Quarantine and Comic Production

[ryoko]

I'm an essential worker, so schedule is largely unchanged except I've had to do more double shifts. Commute is faster, though. About 20 mins less round trip with so few cars on the road. I have managed to get one day ahead for patreon, and almost two weeks worth of buffer for tapas /webtoons

[vothnthorvaldson]

There's not much change in my life because I'm a farmer, but I can start to see that I have more time than usual, due to going less often to town for groceries etc. I'm not that close to the city, so it's saving me.. maybe half a day every week.
As I'm doing my usual work, and have this extra half day of free time, I feel I'm very lucky. I've worked so much more than expected on my comic that I'm able to post twice as often.
Although, the financial impact of my business, that I will only start to see next month, may change all that...

[prunier]

Yeah I'm working on my comic, In my country where I do live things are getting better but still we are in the phase 3 of the virus, my mother it's a nurse she's 47 and I fear a lot for her, she's very brave and takes precaution from everything, luckily where she works it's a small office and it's not in a hospital, anyways I'm trying to take good care of my mom and my health too, I started to eat a more vegetarian stuff and I take good care of my teeth.

I hope you're all safe!! don't touch your face and wash your hands :3

[Cavechan]

I was let go from my job and there's no point in searching for a new one right now so I've been focusing more on drawing. Mostly, I've been trying to get ahead on my sequel comic which I'm determined to finish as soon as I can. But there's still a lot of work to do. I'm basically trying to get everything sketched out, but it would take about 2.5 weeks of sketching ten pages every day in order to finish. Not so bad if I didn't have to also 1. work on my main comic and 2. also post new pages. And ten pages a day is not so bad once in a while, but it's a lot to do for so long. @.@

So so far I've gotten about 56 pages sketched out, 8 pages completely done, 2 color title pages done.

It just doesn't feel like enough. It never does.

[nauko]

I started working home remotely full time a few weeks ago and it's affected my motivation a bit...
How can I phrase this...there's no longer a barrier/separation between 'work work' and 'comic work'; the same two monitor screens and desk I stare at all day to make a living are now the same ones I use to draw to take the edge off and it's honestly depressing the hell out of me. On work days I find it hard to go back to my desk chair after 5pm when I was there 8hrs straight previously working on some bs project my manager has handed over to me.

Because of this my production levels are dropping a bit c,:

[pilot-obvious]

It's been super hard to find the motivation to work on comics. There are times where I feel super pumped to draw but then other things come up that I have to tend to and I lose that drive. It's really hard to separate work work from comic work since I use the same space for it all the time. Maybe this means I need to find a new space in my home to work from home?

Of course, it's okay to not have the motivation to work on something. Quarantine is really hard on you mentally and you shouldn't feel bad if you're not as productive as you think you should be. There are a lot of people saying that by the time quarantine is over, there's a huge list of things you should've accomplished (like new hobbies, side hustles, routines, etc.), but it's just not true. You should do what you are able to do!

[meganebii]

I'll be honest, my comic is like the best distraction for me right now. I have been super productive, and kind of just knocking it out. The world is a crazy place right now, both in general and also just in my personal life, and my comic feels like a nice, cozy place to get away from it all.

[Kiweevil]

I'm getting a sh​t ton more work done on my comic! I went from being stuck on the last update for almost a month to now already having half the lineart done for the next update in a matter of days. That includes storyboards and everything!

The most ironic part of this is that I'm actually working more hours during this quarantine, since I work in an "essential" store. So I have no idea how I'm accomplishing so much. But I'm noticing lots of comic creators are having very fortunate experiences as far as that goes during this quarantine. Pretty cool if you ask me, definitely a way to keep your mind off things!

[sushy00]

My motivation went all downhill. I do try to keep going on, but it sure had a negative effect on my productivity.

[brusskel]

Hey, I know I'm responding late but man, I've gotta lot faith in you.
I'm sorry you're going through such a rough patch and things like this more than likely do not help your drive to create or do anything, really. But please understand there are people who care about you and value your time and work. I read your comic, "No Future" and I really enjoyed it! It was honestly a good distraction from everything going on in the world.

I thank you for everything you've done and the fact that you're still here. Keep pushing, my friend. We're with you!

[brusskel]

Heck yeah dude! I'm glad this benefits you! Good to see there's some positivity goin' around.

[ghostmaya]

My life is always been quarantined~

[Iamapersonmanguy]

Thats deep..........

[brusskel]

You got this! Sooner or later things will improve!

[Shanny8]

Considering that I wasn't drawing period before the virus- because of arm & back pain issues that had been plaguing me for the past year, the quarantine isnt really affecting me. In fact, my arms & back have gotten a little better- to the point where I have been working on small standalone projects. Trying to make sure my arms & back get even better than current standings before I dive into page making again, so I'm figuring at least a couple more months of slow paced work & recovery.

I'm still going in to my job; even though most of the staff is working from home(my position doesnt allow me to, but with others out of the office my "survival rate" has gone up) my workload seems like it has increased a bit. I have a few more single art projects to get done, then it's back to working on my comic stuffs...seeing a few new readers this week on my webcomic has made me happy and I want to start doing pages again, but I have to be careful or my arms will go out again.

[jimena]

Right before my country declared the quarantine I got fired from my job, so, this is a really weird feeling, because everybody is like "yes the isolation, the quarantine" but my case is more like I'm desemployed at first I had a great productivity and creative rush, but now my schedules are getting messed up, I can't sleep at night, at day I don't really want to do nothing : ///
Good thing is I'm about to start a new chapter in my comic so I can take a week or two to... "take a rest"

[Karmillina]

Since I don't have to worry about getting ready and transporting to and from work since I'm on home office now, I think I actually have 3 extra hours in my day to work on my comic. It's not much and it varies with my energy levels and such, but I've been able to complete my chapter, finally. It's something.

[KrispyKremeBits]

My comic production schedule has always been messy (hence why I update once every two weeks) but because of this I'm not sure if the quarantine has made it worse or better. It's hard to tell...

[spadesart]

man i've been thriving. i think this week was the first time i had two queued finished episodes since like... 2017. my character design motivation is back and i've made like 4 new full oc designs in the past three days. and i drew a background im actually proud of for a change!!!

[Mallory]

I was laid-off from a job that I enjoyed but which caused me great physical harm, particularly in my hands and forearms. I couldn't draw more than a couple panels in most weeks and I was in a lot of pain.

To be honest, as of right now, this quarantine is probably the best thing that could have happened to me, creatively-speaking. I don't have an expensive lifestyle so me and my laid-off partner can definitely hunker down and live off of EI until my work resumes, so all I've been doing is working on my comic and healing my hands. I was planning on having enough of a cushion to launch my comic on Halloween this year, but I may actually launch it earlier now that I've actually been able to draw actual pages in a week!

I'm still in a lot of pain, but I'm trying to slowly work through it.