Drawing...partly because it's a lot of work, and partly because it's SO much work that I end up procrastinating. Supposedly, I like drawing, but when it comes to comics I just don't wanna...! >_<
Number 2, drawing, takes the longest for me!
One way I sometimes make it go faster is by investing a lot of time into thumbnails. If my thumbnails are more detailed, there isn't as much to effort needed for the drawing phase.
Coloring definitely. Other sections are probably the "hardest" to do but color just takes more time to complete if you're doing it completely. Even just flats can take a while. I don't color mine anymore so the drawing takes the longest now. But if a comic is colored then the coloring takes the longest, full stop.
Inking the lines always takes twice the amount of time for me to do than anything else T-T on the other hand though, that’s mostly because the art tools on the programs I use drastically reduce the amount of time needed To colour or sort out the text!
With your colouring is it just dropping the colour in the right into the section and filling it out like paint bucket or are you colouring in like with a pen??
Working in Photoshop CS6 I make selections with the lasso tool, fill, and then paint in any secondary colors (shading, details, whatnot) within that selection.
Colouring, that's why I decided to don't do it and stick with b&w, haha! It would be impossible for me to have twice a month updates the other way. Also I reduced shadows to only a couple of places on the body of characters, and in the background when I actually have one, due to time contraints.
Makes sense! I do a similar thing but on Krita. Though I USED to colour it all by hand/electronic pencil Because I found paint bucket was never accurate enough and the ridges would never get filled in. Anytime I see someone having an issue with colouring I always recommend Krita and using the tool they have to drop and add colour ^^
Definitely coloring, but I think that's also one of the most important steps! The focus of the panels can change dramatically during that stage. You can clarify your composition and values, and paint in elements that don't fit into the inking stage, like fog, to bring elements into different planes. Coloring might take the longest, but it's where you really find your pages.
Yeah I've got anti-aliasing on so there'd always be a halo if I filled it directly. Plus I always have gaps in my line work that lead to paint bucket spill outs lol
@joannekwan I've been using this tool recently: https://flatto.nl/4
Helps quite a bit with flatting. You might find it useful!
@joannekwan Yes I could not survive searching through all those lines to find the one broken part, maybe for a cover but not ever freaking page, I’d loose my mind. The tool is far from perfect but works well enough and then I pencil in whatever corrections I need to make.
Yah, except for the closing of open lines this would be perfect! Lol also sometimes I have multiple layers so I have to save the document as a tiff rather than a png,
Colouring always takes the longest for me so the only pages I usually colour are chapter covers or really important scenes that come either at the beginning or the end of a chapter and bonus art.
Definitely highlight/shadow! Krita has a colorize mask tool that I use for base color, which is SUPER fast. But the highlighting/shadowing by hand takes a while, especially because that is usually when I realize something might be off and need re-lined or re-colored. That is also the phase in which I add texture to backgrounds.
I'm a bit perplex since long about the antialiasing/ unproper colour filing problem.
I have antialiasing and use bucket tool and there is no ugly border. The grey part created by antialiasing seems to be considered as part white in a precise enough fashion that it gets coloured accurately.
I'm using Artrage. I sometimes want to switch to something else because it is not super comic friendly.
But if that antialiasing/ bucket filler issue is happening and makes my colouring longer, maybe not 
So, I want to understand: there is no way to fill colours properly without manually selecting? Or I misunderstand the problem?
I'm not sure if it's the clean lineart and setting everything up so I can color it, or coloring itself 
But I'd say, from filling in the base colors 'til finishing the last highlights takes the longest.
In terms of filling in and closing gaps, Clip Studio Paint closes them pretty well if they are not tooo big. But I always go over it with the lasso fill afterwards, because the thickness of my lineart varies. So here and there doesn't fill in everything or it pixels a bit beyond.