Story time!
Two months ago, on a beautiful California evening, my phone rings. It's a friend – believe it or not, despite doing nothing much but working and comic-ing, I still have a couple of those. He is the creator of a cute children's book series and was lucky enough to get a table at San Diego Comic Con two years in a row. Less than two months later it would be his second time going. I knew that at this point that he was almost done with his second book and would probably send it out to the printer soon. Perfect timing for the Con.
Sadly, the news he gave me that day were everything but perfect. Someone had broken into his room and had taken nothing but his laptop and (an empty) safe.
Guess how much of his almost finished work he had backed up?
Yep, you are correct. Aside from a couple of sketches pretty much 0. Nada. Nichts. All that work, gone. And that merely weeks before one of the biggest cons in the world, with table and hotel room already paid.
I helped as much as I could, provided brushes and saved down older illustrations he did. Within 3 weeks he redid his whole book and managed to get it printed on the last day possible.
I walked home that day, found my backup disk and started uploading my comic pages to the cloud. It was a great reminder that even if you have a reliable computer or live in a house that will probably not burn down or be swept away anytime soon, things happen. And most of us do not back up their art often enough.
So this little post is a quick reminder. Do it now. You are wasting time on the forum, you can go get your external and plug it in real quick. Or throw your art into your cloud.
All of us spend so much time doing our comics, loosing them would be a nightmare.
Protect your stuff!
