Pretty much what the other people in the thread had said! Some really good advice here.
One thing I recommend is to use roomstyler.com for planning out interior spaces if 3d models don't work out for you, or other interior design websites. Personally I kind of struggle with 3d modeling, so I find sites like this a little easier for me. I've also heard some people make houses in the Sims as references.
Use drawings multiple times. In Frank Miller's Sin City series, for example, you see the beautifully drawn moon in several panels and even issues. It's most times the same drawing.
All this is legit shiz, but like this example right here is top-tier. Bc the need to fully render exists hardcore, but like if you wanna be fast, gotta make shortcuts while keeping the feel of what you are trying to communicate.
Yeah totally agree with everyone else here. Something else that helps me is to hold myself accountable by just having a system where I cross off steps as I do them. You don't want your process to get roadblocked because you don't like one of the steps of comic creation, you want to get it done so the flow can continue, and breaking it down like this helps me to see it as a small step that won't be as bad as I think it will be.
And, if you look at Kanban Board methods, which are usually for factory production, they also do some things as a batch, and other things as not a batch. You'll have to find out for yourself what is better to do in a batch, but it absolutely makes a big difference. Sometimes I'll batch create within an episode. So I flat a batch of 6-15 panels at a time, then I color those 6-15 panels at a time, and then don't compile them into my episode (because mine isn't page format) until the end. If I were starting and finishing each panel from the thumbnail phase to the coloring phase on the final image, it would take probably 1-2 hours longer than just doing stuff in batches.
Other things I can batch several episodes at a time. So stuff like doing thumbnails and laying down font and word bubbles--those I can do 3-4 episodes at a time (and those things I wrote "batch" next to) and then formatting for upload is another thing I can do in a batch as well.
Another thing is if you realize during your process that you do an action a bunch, like if it were creating color layers, or resizing font to the same size, or resizing pages for formatting--you can turn those into actions. Take advantage of doing things digitally if you have it, and make custom actions for everything, because if something only takes a few seconds, those seconds turn into minutes, and those minutes turn into hours. And, if you do things in batches of like 15-20 episodes at a time, then being able to click "automate batch" and give every single file the correct layers is A+ very helpful.
All of my character shading is done through making actions actually, which is a little overkill of a method, but I don't ever want to go back to having to shuffle through a color library for a character that is exactly the same 1000 times over, and it means all of my layers are labelled, which is a fun plus if I ever decide to work with someone else. It's very easy to read my files.
And about colors, I think having a restrained color palate helps a lot. I have 3 palates I shuffle between depending on the mood and location of my comic. Having less choices give you more time because you aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. You already know what looks good together.
I went from taking 30 hours per page to like 4-5. Some of it was from reducing the content per page (there was a LOT of detail in the old pages), but some of it was from better planning, as others have touched upon.
One thing I haven't seen discussed (and honestly whenever I bring it up, people look at me like I'm crazy), but it's ensuring the tools you're using produce a sort of failure that you consider aesthetically pleasing/acceptable. For example, I used to use Medibang for my comics, but the characteristics of the brushes (the sharpness of the edge, the behaviour of the stabilizer and the pressure sensitivity interpolation) did not produce results I found aesthetically pleasing if it wasn't perfect. So I had to spend a lot of time on everything to ensure that it was. I switched back to Painttool Sai, which worked much better for me, because I LIKED how the wobbliness of my strokes came out, so I could actually work much faster. Even if the product wasn't "perfect", I liked how the imperfections looked so I felt like I could just leave them alone and still be satisfied with the final product.
Neither is perfect but the jagged edge on the medibang circle would bother me immensely, whereas I find the wobbliness of the Sai circle endearing. One I'd leave and move on, but the other I'd feel compelled to redraw. Same reason why I don't really use Clip Studio - I don't like the default brush behaviour and I have not been able to find a brush that fails in a way I like.
Big agree on the simplified art/coloring style & using the 3D models. The latter is especially suuuuuch a timesaver.
I also learned these shortcuts as I worked on my comic:
By using these shortcuts, I began to have way more time to dedicate into my lineart looking good, whereas before I was rushing and drawing off-model.
1) Premade colorset for every characters/ places: I have a color set for every cultures in my story, and even for the horse colors.
2) Character sheets will help you keep your characters consistent
3) Do multiple refinement sketches, rather than do a rough sketch then try to get the final line art right away. This'll save you the time going back to correct everything .
I am super slow, so I figured I won't have anything of value to add here, but after reading everything you've all said here, I realised something ...
puts on contrarian hat
... when it comes to 'speed', time per page/time per panel isn't the whole story!
There's stuff that genuinely eliminates your workload, but there's also stuff that's just a matter of distributing your workload differently. Frontload all your preparation? Of course you'll be faster when it comes to 'actually drawing' your comic, because you've already done some 'actual drawing' beforehand, actually. You don't have to think about composition/character details at this stage if you've done thumbnails/character sheets, but you still had to think about them at some point, and that took time. So there is a downside to frontloading all your preparation - it takes longer for you to get started. Similarly with this:
This is also just a matter of how you distribute the workload. If you don't do any sketching stages, it just means you'll have to think longer when doing the inks, but maybe that thinking time is less than the time it would've taken you to do those sketching stages. Or maybe doing many sketching stages really is faster for you because you get 'stuck' at the inking stage if the layer underneath is too loose.
Basically, matters of workload distribution is just about finding what works for you. I don't prepare jack before I draw my panels, which means I take longer on each panel, but I'd wager the total time I'd take to finish my comic would be no more than if I'd done my prepwork and churned through the 'actual drawing' part at a faster rate. If I frontloaded my prepwork, I wouldn't have even gotten around to starting my comic yet :'D
this is a really interesting point!
I think it does really come down to the prep work. I spent over a year just planning the story and 3D backgrounds for my comic, but now that I have that done I get pages done a lot faster. I don't spend time drawing and colouring my backgrounds which allows me to get more pages done.
It's just working out how much time you're willing to plan for, and planning can be an absolute pain in the butt. sometimes you just want to start!
And honestly, I'd say if you're making pages you're happy with, slower speed is fine. Comics are a very personal experience for those making it, and there really is no rush if you're just doing it for fun.
tru tru.
I think the pre-sketching thing is also a matter of brain function and skills. Some people can just ink straight on a blank page cuz their mind's eye is 20/20, and/or they have a lot of skills. I personally need to actually see things on the page to make my decision cuz I have a hard time envisioning it.
True, though I'd also argue that even if you are doing this seriously and have a schedule and everything, then doing the prepwork beforehand so you can keep pace is basically equivalent to not planning and completing pages at a slower pace than your update schedule but having an unusually large buffer so that by the time you eat through your buffer, you're already at the end of your comic anyway 
Ye, it's kind of like solving an equation in your head vs writing down all the steps. Though I think it's good to get into the habit of 'writing down the steps' anyways because one day you'll bump into an exceptionally complex equation (or an exceptionally complex scene with fancy anatomy and everything) and you don't want your pride to get in the way and make you feel like you have to nail it on the first try (definitely not speaking from experience lmao XD)
Virgin "create a professional, fully polished comic" vs Chad "just get those ideas out and maybe someone will rediscover my drafts one day and fill in the blanks so I can become famous posthumously"
Honestly speaking, the majority of the artists kill themselves doing "as good as possible" pages for a comic they dont even know if there's market for.
A smart artist would deliver pages "as best as possible with least possible effort" and watch the evolution of his/her comic before actually enrolling into a more "full blown" strategy.
Usually, a good story sells, in any form, take the example of "One punch man", the original art is "child like", but the story was enough to gather a fan base of millions, so, I you really want to tell a story and really really have the possibility to deliver it to your readers without spending the rest of your life on it, be smart 
Art example: Grass
Have you seen that grass with white gaps? If done well, it looks amazing.
Now try to draw every single piece of grass to fill everything, it'll take 10 times more and it'll take the attention away from the other objects, so, do that and you're not being very smart...
I send a sketch ver of my pages to my friends to see if everything makes sense. Saves me spending too much time editing everything after I polished it
Buffers. Buffers. BUFFERS. I can't stress that enough. I had my artist draw out ten scripts before we began releasing.
This is absolutely the philosophy I'm following, hence my comic is pretty sketchy and I don't bother with clean lineart or polish I still colour though (and by extension use tones because my method is more 'painterly' rather than flats -> tones seperately), because the colours are fundamental to establishing the mood in my comic and so colouring actually gives me a good return on investment of time with a worthwile (quality improvement)/effort ratio :]
Copy paste drawings across panels that have the character in the same perspective, etc.
Remember not every panel has to be a masterpiece, readers will pass by simple panels in a matter of seconds. Conserve your energy for the "masterpiece" panels on big and emotional moments.
closed May 1, '22
