How much time does it take you to finish one comic?

[nobody]

I do a slice of life comic where each page is an independent story. And all of my first comic pages took a really long time - like ridiculously long - all of them 20 hours or more, even if they were really simple, because I was experimenting with style and colours and brushes, looking for the right font, testing different formats, etc. And after I had made a decision, I could go back months later and make changes (I have a pretty large buffer, not even half of my oldest stuff is posted yet). I still see things now that I'll probably change before I publish.

With the newer stuff I'm making now, the comics that I think are among my simplest, I would say I spend about 2-5 hours. Colouring always takes way more time than I expect it too. With the comics that are neither my simplest, nor my most complex, I would say 8-10 hours. When I do stuff that requires a lot of colouring and details, it can take up to 20 hours or more

All time estimates here include sketching, inking, colouring, deciding exactly what to write and figuring out the text layout. And the text bit is also one of those things that always takes much longer than I expect it to...

I've already improved my efficiency quite a bit, so hopefully I'll be able to be even more efficient if I keep creating on a regular basis Having a plan and a proper sketch to start out with helps the rest of the drawing process immensely!

[RainDogs]

For me, I usually take an average of about 1 hour per panel, depending on several factors. That doesn't include writing the joke though. That can take anywhere from hours to days of writing and re-writing.

[kanisgir]

Well with NEKOBOYS it takes 1-2 hours because its black and white and simple Characters (the new series I'm working on) Takes about 3-5 hours :/ the cover took all night -.-

[TrustyShamrock]

i usually take 1 day for drawing and inkin and then another day for coloring. soooo 2

[SethJH]

Okay let me clarify lol. If I were to condense all the time spent on painting into 1 solid block, I'd say probably 6 hours/page. However, I tend to take plenty of breaks, work a part-time job, and work on other projects as well, so that's why it's drawn out over a week.

[Delete]

Depends on the page. It usually takes me 5- 8 hours to draw and ink an 11x17 page, depending on the page difficulty (be it a weird pose or intricate background). It takes me about 1-2 hours to paint the page using watercolor paints.

[AnnaLandin]

Depends on how detailed the page is, but I estimate that a page of Grassblades takes me between 3 to 7 hours to make. If it's a simple page with few panels and few backgrounds, it's faster. If it's a page with many panels, and complicated stuff in those panels, it takes longer.

Other things that slow me down; complicated lighting, switching to a new scene and having to decide on a colour-scheme for it, and cover illustrations.

Also, I'm not counting the time it takes me to storyboard, because I storyboard an entire chapter in one go, and that can take me quite a bit of time to do. Page-layouts are hard.

[igneriss]

It depends on a page, but usually about 3-4 hours per page: ~20-30 minutes for sketching, ~10 minutes for frames, 2-3 hours for lineart, and ~0,5h for scanning&editing.

[heterodont]

I usually make thumbnail sketches for pages days before I actually work on the page itself, so a batch of 10? thumbnails that are like 2x3 inches takes me about 10 minutes tops and I usually wing the speech at the same time too to get a general flow for the convo.

As for the actual pages themselves, at most it takes me 2 and a half hours to finish one page. However since I started working at a bigger resolution than the older one, its been taking me an hour longer due to the fact I'm not used to the big resolution and I'm so much more meticulous about the rendering because mistakes are more apparent HAHA.

My latest page, which I can't show cuz its scheduled to post 3 weeks from now, took me over a week because I Was procrastinating so hard on it :S

It helps to have a buffer if you're looking to update every day. I unintentionally finished an entire months worth of buffer (then again it's only 8 pages - for my comic at least since its biweekly and not daily)

[punkarsenic]

lets say one weeks installment is 3-6 pages, usually 4, and lets say its not a holiday so i get home at 4pm.

ill work from 5-6pm to 10pm on thursday, 5-10 on friday, and ~10am-10pm on saturday and sunday. and usually by that time its finished.

obviously since its the holidays now i can get more done in a shorter time frame, but basically 4 days for one installment.

[Nat]

Hm good question!

So for SKY BLADES if there's no detailed background with special perspectives, I can whip out ca. 15 pages in 2-3 days. If I need to do background settings, I can manage about half of what I usually put out. I'm hella slow with backgrounds - I just have this silly urge to make it look as good as I possibly can, so I waste hours and hours on small details (bad habit).

[Dorian_Grey]

I say it'll vary if you work full time or if comic booking is your full time job! Which if it is...I am a jelly jelly person.

But I usually work during the week from 6am to 5pm, so a good part of my day is gone.
But I try to squeeze at least 2-3 hours a day after work on my drawings...and more time of course on the weekend. My comic Unravel is black and white, one because it saves me time to make a deadline, but two; I feel my coloring isn't strong and my line work is far stronger then my color.
Also I'm detail crazy so, and god forbid if there is an action scene...which there will be a lot of...I'm slow. There's just a lot of variables when it come to time framing.

[allenthomas]

I'd say for my comic it takes me about 1-2 hours to sketch out may page and then it takes about 2-3 hours to set it up and color on my computer. I post about every other day so I can get a little bit of a buffer on the in between days.

[Doubtcent]

For my gag-a-day comics, 1-2 hours. For anything else, 3-4+ hours. It all depends on how much needs to be done. The more line-art, the more backgrounds, the more time needs to be spent. If I have to color it, even more. Not to mention shading, highlighting, lettering, and just fixing the minor stuff.

[Kura]

It's a little difficult to give an estimate, as the amount of time spent on a page greatly depends on what's involved in that page in regards to various things, like the view/angel the characters are drawn in, number of characters, number of hands, number of panels, background complexity, amount of text bubbles, etcetera.

I guess maybe around 5ish hours (if it's going well) for a black and white page. (And that may not even be very accurate as I am a lose track of time when I'm working type)

Much much much longer for a colour one, this length only increasing if the background is detailed.

[insomniascrawl]

I do two comics right now, both in different styles. One that's slightly more realistic takes more time to draw, so I plan on doing less pages per post for the sake of time. (Maybe 2 or three hours to do a full page?)

The other comic is less detailed, but there are more pages when I post, so it takes more time than the more detailed comic (ironically) Though I'm not sure exactly how much time it takes... It might take me 5 or 6 hours to finish whatever I'm about to post for the week on that comic.

[mickcatty]

For me, it mainly depends on how large and detailed the update is. A page for me usually takes about an hour or two , but a whole update will take me about 7 to 8 hours if I just sit down and work on it continuously with no breaks. This is mainly because of the style that I went with -D O W N L O A D- as it is pretty quick and simple with basic shading.

But, since I do procrastinate quite a bit and I do tend to add a bunch of things, it'll probably take me about 2 days or longer.

[serenitysquirrel]

For me it's a few hours doing it in Grey-scale flats with cell-shade and a little splash of color. Full color was taking me FOREVER. With a full time job and the need for art outside of pages themselves (bonus art, con art, etc) I get one pg done a week spread out through it and part of another.

[zoonland]

It usually take 1 or 2 days to do a complete page (lettering included), but I don't work full time on it so I guess I could do a page per day. Then, it depends if it has a background or not... I hate backgrounds and perspectives -.-

[lanceredding]

I only post 2 to 4 pages a week, but it doesn't take me a whole week to do them. Depending on how complex the image is, it can take me from 20 minutes to 3 hours to complete each drawing, and most of my pages average 3 images. Then I have to edit the images together into pages in Photoshop, which usually takes about an hour per page depending on how much editing the page needs. So generally in two really productive evenings, I can get all my pages done for the week.