So I have an idea for a new series that I would like to tackle up but since I am currently working on my main series The Dark Children of The Night but I don't know how to keep track and balance two series at once. For those of you who are working multiple series at once can you offer some advise?
Jul '20
Jul '20
Yeah. I've done this quite often, and something I've learned the hard way is that you can do more than one, for sure, but you gotta balance it so that one of your projects is always your priority. So one can be a side gig, or a short gig, or just a funsies gig--but make sure that it's always clear to your readers and to you which project takes priority. If stuff falls out, which project will take a backseat. If you need to drop something and stop updating altogether--which project will get dropped. Overall,
So for me, my webcomic is my backseat lower priority as I do paying artwork during a stressful pandemic time. But, I still work on it, despite the fact I had to stop updating every week. Which is fine. It's not my paying top priority. It takes a LOT of stress off of yourself to only allow one thing you do be the one that takes 80% of your attention.
And that thing can change! At one point I was designing and selling lasercut buttons, till I lost interest. At another point I was a youtube crafter, until I lost interest in that--basically you should do multiple things, or you'd never know--but if you have too many things, you'll drop em all, so I'd be aware of your own limits so you're not too little butter scraped on too much bread.
Now if it weren't a Covid time as it is now, and if I were back to my old productivity, I usually assign a schedule to my side projects, because otherwise I will forget to do them, but I make sure it's suuuper lax. That way I can make a buffer and take advantage of scheduled posts (at one point my webcomic had 1 years worth of buffer and lolololol it's all gone). I rely on queue scheduling so much to free my brain that I...just can't really do webtoons because they don't have scheduling right now (I even schedule my tweets with tweetdeck. I highly recommend automated scheduling, especially if you decide to juggle twitter accounts.)
Just be aware that you're only human, and so you will need to write down and plan which days you work on what--I tend to use Asana for that--but right now with the Covid, again, my productivity is down so I'm just...letting go of all that. And that's OK.
But another thing--and this is just a Tapas thing--I have noticed most of my readers to my side stuff were people already reading my main stuff. I don't really get new readers from posting different things! Which is odd, but youknow...I guess it's nice they like my other work.
Well i think it does that readers do care about your work and they're willing to support you in anyway shape or form. XD also LOVE THAT MEME PIC! But going back on topic this is basically another i would like to work but giving how i thought of it long ago and rough the edges are like i have summary for it and but i haven't planned for the plot, characters, development or even how it will even end. So for now this series will under the TO BE ANNOUNCED file for now until i actually do have time to work on it otherwise i'll be struggling to juggle between two main series at once which is not good for my mental health as i do have major plans for my novel. Also pandemic working on the opposite for as i became more active for my novel and it has grown exponentially since i have been working more actively on it. It's only been slowed when i have a busy semester in college. But thanks for your advise! it really helped.
Hmm well, during my first comic here on Tapas I took 2 breaks in the middle to work on shorter one-shots alongside it- one was a collab project and the other was for an anthology. In both instances I kinda set aside my main comic temporarily to manage them- the collab I stopped work on the main comic altogether and just ran it on buffer, and the 2nd time I just slowed my main comic's upload schedule from once a week to once every other week for a month or two. In both cases I definitely would not have been able to run them completely alongside one another, and especially if they ended up being longer side projects (the collab was 6 pages, the anthology comic 10).
In the near future I'll be launching a new "main" comic though, and have decided to run a comedy D&D diary strip alongside it (as I've just started a new campaign recently with some friends). Much like @rajillustration said above though there's going to be a definite priority system in place here: the long action series will take priority always and the D&D comic will be just for fun, whenever I have time to bust out a quick strip (and with a slightly simpler art style and such).
That said depending on how open your schedule is maybe doing 2 big comics at the same time would be possible but I know it defintiely doesn't jive with mine xD
I'm doing two projects. One is a daily comic strip in B/W, which I do together with my husband. And the other is a weekly webcomic in color (between 5-20 panels per update)
My main comic updates religiously, while I'm a little more easy going on the weekly webcomic.
I think you should figure out how fast you can draw without stressing yourself out or burning yourself out.
Also, I agree on the motion to have one main project and one side. the main project should always have your attention while the side project may have a different schedule or can be put on hiatus more easily.
If you try to do two weekly comics, you may wanna consider to let them update in tandem to each other and turn them into bi-weekly comics. I can imagine that that might work quite well (assuming you don't have issues to switch gears between to comics.
What I do, I draw my main comic most of the day and use an hour in the morning and two hours in the evening to draw panels for my side project. So far it works quite will for me and my lifestyle personally 
I don´t exatly have two series, but an anthology series with one main story and some smaller ones which I will post inbetween chapters. So the main comic is weekly and the rest is random at best. Well this only works with stories set in the same universe.
Funnily enough I think it's easier to juggle multiple on-going comics than on-going novels.
Comics I have the script already laid out and written, the only work I have to do on a weekly basis for them is to draw the page. (I have 2 right now and each updates one page a week. Before I've had 3 going simultaneously).
Now for novels, unless you already have the manuscript nearly complete, it probably would be trickier to balance, since each update has more happen than say a single comic page. So if you have multiple novels, and you're writing each episode as you go, you have to come up with more content compared to a comic every week.
So the best advice I can give is: Just work on that second project on the side. Build up a considerable buffer or heck, even finish it especially if it's a novel! Otherwise, if you start a new series, post a couple episodes, and then go on an indefinite hiatus readers can be left disappointed. Some readers might even nag you on your main series to update the second one.
I have two series but I tend to p much work on each a chapter at a time, prioritizing one over the other in shifts. I have one I try to keep a schedule on, and the other which is way more lax. Honestly if you think you can do it, just go for it, but don’t be afraid to mess around with different methods until you’ve found one that works for you!
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