19 / 36
Jan 2021

I have two comics, and I find that the process/time for each of them is wildly different.

How many hours a day do you generally spend on your comic?
My Ink comic takes 4 - 6 hours per page. My Marker comic takes 4 - 5 days per episode, usually 2 - 3 hours a day.

How many days per week?
I update my Ink comic twice per week and my Marker comic once every other week.

How often do you update?
Ink - weekly. Marker - biweekly.

How much content is each update (a standard comic book page, or 1 full plot point, etc.)
Ink - 1 standard comic page, usually around 4 - 6 panels. Marker - I'm aiming for natural scene breaks where possible. This seems to be averaging 20 - 30 panels per episode.

I spend more than 8 hours to draw my comic 6 days per week and update twice a week. every update is about 15-20 frames :cry_02:

I've talked about it before, but I have a series of unknown health issues (there's a possible etiology but it's... not confirmed and no doctor seems to be that interested in confirming it, so I've been kind of on my own in regards to sorting it out) that manifest as pain or head problems (brain fog, vertigo, nausea and light sensitivity). That limits my ability to draw or write quite significantly.

How many hours a day do you generally spend on your comic?
2-3 hours on days that I can work on. On REALLY good days it might be 4 hours, but that's rare.

How many days per week?
I work part-time and cannot physically draw on days I work, so, I draw about 3-4 days a week when I'm off. Also I'm trying to be kind to myself, so if I don't feel like working on the comic on a certain day, I let myself have the day off (usually it's because I want to work on some other project, and I'm okay with that).

How often do you update?
1-2 times a month. My ideal is 2x month, but as long as I can get at least 18 pages out a year, I'm ok. My goal is to try and put out 24 pages a year, which would mean I would finish my story in 5-6 years. For now while my health issues are going on, I'm trying to stick to what I can do comfortably without adding any extra stress on myself.

How much content is each update (a standard comic book page, or 1 full plot point, etc.)
Just one standard page, though when I'm editing my script/thumbs I try to make it so that every page is worthwhile.

I'm definitely not a doctor, and I hope I'm not overstepping, but those things all sound like they could be migraine related. I too have had some weird problems (including all of those) that I didn't realize were migraine things, since they often didn't come with a headache. Medication has made me a lot more functional. Might be something to ask about? Again, sorry if the unsolicited advice isn't welcome... At any rate, I hope you get some answers -- it's rough not knowing what's going on. :heart:

It depends but most pages take me about 10 hours or more.

i usually work on my comic 5-6 days per week for 2-4 hours per day. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending how tired im after work. I could update once a week, but im trying to create buffer for future so now i update once every 7-10 days about 4-5 pages at once. I also edit a webtoon version out of my comic and work on another chapter at the same time, so those slow me down a bit lol.

I've been spending an average of about 6 hours on each page of my comic. Sometimes a little under, sometimes over. It depends on the detail of the page, whether I struggled much in the sketch stage, and whether I already have a colour palette for the page in question.

Time spent per day: that's a little harder to answer. Some days I'll hyperfocus for hours and still be working at 9pm because I just keep circling back to my iPad. Other days, my brain will ADHD off to nope-ville and I'll get absolutely nothing done. On those days, I'll at least try to spend some time marketing it, since I'm usually procrastinating online anyway. (Once our new public library is finished, I'll be using those days to trot down and read other graphic novels. That'll probably trigger me to at least rough out some page layouts, and the change of environment sometimes helps my brain agree to work.)

Days per week: Usually three. I teach two days a week. The other three working days are supposed to be entirely for illustration. I'm usually too tired to draw after teaching, but I'll let myself draw on weekends when the mood strikes, so a little of my illustration work often dribbles over into them.

Update schedule: At the moment, it's one page each week. Just a standard comic page. I would like to raise that to two pages per week, but I don't have enough of a buffer to feel safe doing that yet. I get busy and exhausted around assessment and reporting time, and I'm easily overwhelmed when I have too much to juggle, so a ten page buffer would be vital. Right now, I have... a two-and-a-sketch page buffer. :cry_02:

Oh, if you tend to get tension headaches and migraines from your neck muscles pulling, try having a low-dose magnesium supplement each day for a few weeks. It's a muscle relaxant. My partner does this to control such headaches, and it helps him.

I work on my comic on most days, for about 45 minutes a day. I upload about 1 chapter, consisting of 4-12 pages every month.

I upload one page per week on Tapas/ComicFury (page format, full color, a single page ranges from 3 to 5 panels) and two/three pages every other week on Webtoons (started posting a few months later on there; vertical format, 10-12 panels per update). I try to have at least two/three weeks worth of buffer before I post a new episode and I try to get at least one page done every week. I don't have a set amount of working hours per day: I have a full time job, so I work on the comic whenever I have the time to, which usually means holidays and weekends. I can easily work on a single page for up to 5 hours in a day (with some pauses XD), but there are also days where I can't get anything done because I just don't have the energy to. Thumbnails usually take me just a few minutes, while the actual digital coloring part can take me anywhere from 5 to 8 hours. Not too sure how long the additional edits + lettering takes me, but I'd say around 1-2 hours? Overall, I'd say a single comic page takes me from 7 to 10 hours of work.

How many hours a day do you generally spend on your comic? - Hmm, well it takes me around 4.5 hours to make a single page. I usually do the formatting, text and sketch first the previous day (this takes usually around an hour) and then everything else the next day.
How many days per week? - Technically 4
How often do you update? - Weekly on here and Webtoon, bi weekly on Tumblr/deviantart
How much content is each update (a standard comic book page, or 1 full plot point, etc.) - Each update is two pages long, but reformatted for scroll format

Here are my answers -
How many hours a day do you generally spend on your comic? - Depends on my mood, but usually, I sit for around 2 hours on weekdays and 3-4 hours on weekends

How many days per week? - Since I'm a student, it's really hard to cope up with things but I try to work daily or at least 4-5 days a week

How often do you update? - I don't really have a schedule, on webtoon I used to update 3 times a month (mostly on Sundays) but I soon started lagging behind and I'm currently on hiatus :persevere:

How much content is each update? - I upload 1 episode in 2-3 parts, each part containing around 25-30 panels

Hope this helps :smiley:

I spend about 40-50 hours in Clip Studio per week since July this year - before that I was drawing a couple times a month maybe. I'm not sure exactly how much of that is for our comic (updates weekly) - maybe 25-35 hours depending on the week? That covers a sequence of 10-15 panels typically of people talking and relatively simple/reused backgrounds for a scrolling format comic.

Ah, I should note that the only reason I can keep this pace is because I don't have my day job anymore! I would love this to become a day job for me someday.

I work a 9-5 day job so I have to plan my time spent wisely to get comic work done.

I work on Mondays starting around 6pm-10pm and Thursdays 7pm-10pm then through the week on breaks I try to squeeze in any time I can get to do some writing done and polishing. I started working on my comic about 3 years before I started posting it to get used to my schedule and figuring out a style I could do that wouldn't be too time-consuming, but still, make me happy. It took about 2 years for me to figure this out and then a year and a half I worked on my buffer.

I update once a week on Mondays.

I update 1-page comic/manga style a week.

I appreciate your words! One neurologist I saw IS treating it like a migraine but it's just... weird that it would happen on top of all of my other nerve problems. I just get overly pessimistic, and it means a lot to hear from someone else who had similar issues who found a solution (or at least, improvement) to them!

How many hours a day do you generally spend on your comic?
Probably 5+ hours a day drawing the actual pages, if I'm scripting or thumbnailing new pages then add another 2+ for each of those as well.

How many days per week?
Almost every day.

How often do you update?
My comic isn't ready to post yet but when it is, hopefully weekly. Once I finish the chapters I'm working on currently, I'll have 12 weeks of updates so I can start posting but ahh I'm nervous lol

How much content is each update?
My chapters are on average 20 pages so each update will be roughly half of that depending on where a good stopping point is (usually at a scene or pov change). so yeah each chapter is 2 updates. I try to get a good amount of character development and plot progression in each chapter but as the plot gets more complex it's inevitably going to progress slower chapter to chapter

For my comic, I've been updating it weekly at saturdays.
Each chapter is around 10-11 pages in the classic comic format and I usually spend from 4-5 hours daily (monday-thursdays) drawing it. Fridays and saturdays I use for breaks and on sundays I write the script and roughly draw the layouts for the next update.

I've been maintaining the same schedule for a while now, but I only came up with one that worked after several trial and error attempts.

I update my comic with 5 pages every week. I was able to make it so I’m a month ahead of my updates so that I can draw at least 5 pages every week.

I find that, for me, it’s a pretty good schedule especially since I work full-time and can only draw in the evenings and on the weekends. Some pages are finished faster than others during the week so I can take a few days off. But I have to remember not to slack off for too long :sweat_smile:

Yeah, it can definitely be hard to balance taking some (much needed) time off with maintaining a routine... the longer you take off, the harder it is to get back into the routine.

I usually work on my comic about 5-6 days a week during my free time. I have a full time 9-5 job so I'll usually put in work on weeknights when there's not much time to do anything else. On the weekends, I'll usually dedicate at least part of one day to it. If I genuinely don't feel like I can do it, then I don't force myself to. I learned that the hard way early on.

I had originally tried to do weekly updates and I just burned out. By the second half of last year, I was putting out updates maybe once a month because I didn't have much time and I wasn't feeling motivated 3 out of the 4 weeks between episodes.

Right now, I'm on a planned hiatus so I can get a backlog of work completed. I find not crunching on deadlines is allowing me to stay motivated and I'm getting more work done than I would have otherwise. I'm hoping to have at least a 2 month buffer before I start posting (or 4 episodes)

Also, being in pandemic times helps me have more free time... I have no gauge for how this will work once restrictions ease up and life turns normal again. I'd like to regain my social life. LOL