How much concept work and planning time went into your comic before you started drawing/writing it?

[MelancholicOtaku]

My main comic has been in the planning process for about five years. What I have now to what I have in the script two different stories.
My second comic about two years ,although the script is also different.

Now for the writing process, I have the main stuff written down. However I do tend to just wing most my of comic scripts.

[avrilguarino]

Hahaha I'm a bit ashamed to say that, I've read answer on this topics and people seem to take a LOT of time to plan their comic, I'm amazed, go people ! But since my comic is a simple life comedy comic, I maybe thought about it for less than a week when I started drawing it ! I started maybe beginning of January, the comic is about stupid things that happen between my bf and I and I've been together for (only) 6 months lol. But I still have plenty ideas to continue because we're both incredibly stupid

But yeah I thought about it a week, started drawing profusely about it and still going on today !

The Adorkables :: The denial is strong in me | Tapas

[Kann]

I had idea for my comic for like, 3-4 years but serious concept work and planning took me around 6 months. There are still parts of plot and ideas that need some planning and thinking, but they're so far in the future, that I thought there's no problem if I start drawing before I'm done with that work and ideas will come eventually. xD

[storytimebiondi]

You seem rather quick to jump into final art!

The comic I plan on releasing in February was conceived of in the fall of 2016. It's taken me that long to draft-redraft-redraft the plot and construct the characters and elements of the story. Though, I didn't actually write a script until late spring last year.
This being said: I had other projects on the go at the time and haven't actually FOCUSED on this project until the past few months, when I started doing art.

Artwise: some pre-planning on character design, costume, and aesthetics was done, though not as much as some, I'm sure. I'm a writer first and an artist second, so most of my planning went into the writing side of things.

[indagold]

My comic All Broken Gods I thought up when I was 15/16 which would be about 7-8 years ago? Well the plot didn't go anywhere so I spent a while mulling over it for years. Then started working on the story 3 years back, took about 6 months writing it out and polishing it up, then moved onto character design and scenery design for about a few months. Been working on it ever since 2016

Welcome Back and Garden of Mold was an interesting process. I started getting interested in psychology when I was 12, reading jung and barely understanding it lol. Then I became interested in dreams when I was 14-15 and starting jotting down stories and characters that didn't really have any continuity, just ideas. At 16 I finally started working on more fleshed out ideas for welcome backs first story and its sequel. Finally in senior year we had to make a comic so I made the first part of it and then for the next 4 years I went on to finish the sequel. Garden of mold was based off 2 dreams I had in highschool that I also wrote down in these brainstorming sessions.

[dawgofdawgness]

For me, about 6 months. A LOT has changed since I started though, so it doesn't really matter.

I'm glad I didn't stick with my initial idea... yikees

[DiegoPalacios]

I had the idea for my comic may years ago, but after a storytelling course i had in college, i started to polish my story for about 11 months. While it kept it`s escence, the changes helped to improve many scenes, characterization, foreshadowing, etc...

[spadesart]

since this is gaining traction again, heres an update for my original post:

SPIRE is now at 167 finished pages! my initial ideas for some of the more prominent characters (victor, william, cog, alphonzo, alpha, and caravan) had actually existed since 2015. outside the actual plot for spire i've been building their world since 2015, so i guess my info here was kind of off?
im not super proud of the original versions of these characters and im glad i didnt end it when i lost round 4 of the tournament i'd attached them to. victor was abusive towards william, and those two had a love triangle with caravan? and cog was really mean to william most of the time (and william had a crush on her). caravan still needs a lot more work since she ended up on the back burner while i polished william and cog's relationship and dynamics.

[monotone_ink]

This piece of eventual despair was given birth to 5 years ago

Project SHaDe | Tapas

I first made a dumb comic with myself and my friends as the characters - it featured comedic shenanigans and fantastical hijinks. It was named My Not So Ordinary Life

It has undergone around 4 iterations, with Project SHaDe being the 4th one. While I was messing around with the previous ones, I'm going full ham with this one - all plot points have been planned, especially the ending, leaving enough flexibility to freely write the chapters.

In conclusion, it took 5 years of meandering, and 1 or 2 years of serious writing.

[chojine]

My planning and thoughts on the world of Bound by Blood are never over, it's always growing and has been for about 2 years so far :P!

[Aspie_Gamer]

Life of an Aspie dates as far back as 2011 when I casually doodled the girl who would become the face of my personal pet project.

That said, I only had the first six chapters of LoaA planned out (and even then, I improvised a good bit when I got around to working on them) from the start. Everything else has been potential ideas or inspiration I randomly receive.

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

i completely misinterpreted the purpose of thread... *facepalms
/wastes time writing a new post.

okay so, I've been designing characters for various stories since maybe 2015? A combination of kids, talking animals aaand... basically just kids and talking animals, lol

mostly I'd sit and imagine all these scenarios, sort of to see how each characte plays off of each other, removing some from the plot, crossing story arcs, etc.
when i was little i used to do this with non OCs (cartoon/movie characters, etc.).. until i found out i could just make my own!

i tried writing prose books about those characters... but something never felt right. I wanted people to see what they were doing, not just describe it.

fast forward 2+ years ago when i discovered webcomics, i finally found a medium where i could do just that. my process has involved a lot of writing, drawing, scrapping drawings, and straight up do overs... but i feel I'm reaching solid ground with my writing... finally. and the attempts i made at drawing pages have definitely improved my art and brought me closer to the story i truly want to tell. so it's all good

*exhales

[MaiStarberries]

For me I think the planning stage for Phantasm Investigations has taken about 5 or 6 years. The setting and lore for it actually started out as an intention to just play a tabletop game with some friends, but then I kiiinda got carried away from that and came up with so much wonderful lore and plot and WHOOPS NOW IT'S A COMIC IDEA.

From there I pretty much ended up planning out the overall story arc, more or less just the idea of what the end goal is and any important events that'll take place over the course of the plot. I've done comics with no end goal in mind or where I just kind of planned as I went along completely and they've all ended in disaster, so with Phantasm I really tried to make sure I had the important outline taken care of before actually starting. At the same time though, I can't enjoy my work as much if I don't give myself a little wiggle room to change things as I go, so I also haven't done more than that basic outline with the exception of specific big important, chapters.

So basically, it's a balance thing for me. It took me long enough to develop the overall plot but not so long that I've nailed down every single detail years in advance and just feel too restricted. Also, the first chapter went through 8 or 9 drafts all because I wasn't happy with it. I'm finally happy with it, at least enough to upload it and move on to the rest of the story.

[LyliClovis]

I'm more of an illustrator, so I usually draw the characters first and if I like them, I figure out ways to incorporate them into a story. I very rarely think of the story first before the characters (that's just how I function ww)

For Our Flower Language, I roughly spent 4 months developing, researching, and refining the plot + future characters. However, even as I draw the story, I still continue to refine plot points, or even scrap some ideas. It's all a process even as I go, but I at least have an outline and main points I follow, in order to make sure the story doesn't go off track.

However, for Iro Iro Stories, they're mostly short stories I thought up in a day/week. I just made this series so I could experiment and draw stories I don't want to put all my focus on (yet).

[TheYuriCanon]

The original story for Inside OuT was being written as an AU fanfic based on a question someone posed about the possibilities of one of the characters from a series being butch later in life. This got into a discussion about gender identity and fluidity. Along the way I was asked to write the story. After several months of writing it I decided I didn't feel it was right for me to change the creators vision so much so I turned around and rewrote the entire thing as an Original story with my own characters.

It only took me a couple of months to rewrite the entirely story and design the characters for the story, mostly relearning to draw comics after 6 years crashed made it hard to draw... The rest of the design work for the world and everything else would take years as I rewrote more and more while drawing the first chapters. Now wishing I had more thought out before beginning, but not much I can do now after 9 years of doing this series.

The side story I'm working on now Inside OuT: Another Tale, has taken me nearly a year to think over the plot line, how it links up with the main story, character designs and what have you. I'm taking more time with this series in hopes to make it as relatable for people as the main series.

[Darth_Biomech]

For Leaving the Cradle the first ideas and characters started to appear around... 2006, was it? And the comic itself started late in 2016.
So that makes it 10 years in development.
Most of that time was devoted to worldbuilding, though.

[duckuga]

I had a whole story and everything for the characters in my comic but I decided to do a quick side story of them just for fun hahaha. I just wrote how generally the whole story would go along with some specific dialogue that I'd probably use. So I guess it probably took a couple days of planning and deciding whether to do it? But I'm not really taking it seriously, so maybe that contributes to the short time spent planning.

I have a big collection of ideas that I've been meaning to develop and make into a comic once I get better. I think if I were more serious about them I'd take at least two weeks or more planning it out? Or not, because I'm impatient lol.

[kiplothedungeoneer]

Nil. Nada. Not even a character design or sketch. Jumped straight in, came up with a full story in like...a day?

And I think it's going great so far! My world actually ended up being quite comprehensive, so... yeah! Who needs planning, orrr scripting?!

Probably me in like a chapter :')

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[elyss]

My story's been knocking around my head for about six years now. I knew what the characters looked like already since they were from previous stories (my current story is a prequel), but they ended up having a drastic glow-up since they were products of my high school obligatory anime phase.

I drew the first chapter, a painful 27-32 pages, about four times over the course of those six years before settling on something I liked. Even with all my story planning, the hardest part will always be visualizing the world itself.