Rush and then Regret

[DarkestPaladin]

Sometimes I find myself getting so excited to post the next page of a comic,
that I totally rush and skimp on the details.

Then when I post it I see hundreds of issues and things I could've done better. How the art doesn't really represent "me" and my style.
Anyone else do this? I take the page down and fix it up, then put it back ahah..

How do you keep yourself grounded and disciplined enough to take your time on posts and
update your comic once a week? I just get so excited....

[joannekwan]

Sticking with a schedule helps. Even when I do finish a page early and want to show it off, I queue it, look at it on Tap, find mistakes, fix them, re-upload, and it will be good to go when it goes live to the public.

[DarkestPaladin]

That's a good idea. I think I'm going to start planning out a schedule and try it out for a while.

[mappypaint]

You're not alone! Since i've used up all of my buffer for U-Speed, I upload a page as soon as it gets done. I do checks on the page to see if I missed any details and stuff before uploading, but even after all those checks the mistakes will always be seen soon after the page is uploaded.XD

I don't take down the page though. I will edit it when I get the free time (like add more details, fix the colors, adding backgrounds, etc.) then just replace the old page with the edited one.

[igneriss]

I'd suggest doing a detailed sketch much earlier than rest of the page. This way you see the mistakes and you can fix them while inking ( : I do sketches for the whole chapter at once, so later it's easier to catch what I need to correct. And if I make mistakes anyway... well, it's not like I can fix it without redrawing the whole page, so I usually just hope that it's not THAT noticable CX
And as for details, you can set yourself some quality rules, like 'at least 1/3 of panels must have backgrounds' c:

How do you keep yourself grounded and disciplined enough to take your time on posts andupdate your comic once a week? I just get so excited....

I don't! : D posting daily! : D

[Doubtcent]

What I like to do is, once it's uploaded, I leave it and move on. If I dwell too much about the past stuff, I have no time to create something new. The more you progress forward, you'll pick up more on those mistakes you might have made in the past. Your content will improve if you keep working and taking steps forward, rather than backtracking to be absolutely certain something is perfect.

There's a common thing one learns in a writing class. Sit down and write something all the way to the end. If you dwell too much on the first few pages at the beginning, the story will not be finished.

I've often rewritten the same five pages to make it perfect, rather than trying to get it done. That's what first drafts are for, that way once you're done with the finished product, you can go back and fix things later once you have a complete picture.

I personally have been facing this issue with my comics. I've been creating for a year, but then I looked back at the old stuff and think, "Man that sucks. No wonder people don't want to stay."
But of course, I've only been updating things to the current style recently, as a reboot. I was still uploading new stuff as I updated the old. As of now, I've decided to start over, simply so that things are more contained, less confusing, and more focused. I haven't given up and I still keep the old stuffs just because I still enjoy them.

So, long story short, get some stuff done before you decided to do improvements. Get better, and only then you should stop and try again.

[kazukitakamura126]

I messed my 2011 reboot of a 2009 comic I did because I rushed into it. Despite the facts being recorded physical the execution was sloppy and the actions were not believeable. From that point on, no matter how excited I get about a comic I tell myself I don't was to screw this comic up either. So I make sure I can't poke any plot holes in my story and I ask for feedback so I can further flesh the story out.

[mattcleaver]

Artists are always their own biggest critic. Readers will often not even notice mistakes that you think are glaringly obvious. I find over thinking pages and spending too long fixing all the mistakes can be a little unnecessary. I sometimes upload pages early so the mistakes are easier to see, and let a few people see it so they can spot things I missed. Then I fix up those things and reupload ^^

[guilhermecahu]

After two failed comics in the past due to lack of planning, I decided that my current one, Badger Badger, would not have the same destiny. The idea is to hold your excitement to release everything early and comprehend that there won't be much difference in starting a series (for example) today or in two months. It is better to have a big buffer and many things planned ahead than having to rush to produce them.

For Badger Badger, I've written the first two chapters in prose (which I do not recommend) and I started converting them into scripts and thumbnails. When I had all the thumbnails for Chapter 1, I started drawing the pages but I've made a slight mistake. When I drew the first two pages for the introduction I got so excited that I decided to share it with everyone, so I created the series, facebook page and some subscribers. BUT I had no other thing done! And thinking I would be able to finish 20+ pages [of buffer] by September, I just set the date of the definitive release fot that month (the Intro was released in August). For my despair, I could only make around 15 pages in 30 days - 1 page being published by week - and I still had to keep drawing during September.

In the end, that wasn't the worst of things that I could do to myself, but it kind of set me in a rush. It'd have been better if I had just drawn all the pages for Chapter 1 (including the introduction) before creating any page and releasing anything.

Anyway, with a buffer in hands (that unfortunately ends this friday), I could spend 2 whole months without having to worry about the pages and focusing 100% on my college activities.

So my tip for you is: calm down, relax, make plans, work with the plans you made and always learn with your mistakes.

---

Extra tip: try to measure how much time it takes for you to draw an entire episode. For me, it usually takes 7 to 9 hours to draw and finalize an episode/page of Badger Badger, so it'd take around 2 days (dividing the workload) to do it. In case I run out of buffer, I know I can produce at least 1 page per week, considering other activites I have to fulfill.

[DarkestPaladin]

This is actually very good advice. I appreciate it. No need to make myself rush and mess up by posting one thing to early, then suddenly being overwhelmed by the level of work I'd just given myself. I think from now on, I'm gonna schedule and draw everything out ahead of time to keep things smooth before even announcing anything...good, good advice!

[dracoplato]

I have a queue for Zenchav that makes it so I don't have to rush post the pages I just finished. I usually look them over many many many times before I actually post them, lol. But even then there's mistakes, there'll always be mistake since I'm not a perfect artist, I don't think anyone is. If something really bothers me I'll go back and fix it later, sometimes months later, years later, lol! I've already changed the first couple of chapters artwise several times. I don't take the pages down though, I just replace them with the newer version without making a big deal about it.

You can't get caught up on the "mistakes", as someone else said the artist is the most likely person to notice them anyway since the reader isn't nearly as hypercritical about the work.

[GFalconDX]

I know that the urge to rush your work is strong because you want to get the comic released early, but I realized down the road that doing so will fail in the long run. For my comic, The Chronicles of SolLuna, I usually keep a schedule of trying to get a page out every week or 2 unless something comes up. However, I usually would spend a day or 2 after finishing the page to make corrections where I need to, because I want to make sure the page doesn't have mistakes before I upload it.

I guess another way to make sure there's no mistakes is to leave the comic, take a break, then come back to it and look over it and see if there are any.