of the worst feelings ever.

[AnnaLandin]

I spent three whole days in complete panic once, because I'd lost my plot-notes for Grassblades. They were just gone. The entire outline, all the loose ideas for new scenes and plot-twists, every detailed character-backstory - heck, even the page-breakdown for the upcoming chapter - all gone.

I managed to find them again after tearing my room apart looking for them, frantically re-contstructing the bits I could rememember just in case I couldn't find them, but yes. NOT FUN.

And the lesson we learn from this, kids, is to never keep every important piece of writing about your comic in one single notebook with its over torn off, and if you do, don't put it down in a room full of chaotic scattered papers.

I haven't actually lost any work on any of the pages, though it's been close a couple of times - sudden power outages shutting down my computer, etc. When it's happened, though, I've been able to restore the pages automatically - but I hate that sickly feeling of holding my breath and waiting.

[maximumthemokona]

I admit I've never lost a significant amount of work, I've only ruined/lost individual pieces. In those cases it helps me to remember: there's more where that came from. You can lose single drawings but your skill isn't gone. You have the power to remake everything, even better than it was before.

(I know, I know... it needs time. But a drawing is just a drawing. Your skill is forever!!)

[scythe]

I've had enough minor burns over the years that I'm pretty careful not to let the whole thing go up in a blaze. I don't even know exactly how many back ups I have of my digital work. 5? 10, perhaps? My comic is new so I've only got it on my computer, an external hard drive and on my computer at work, which is in turn backed up on a secure server in a fireproof room. I'll no doubt start uploading to cloud soon too.

This might sound like overkill, but when I consider the amount of work and love I put into making it, I'm not about to just let it all disappear with a glitch, a fire or a robbery.

But to answer the original question. The worst I've had is a loss of about 3-4 hours of work due to a crash, so I count myself among the lucky ones.

[getsuart]

Lost three finished pages because I mistook themm with others while I was scanning. Now i'm scanning the entire chapter at once so it will never happen again.
Buuut recently I didn't pay attention that I saved a low resolution psd before closing it on a paid work. Argh.

Usually I don't loose much things because I make saves everywhere, or when photoshop crashes, I saved without paying attention some minutes before.

[igneriss]

I accidentaly torn a finished page while erasing pencil.

[alakotila]

Fifteen years ago our computer went down. An old desktop. We tried repeatedly to turn it on so we could save my creative works -- dozens of stories! (Terrible, awful) poems! Comics! At long last, my sister managed to get the computer turned on. So confident was she that we would be able to turn it on again, she did not save any of my files to disc. She instead spent hours burning CDs of all her music.

That computer NEVER turned on again.

I had a bunch of older saves on disc. Trying to open those weird files on my second desktop didn't work well, but it was enough of the story to work from. I figured I would just rewrite it. Make it better! Faster and stronger and all that!

Back up your stuff - often! - but keep hardcopies, too. Those hardcopies helped save the most salvageable of the stories from those years! (Also it's just memorised. I am sure we all have hundreds of characters taking up space in our heads, no?)

[AnnaLandin]

I am sure we all have hundreds of characters taking up space in our heads, no?

Totally besides the actual topic, but yes. Last time I counted how many characters I had, I had over 300 different characters, spread out across 25+ fictional universes.

A lack of ideas will NEVER be my problem.

[LeaLeeLee]

I've noticed a couple people mention the cloud but not anymore details on that. I ABSOLUTELY MUST INSIST that you use some sort of cloud storage with an autosync option. I don't have to worry about backing up my artwork because every save I make is stored to dropbox automatically. So, even if I royally screw up a file or folder (I've accidently deleted a whole darn chapter this way!!) You can go to the dropbox website, look at your change history on a certain file and most of the time be able to back up to a specific previous version.

Cloud storage is critical for artwork!!! It will save you so many tears. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to answer them for you.

Don't know what you would do for analog material....other than scanning?

[Kura]

Most of my loses are due to pets. Physical and digital works are not safe from them.

Second most common culprit is power outages. The power grid for my neighborhood is not very great, so they happen often.

Third would be other various computer problems that corrupt my files and render them unusable.

Fourth would be one of the back up storage drives/hosts fucking up and replacing my newer file with an older one.

[Pandastrophic]

I've been backing stuff up like crazy so in regards to my current comic, nothing too big has been lost, aside from my laptop crashing and having to recolor stuff orz

However, I feel like I'm my own worst enemy, I think I can totally make a whole series just around the stuff that I cut out of the final episode I upload on here. I remove panels, redraw scenes or just scrap finished sketches. The most I've lost was the prologue that I drew, colored and added the text too, my comic is like a webtoon so I had drawn a lot. Then I completely scrapped it and redid the whole thing with a completely different idea, so I couldn't even reuse some panels in the old prologue orz it was crazy considering I spent so long on that prologue yet I will never use it again but I'm glad I did, the current one I'm very happy with.

[aspiderjonny]

I just recently lost my little story notebook which had character motivations, location discribtions, and most importantly, brief discriptions of about 12 Books each for my two series. These kept me focused so that I wouldn't put too much in a chapter and when I would reveal certain things. There's only two places in my house I can sorta remember putting it. I checked there for hours and couldn't find it. I may just have to start over again in a new notebook. It's just fustrating when you can't remember where you put important stuff.

[Luie]

My computer died yesterday. I didn't back anything up.
I saved a few things on OneNote, but all of my drawing files are gone 5ever.
And the worst part is...
I got a spare computer, but...
It's Windows Vista.

[zoonland]

Sometimes I lose something, especially notes on the story and characters, but usually I do two "backups" to be sure I don't lose much: I write my story/notes both on a Word document and on paper.
For my comic book pages, I save them both on my pc and on an external drive. Sometimes I even do a CD with the most important stuff (but it's very rare). And all the original -traditional- pages are well archived where I can easily find them, together with characters study and storyboards/layout/notes.
I try to keep everything well organized and in an easy-to-find place.
The less stuff I lose, the less I get mad looking for it, the less I'll get disappointed and mad at myself for being messy .