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Apr 2015

I'm currently on break, I have been so for a week. At the moment I've sketched and planned out 7 pages and I am TRYING to thumbnail the remaining pages to speed up. Thumbnailing isn't my strong suit I have to admit. I dont feel I plan correctly when thumbnailing but I need to master it!

But I'm curious how fast do other people work in the planning process?

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    Apr '15
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    May '15
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It cans be from two or three days to one week to finish a page. Depending mostly of my mood and the amount of work I have.
I do storyboards on paper as a first sketch (I prefer sketching chapter by part, or a whole one if it's a tiny chapter), then I can change them on Photoshop if I think they are pretty horrible for reading (and it happens sometimes). Inking and put flat colors take most of the time.
I remembered that I did some of my pages in a night. But now I'm taking more time to put details in it, especially because the characters are in a city.

And now I think about it, it's pretty slow.

It's kind of tricky to measure, as I do my work in stages - and it definitely varies from page to page.

Layouts/storyboarding is my biggest obstacle, so that one usually takes most time - I take entire days off to thumbnail, script and plan an entire chapter in one go, and if I'm lucky, I manage to plan the whole chapter (which varies in length between 18-35 pages, depending on content; I don't have a set length). If I'm not, I might need to take another half-day.

Then, I open Manga Studio and do digital roughs - placing the panels and speech-bubbles, doing stick-figure style sketches to give myself an idea of what goes where, working off of my thumbnails. This can take up to a day as well, depending on length (or less, if I've got a good workflow going). After that, I do clean sketches, which takes 30-45 minutes per page (I'm a messy sketcher). After that, I ink a bunch of pages, and then go back and colour the first page - and then skip back to where I was inking and ink one page, and then I go back, etc., etc. This way, I switch between colouring and inking so that I don't get bored and lose attention.

But yeah. The finishing of each page roughly breaks down as follows (low end for simpler pages with fewer panels, upper end for complex pages):

Clean sketch - 30-45 minutes
Inks - 45 minutes-2 hours
Colours - 3-6 hours

So in total, finishing a page takes me about 5 hours. Sometimes it's a lot quicker, but as I said, it depends on what's on the page. The chapter I'm working on right now has a LOT of lighting-effects and detail, so it's a lot more time-consuming - but I have found a nice, efficient way of coloring, and I can tell I'm speeding up the more I draw.

thats faster than me @getsuart! I've been working in a city too and the establishing shot have been painful yet rewarding.

I think my problem is I over think things when planning I try juggle a lot of things at the same time like text flow, narrative, panel dynamics, and stress out and slow down .....

@elixiadragmire Planning is the hardest bit for me too! I write all my dialogue (first draft only and subject to change, but STILL) while I plan page-layouts and stuff, so it's a lot to juggle all at once. It does get easier with practise, but it's still kind of a slog. D:

hhhmmm...My writing and art work are two very different steps in the process. I will have a script done weeks, months, or years before I draw it. The Shadow War has 44 pages done (2 issues) and a third plotted that I am in the middle of writing. It's very hard for me to put a tim estimate on the writing, since it's something I do in spurts. I'm always thinking about the writing, so often when I sit down to actually type, all I'm doing is putting my thoughts on the screen that I have been working on for days.
My art is different. It takes time to set up the scenes for a shoot. I might spend 5-10 hours building a scene, from the buildings down to the set dressing. Then any new figures that have to be done for that scene. Once that's done, it takes me about 5-15 minutes to set the angle and render the shot. After that, I am onto the traditional media, and the inking takes about 3-5 hours per page, and the same for the colours.

Eagle
(Hope that helped)

the writing (for this chapter) is already done, its the page setups that eat so much of my time. checking flow, narration and pace. My pace can be super fast at time but thats a different problem.

I'm starting to get the hang of it now, I'll be honest this is the first time I'm properly setting up a chapter, most the time i was winging it in the last one >.>

heres my thumbs

and my sketches

My problem I think I was going STRAIGHT to sketchies and not thumbnailing

@AnnaLandin Yes! This was something I was critiqued and told to do, to take more thought with my speech bubble placement So now I'm placing them first.

@eagle1 you mention to do create the scene then set the angle and render, do you use 3D software? I've also considered looking into that

I don't like to say I work slowly, but my pages do take a very long time. I don't really spend a long time planning in total, but I tend to come back to it in short bursts to edit things. Per page it probably doesn't work out at more than 30 minutes for the script and layout, and many are a lot less. It's the actual drawing that really takes the time.

Pencils: 3-5 hours
Inks: 4-6 hours
Colours: 7-15 hours
Lettering and finishing touches: 30mins

When I'm working on something with a lot of extra detail like a cityscape, a whole page can take 30-40 hours, but I think most fit into 15-20.

Yes, @elixiadragmire, I use DAZ3D for my 'drawing'. I draw freehand as well, but for the rigors of a comic production schedule I need shortcuts. Once I've done the render, I import it to GIMP, convert it to a line drawing, and then print that sucker, slap it on the lightbox, put a comic board over it, and start inking. It's a very different process, and one I am still working the kinks out of, but it looks good for the long term.

Eagle
(And Perspective, Anatomy, and Proportion issues are gone)

The planning I do for my comics often takes a long time, I keep a notebook by my bed that I go through to write, find, and refine ideas until its something I'd want to put online. This part is easily the hardest. Then there's story boarding, concept sketches and so on....
My regular comics (Life of a Homeschooler1 and Oy Vey!)can take somewhere up to an hour, though the actual drawing only takes up about half of that time (unless I'm in a hurry, than I can do it in minutes, they're not too good, but they work)
My pages for [insert epic title here] can take up to a day to get planned out because I find myself changing panels over and over again... its never good the first time. That and I'm re drawing the whole series because I realized there were a lot of errors I need to fix...

You're all so quick, it's amazing !

@elixiadragmire It may have not helped to go straight to sketches before the thumbnails. there is a whole reflection with it ! :o
I understand the struggle with planning everything ! comic are a very good exercize for this.

My process is kind of spread out, but it usually takes 2-4 days before a page is complete. Sometimes it can take even longer due to the page being difficult, headaches (as I'm prone to them) or other life things.

Usually my schedule goes like this -
Sunday night : Sometimes I may refine the script of the current and/or next few pages to make sure I'm happy with everything, but either way I sketch out the page on this night. If I'm busy this part may be done on Monday instead.

Monday: Clean up sketches and ink as much of the page as I can. If things are going well, maybe do a bit of flat coloring.

Tuesday: Finish up inking and do flat coloring. If things are going well, I might even get a lot of the page done or completely finished this day...but usually...

Wednesday: This is when I do all the shading, detailing, editing, and then add in text. YAY, FINISHED.

Inking, refining and complicated backgrounds are what takes the longest with me. Kind of hate those parts. .__. I feel like I'm incredibly slow at this, actually...I use to pop out two pages a week and now I wonder how the heck I used to do that...

6-10 hours figuring in layouts, pencils, inks, colors, lettering. I typically do a 4 panel comic per week. Varies depending on the complexity of the scenes and what's distracting me, of course.

I can either do a page in a day or in a week, it really depends on how difficult the page is.

When I start a new chapter for Time Gate, I start the sketches and panel layouts and text and finish all of the preliminary stage in about a week, if the work time is good and if I'm not bogged down by school/Starbucks work/etc. I do these a week or so before the chapter begins in the next month.

As for the linearts and tones, I'm usually able to finish a simple page in about a couple hours. There are times I've spent up to twelve hours in a day just drawing pages, and able to get four or five pages done if it goes well. Bigger and more intricate pages take more time though, of course.

I'm actually considering doing weekly chapters instead of monthly chapters when I'm finished school, as I'm getting about 20-30 hours a week at the 'bucks right now, and I'll have more time to dedicate to comics. But it depends on how the process goes with it.

I have a general idea of what's going to happen in the story and some of it is scripted, while some still need to be. I thumbnail about 10 or so pages in advance then draw them from there. Rinse and repeat. Thumbnailing doesn't take too long. Probably an hour or two, depending on how many I'm doing.

The actual time it takes to work on a page is about 6-10 hours, give or take. For me, lineart takes FOREVER to do (like, 60% of the time I'm doing lineart....). This is why I don't even bother cleaning the lineart. In my comic, everything looks sorta sketchy, but I like it that way. haha. Coloring also takes time. I'm not very good at it. ^^;

Doing storyboards take me about 1-2 weeks per chapter. Would be much quicker if I didn't just doodle random images on pages instead of focusing on storyboarding : p Then I sketch margins for all the pages at once in one day. Sketches take another week or two. Now I ink all the frames and speechbubbles, and it takes 1-3 days.
And now is where the fun starts- inking pictures! : D it takes me about 1.5-3 hours, depending on how detailed the page is and if there are any distractions. After that scanning, editing and adding text take about half an hour per page.

I think a lot about what I'm going to draw, so when I start I know most of what is going to be on the paper.
Then I do a story-board and I sketch directly on it.
Once I'm satisfied with the scketch I do the inking.
Generally I'm working on 3-4 pages at the same time, and I spend about two hours on one page.

@raintowns you and me ... we think a like!!! i do this so often! I'm trying to at least thumbnail the whole chapter. so far the whole chapter is scripted so its a start compared to my last chapter!!!

Peppermint Helmet is a comic strip so it isn't quite the same as a traditional comic page in the planning stages. It usually takes me 1.5 hours to pencil a strip, maybe an hour to ink. Then colors/backgrounds are usually 4-6 hours. I'd say the average strip will take about 6 hours but it all depends on the detail level. The ones where I'm drawing more realistic characters take a bit longer since I have to care a little more about accurate anatomy. smile

Since I do most of my work through ComiPo it usually takes me 20 minutes to make a page if I am not distracted by anything.

ComiPo is a 3D program with already made characters here it is Comipo4 While I do know how to draw I take way too much time to do so. So I find this the best way to tell the stories I have in my mind to the world.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to spend that long on pages! I do wish I could get them done faster, but I'd have to sacrifice most of the detail that makes it fun.

How fast do i work? well imagine a snail and a turtle running a 100 meter dash. That should give you and idea of how fast i work.

I usually plan about 30-40 pages in advance with quarter sized thumbnails based on my dialogue document. Usually in 1-2 hours,
Then I go straight to full on production and produce about 4-6 pages a week depending on its complexity with which I produce usually when I should be going to bed >_>... If i'm really productive or have a lot of free time, I can hash out up to 15 pages a week.

I'm probably the slowest drawer I know, getting bogged down in details, re-drawing everything I'm not at least 95% happy with. Not great for regular updates, I know, but I'm trying hard to get better at that. Plus there's work and life that always seems to get in the way. Even somehow squeezing 3-5 hours a day on drawing, it can still take me weeks sometimes to get to a point where I'm happy enough to upload.

Yeah, It takes me two to three days to finish a full-detail page and I believe that's how long most of the creators finish a page.

But in my current series2, I can finish 3 pages in one day(I draw about 7 hours/day) since the details are not much. ^O^

If you're a slow drawer(even though you draw for how many years), you can just adjust you art style according to your speed. But its not easy to adjust though. Quality or somethin' may drop.

No mater how fast I work it never seems fast enough.

Aside that it's dependent on how many panels I have to deal with and the amount of detail that is included in said panels. Some pages take a couple hours, some take a couple days, it always fluctuates.

That's really true though. When I enter manga contests, I finished an 18-page one in two months. T.T then I saw other finishing a 15-page manga in 1 week.

Though, its okay to take time though as long as theres no deadline. Always keep in mind that You Can't Rush Art. ^v^

I'm faster with my traditional work but my digital is more convenient because I need to go to Staples in order to scan my traditional stuff xD

12 days later

It depends on the content of each page, but in my case, sketching+cleaning up+inking+lettering can take 4, 6 or even 8 hours for the most complex pages.

Depends on do I know exactly what I want to happen in this chapter and how can I get to a point that satisfies me.

20 days later

I use to do 4Ëś5 a week, than my son was born and i'm doing 1. And I have to cheat to make it happen. stuck_out_tongue

Working on multiple pages at a time can keep you from slowing down or getting bored. I may just be in the mood to draw faces or just do layouts, so I choose the pages I'd like to work on, then when I stop feeling picky I can go back and finish the upcoming pages.

Thumbnails don't have to be that big, As long as you remember what you want, they can be squigglies the size of a quarter. This way you can fit 30-40 on a page. I usually look at the dialogue document while I'm doing this and shape the panels around the character's poses.

I do have slow weeks though when I feel unmotivated or have been stuck on a scene for too long.

Also developing a style/method you know you can work fast with is another thing. Took me a year to find a style I could produce fast with and was satisfied with the quality. I don't do full digital, so I could also just work faster with traditional materials instead of always undoing lines and drawing until the line's right. Once it's inked there's no going back.

For my four panel comics, they used to take several hours. Then after a while I would finish them in around 1 hour, however that was way back then. Nowadays in order to make a quality 4 panel comic, it can take as much as 2-5 hours.

Of course, that doesn't count how long it took me to make a normal a 1 page comic. Several days. I've currently stopped making the one-shot I was working on, but I have others in mind that would be a lot simpler. They'll be coming around the mountain much later, once I've learned a lot more about panel composition, backgrounds, action and speech-bubble placement. Hopefully soon.