Mine is a scrolling type and the length varies, but generally it takes me one week per episode.
I would say they range 20-30 panels, and I don't have a lot of color or detail to add.
It only takes me about 2 hours to make a page since I’m doing my comic line less but I try to take breaks so what should take 2 hours is postponed until a few days later because of life or just me being lazy. I try to pump out updates within a week and at least 3 pages at a time. I’m only on page 8 right now so I can’t speak though.
It takes me a long time :') To do one chapter (~15-16 panels), I sketch for maybe 30-40 min (super messy). I spread inking over like 2-3 days (my least favorite part), and coloring takes another ~2-3 days. I've been keeping up with once a week updates but my buffer runs out next week so I might need to switch to once every other week
My comics are in the scrolling format. It typically takes me two weeks do a fully colored, with actual backgrounds, 40-50 panel episode. Three weeks if it's 60 or more. I think it takes me a while because I take fairly long breaks in between drawing the comic.
I mean, I don't want my wrist to break just yet. I've still got a lot of comic-making in me, lmao.
You can ask me, "why not make the episodes shorter so you can pump them out faster?" I like comics that are infrequently updated but produce longer episodes more than ones that update faster but with short episodes, and so that's what I make, haha.
Well, it really depends on the day and how I feel. Generally I start the week by writing the script, then I start sketching. After drawing 10 or so sketches, I usually start setting up the panelling to decide where the stuff should go.
Once I'm done with it, I start the colouring and inking phase, in wich I draw the lineart and put the screentones. Finally, I return on the panelling, where I put all the drawings in the pre-established order and I put the various speech bubbles, along with speed lines, onomatopeia and text dialogue.
That's basically the whole procedure and it takes me a a week or so!
I haven't really timed myself but it seems to be taking me between three and four days if I get my head down to it to pencil, ink, flat, render, and letter a page.
I really do worry that it is too long and that this long-form project I have embarked on will take many many years.
I want to get faster.
I've started drawing this in April, not long after the start of lockdown but so far only have three completed pages done. I have not been working on it consistently.
My comics is a long scrolled format which usually has 7.5 panels average. But I only upload twice a month, meaning 15 panels a month on average.
As of recent, I have action scenes which is a bit hard to do but at least I use 3D for the backgrounds so I don't have to draw them all in different angles.
When talking about fastest I've done on record: I did 8 updates/pages which was uploaded within 10 days. (Note: multiply by 7.5 panels per 8 updates and I get 60 panels for those 10 days).
That makes 6 finished panels per day. Fastest I've done as of recently.
Which was extreme for me but it's doable when I'm very focused and have nothing else to do but I don't think I will be binge drawing that frequently. But I want to just say do not push yourself, draw at your own pace. My personal experience, that I just shared, is just for reference.
(I haven't changed my username here but I'm Zee Red Dino. Haha!)
I'll try, let me see if I can describe better how pages helped me batch processes together and speed things up.
Once I had my story, I spent a lot of time dividing it up so that there were three distinct acts, and I knew on which pages those events had to go so that provided a big conceptual anchor. Then I made sure I was putting a cliffhanger on every right-hand side page. So with a strong structure in place I could start to pare down each page's dialogue until I had a good idea of what the most important thing was that happened on each page. That was my 'big panel' per page, and the layout of that panel dictated the layouts of the other panels on the page. That brought me to the thumbnailing phase which was quite simple since I could still adjust script if there were too many events or too much dialogue. I did a temporary lettering pass at this point so I could adjust the art correctly and I wasn't wasting time drawing things I knew would eventually go behind a speech bubble. This was a big time saver. I spent a lot of my time per page in the pencilling stage, which paid off by making inking a breeze. I found that hand-drawing the background after the characters were done helped unify the perspective, which sped things up dramatically. I tried to do one major background drawing per page, and then re-used those lines in the smaller panels. In inking I made sure that I was doing 'selectable' inks so I could flat relatively quickly. Coloring traditionally took the longest amount of time but I chose unifying color schemes for the facing pages that gradually progressed through the spectrum as you turn the pages. If I were really to go for speed I'd use my standard coloring trick of a grayscale underpainting with a multiplied gradient map. Overall I batched things out so that while I was thumbnailing the later pages I'd be pencilling some earlier pages and inking the pages before that, coloring the very first pages. That way when I burned out on one process I could switch to an easier one and an easier one throughout the day, working on down the line. I was probably putting in an 8 hour day, maybe more, but not dramatically more.
I'm not even sure anymore lmao.
For TreasureHUNT!!, I think my fastest was like 3 pages in one week? That was towards the beginning when I was spending like 90% of my time outside of work working on it though and working in batches. I would just sketch as many pages as possible like Monday through Wednesday, Ink as much as possible Thursday & Friday, & Color Saturday/Sunday.
As time went on I started both adding more detail to the pages as well as spending less time on the comic overall... I think it got to the point where I could bust out a page in like 2-3 days (where as at the very very beginning pre-batches it would take me 6-7 days to do a page), but then I was only doing 1 page at a time so the pace slowed some.
The above is with my mixed media approach though, with physical inks and digital colors. I did a 10 page comic for an anthology over the summer last year and I think I got like 10 pages done, gray scale, in like a week and a half full digitally. Moving forward I will be continuing to work full digital too so I guess we'll see what my speed looks like going forward? It's a big time saver to just be able to use the same tool for the whole process rather than getting the pencil out, then the ink well and dip pen, then the eraser, and scanning (4x because of the large paper), and cleaning the scan and then FINALLY colors.
I've recently decided to do a strip-style comedy comic based on a D&D campaign that I joined last week on the side of the other larger project I have in the works, and I gotta say- it's a little simpler than what I do normally, but I busted out most of a 12 panel strip last night in like an hour and a half xD Got most of the way through flats, will be finishing that and shading tonight. If that's any indicator maybe my speed has gone up lol...
On a good day...I can do one full page in 4 hours. That's my fastest. Overall I'd say a full page takes me anywhere from 5-6 hours.
I'm hoping to get much faster once I cut out using colors entirely and just go monochrome. Being able to bust out a page in 3 hours or under is my speed goal.
I really don't like working in batches at all. I prefer to get it all done in one go.