Scheduling your comic making time

[SketchbookKid]

How many hours a day do you devote to making your comic? I myself try and spend a nice 4+ hours working on my pages, but sometimes It can end up taking a whole workday(8+ especially if my day job puts me behind schedule) lol It's a pretty interesting experience this comic making thing.

[Aetherwing]

I spend nearly all day every day working on my comics. But that's because I'm a crazy person who's currently in between jobs.

[SketchbookKid]

It's pretty much all I do besides work so crazy peeps unite!!

[joannekwan]

Here's my schedule.

Monday - 3 hours to sketch and line Demon House's update (usually 2 pages). This is usually stretched to 5 hours because I like to screw around on the internet in between.
Tuesday - 4-5 hours to color Demon House.
Wednesday - work on other projects, maybe get a head start on sketching Heavy Horns' update (usually 1 page).
Thursday - 5 hours to sketch, line, and tone Heavy Horns
Friday - work on other stuff, maybe get a head start on sketching Erie Waters' next pages (2-3 pages).
Saturday through Sunday - 4-5 hours lining and shading Erie Waters. Sometimes carried over to Monday if I'm busy during the weekend.

So yeah, that's my week...

[AnnaLandin]

I'm an illustrator working from home, so the amount of time I have to work on my comics is a bit different than most people's. Also, how many hours a day I spend varies depending on where in the creation-process I am.

Storyboarding usually takes me a day or two per chapter - and by that, I mean I spend 8-9 hours a day on the storyboard for the days when I'm working on it. After that, I spend a focused day or two doing full-sized clean sketches and laying down the speechbubbles - again, 8-9 hour days, if not more.

After that, I fall into the pattern of inking a few pages, then going back and colouring the first one - then going ahead and inking one-two more pages, then going back and inking the second page. And so on until I've worked my way through inking the entire chapter, and it's time to start storyboarding the next one. Inking takes me about 1-2 hours per page, depending on complexity (some of the crowd-scenes/architecture-heavy pages take me more than that), and then I spend 2-5 hours colouring, again depending on complexity.

Once I get to the inking/colour stage, I tend to spend the morning of my update-days - Mondays/Fridays - colouring/finishing pages, so that I stay ahead with my buffer. I could afford to skip a few days - I have a 50+ page buffer - but I don't, because I like knowing I have that many pages in case of emergencies.

But yeah. I usually spend a couple of hours every day working on comics - sometimes it's my main comic, sometimes it's extras for the main comic, sometimes it's entirely separate projects.

[Kecreed]

It takes me 8+hours as well on my comic series. I'm currently behind so I'm updating every day till near the end of the month. The reason why it takes me a long time to work now is because I am now getting pretty tired. Though I refuse to give up on my goal. Also my hands are always getting carpal tunnel and my arms get tendinitis chronically so I have to take it easy every other hour.

[SketchbookKid]

A 50 page buffer sounds like heaven!

[mariusthered]

I too work from home. my art is my life so when i'm not working on commissions or promoting, I'm sat here working on swipe city.

most of my "sets" are already saved in the computer ( one of the perks of using poser 10 for my background ) so backgrounds are not a problem time wise unless I need a new location. some rooms such as bed rooms can take ages to set up due to all the little props that have to be put in place.

once I have all my background pics sorted ( my version of sketching and thumbnails in one) laying out and speech bubbles normally take between 30 mins to an hour.

then its another hour per page inking ( ugh! I loathe inking!)

the coloring and polishing depends on the page content.

all in all the writing is my favorite part, I love plotting story lines ( it's like playing god evil laugh! )

[SketchbookKid]

Im rooting for you! Please do take care of your hands.

[AnnaLandin]

A 50 page buffer sounds like heaven!

It's pretty amazing, yeah! I made sure to build it up before I started posting chapter one - and now, it means I don't have to stress out if something out of the ordinary happens that delays my drawing-plans.

[Aetherwing]

I'm cutting down on updates for a little bit so I can build a buffer. Not having one is becoming quite stressful ;A;
Having 50 sounds amazing. I'm totally jealous haha.

[heterodont]

Storyboarding doesn't take me too long once I know how to progress the story - I sketched out about 16 pages worth of thumbnails during one of my classes! (which a friend proceeded to yell at me for storyboarding in class)

The part that does take up most of my time is lining, coloring, and rendering a page. Particularly lining - on a good day I can usually finish lining within 2 hours and coloring + rendering takes me no time at all. Yet, I usually end up spending a day or so working on a single page :') It used to only take me 2 hours but seeing as I had increased the resolution I worked at (by almost double!), it makes sense as to why I'm taking longer on a single page.

I always try to finish roughly four pages before adding in dialogue - sometimes I (pleasantly!) end up with more than four pages because I somehow managed to look over the extra page.. Speech bubbles take me, max, 30 minutes for four pages in total. I always write out the dialogue as I'm sketching the thumbnails out because I'm seeing the 'scene' - if you will - play out in my head. I fix up the writing to the best of my abilities if there's some errors, but for the most part I hardly touch the speech.

As for setting aside time to work on pages, that's a huge variable. Sometimes I'm not too bogged by homework and I can easily spend two days working on a page, and other times I'm struggling to just set aside some time for a drawing breather. However, that might just be because once I start working on something, I don't quit until I'm satisfied with the finished product! A blessing and a curse at the same time - especially when college deadlines are hanging over your head <:p

[thomassayle]

well I'm always thinking of new ideas, that counts right? but depending on the quality and mood i'm in can take 40 mins to 5 hours.

[Vikiro_Hop]

I just wake up covered in blood and bile with cryptic instructions to post the already completed comic or else.

[mg78]

to think about stories, or just planning new events for grunk, i work every moment lol.
sketchs & storyboard, i can do at work (ive got a work that hate me, so i do the same lol)
i can do even the first step (pen) at work.
ink its my main problem. im very slow + i quite hate inking, so, find the time for it... it's always a pain. as the work "kill me" most of the time, the free time s only to relax myself. plus: when im free from work, hockey come first. and so on... so it happen to spend 2 or 3 week to ink 2 or 3 pages.
editing/lettering take me 4h to 8h for page, but i can find always a lot of time for that.

[Aetherwing]

It's a foul business that we've found ourselves involved in. Never should've signed that contract in blood.

[Vikiro_Hop]

I was between jobs at the time too...a 50 dollar walmart gift card and a free oil change seemed like a good deal, I probably should have held out...or at least opted to sign in ink.

[eschaefges]

I work a full-time (more like 50-60 hour per week) job, so my schedule is basically:

12:00-6:30: sleep
6:30-7:00: wake up, get kids and wife off to school/work
7:00-8:00: get myself ready and to work
8:00-5:30: work, drive home
5:30-7:30: time with family before kids go to bed (they're little)
7:30-9:00: time with wife
9:00-12:00: exercise/comic time

...which is why it's taken me 4 years to create a 208 page graphic novel and i STILL have 35 pages to color.

[pottedlilgoree]

2 hours per day - 15 mins break each hour
drawing in general - including comic

[Doubtcent]

Since I don't do art as a full time job or even any kind of job (I'm still very new at this) it's devoted to maybe around 3 hours each night after my normal work, that is if I don't have class on the side. It's just usually during my free time.

I really dream of when I CAN do this for money, that way I could put more effort and time into making stuff, much more than I already do.