What school level are you in? And how do you balance work with drawing?

[marygold]

So many of the bigger named creators talk about their classes, paying their bills, room mates, etc it seems like a lot of the comic artists here are either in college or are in the full blown adult life. Those two lives are so busy though! Do you guys just manage your work time really well then draw with what free time you have afterwards? I myself am having a crap ton of trouble balancing my comic with my high school life. I feel like I should set up a set time to draw, but I always get carried away.

Who's in high school here? Heck, who's in middle school here? How do you guys balance time?

[Puppisama]

I'm currently at a year and a half of graduating from university, a carrer quite similar to Computer Science tho. I started doing my comic on vacations, so I can dedicate all the time I want to it, but when university starts I'll have to adapt my upload to the schedule, probably gonna end up updating VCvsDvsCFAD 3 times or twice I week, I'm trying to make a page per day, but one page takes arount 3hrs to make, unless I lower the time to 1hr-1h and a half, I'll have to make less updates per week. Since I don't work is not much of a problem, I only have to dedicate to my studies and my comic, but when exam season starts, shits get's crazy hahaha, good thing I learn fast, but when coding projects comes... I only want to hide under a rock.

[igneriss]

I graduated uni a month ago, and currently I'm slowly looking for a job c:
Balancing drawing comics and uni was really difficult, especially when I had to stay in the lab till evening. I run out of buffer and had to change updates schedule few times, but at least I learnt to work fast :'D

[niinasalmelin]

I'm just entering to my master year, Balancing has been easy, since I study art education so I get nowhere near as much work as.. a law student would get for example.

[J.Z.Castillo]

I'm about to go into my penultimate college year after I took almost a 3 year break. I'm in an Illustration BFA program in NYC which is like the olympics of art and cutthroat as fuck. So, yeah, that can be pretty stressful sometimes haha. I also do freelance illustration to pay the bills, on top of my comic.

I guess I'm just really good at prioritizing what I have to do first. Riding the subway, most of the time, I'm making a list in my head of what I have to do and how much time I should spend on it. I come up with plans A, B, and C just in case I have to change what I'm doing on the fly. And that's it, I prioritize everything and make a mental schedule of what I should be doing since I also lead a pretty active life style, from working out to hanging out with friends (extrovert problems).

[marygold]

@Puppisama @igneriss @niinasalmelin @mrjonzap you guys make me scared of college lol I'm worried I won't have time to continue my comic, it takes me 1-2 hours for each panel

[WakaXO]

I am not in school, nor did I ever go to college for any art courses ( I feel like the vast majority of people here have gone to some sort of arts program, I feel so jelly! I went into the trades programs after high school. ^^; )
I have a pretty full work week, my job can be 7 days a week and 8-10 hours/day regular, so I have to stay on top a strict schedule to maximise my time use. I have days set aside for my comic and it seems to help.

[Ringarune]

I'm in my last year of high school. Balancing the drawing is hard... tbh I just stay up pretty late when I need to finish comic pages

[Triple_Horatio]

I work most afternoons, which leaves me with mornings and most nights to work on my comic. My only days off are Thursday and Sunday.

[niinasalmelin]

Don't worry, you'll always manage to find time for doing stuff you love. Also, the more you draw, faster you'll get. It used to take about 4 hours to finish full watercolor page, now it's at best 1 hour, very rarely over 4. Summer breaks have been great help as well.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I work full-time as programmer. Out-side of working the 8-5. I usually have to spend about 30 minutes doing extra research to keep up with tech. So personal + work responsibilities can consume a majority of wake time. Learning how to manage time and make lifestyle changes/sacrifices are essential if you are looking to develop any sort of long-term side-gig.

With that said, it's not exceptionally hard since we tend to waste more time than we believe. It's a matter of developing discipline, time management skills, and just making small daily adjustments. I generally find myself about 3 hours to read and work on my comic (on a weekday), while taking care of my personal life/health, relationships, and career. As someone who is "naturally dis-organized and undisciplined" I can say it's not something you're born with, it's something you learn and practice when you're either really young or later in your life when you realize, you need to make changes.

I recommend spending less time worrying about squeezing things in and make a habit of spending 80-90% of you're efforts planning out what you're going to do and how. Usually you'll find you have more available to work with and less resistance than you originally thought. Developing routines also REALLY helps since it saves wasted time on decision making.

[heterodont]

Currently going into my second year of art school! (ACCD in Cali)

My first year was...awful. I had bad priorities so I screwed over my GPA during my first semester because I thought I could work on my comic and do school work at the same time :') the second semester I made as many pages as I possibly could so that, if need be, the hiatus wouldn't be super long for my readers. I went back to school in January, and my buffer lasted until April 12th? with my last class being May 12. While I was in school, I did have time to do at least 4 pages before midterms & finals, but once I hit those two periods in time I couldn't do any other work that wasn't for my classes that took longer than an hour at the most. That was with time management, as I had arguably better time management skills than my friends/classmates. Then again, I also live 30 minutes from both of my school's campuses, so I didn't have the leisure of only needing to drive like 5 minutes to and from.

I definitely recommend making a buffer if you can or if youre worried about not being able to balance work vs drawing.

[60Six]

I graduated college about 2 years ago now but having worked on my comic since high school (or the old version of it at least), I can at least vouch for my experiences. High school was the prime for my comic's page production. I was sometimes spitting out 2 or 3 pages a night, even with school. Granted the pages were in black and white back then and MUCH quicker to make, but I still managed to spit out pages at a pace I'm sure I'll never achieve again. :'D
College was a different story. Especially because I was going to art school, my pages slowed down a tooonnn. My comic slowed down from being just really inactive to a full blown year long hiatus. Course, I kinda had another big distraction that was contributing to that too (Cough I met my girlfriend)...
As much as college was distracting though, it ended up being great for my comic! I learned a LOT that i implement into the new version of my story and characters and even got to use them for a few assignments. :'D That helped a ton with their designs and overall rounding them, as well as the art in general. Boy did that have a drastic change. So even though I didn't post for over a year, I still feel like it was sort of productive. I basically took a year off to come back with a much better and stronger story and art.
Now that I'm graduated and working, eh, I can't work on my comic as much as I'd LIKE, but such is life. :'D I do what I can and still manage to get 2 or 3 pages done a week.

[Puppisama]

You will always have the time, you only need to organize it better.

[MissMagicGirl]

I dropped out of high school and went to art school and fashion design school instead. I am 24 now and the last two years I have been studying up on my highschool grades so I can get into university some day. I will be studying for a couple of years until I am done and can go to university. So my school years has been quite different from most people. But I think it was the best way for me since I was dealing with a depression and anxiety as a teenager and it was better for me to go to art / fashion design classes and do what really inspired me. So long story short: I study ^_^ But I don't feel like it is hard to get time to work on my comic. I love making it so whenever I have time over I want to work on it

https://tapastic.com/series/magicadvisor

[ratique]

I have a full-time 8-5 job, got promoted recently and the deadlines are crazy. Then I drive home, eat and work on my comics. Weekend: One day comic, one day freelance work.

It is honestly not that hard (but still really exhausting). It only becomes impossible when I lazily lay in bed to watch youtube videos. Or when I meet up with friends on the weekend. But you learn what is more important to you and where to place your priorities. It just takes some commitment.

[WintreKitty]

I'm going into year 6 of university (already have a degree, working on diploma). I find it a bit difficult to manage time, but I just pace myself as best I can and find time in between obligations to sit down and just write. When I head in to my masters it'll probably be a bit more difficult... and even moreso when I finally have a career since my work hours won't be 9-5.

[ToonDoctor]

In my last (I hope) year of my PhD degree. I also teach undergrads at my department. Very very busy, but I have learned to manage my time.

[ChrisCoteArt]

I'm in my second year of my advanced diploma for Fine Arts. My comic takes about 5+ hours a day with maybe one break day a week, and my classes take far more than that. As you can imagine, the secret to balancing it is to not do much else. I still go to the occasional party or stay at school longer sometimes, but the more you do that, the more you need to sacrifice elsewhere.

If you are an artist who is serious about what you do, you will always have 2 full time jobs. Your art, and whatever else you have going on at whatever stage of life you're in. The dream is to make art into a job so you can have one job, but even then you need to balance work and personal art projects, which there will always be.

I am the author of https://tapastic.com/episode/407280 and those pages are made on industry standard 11x17 art boards, which take a lot longer to fill up than people realize. lol.

[punkarsenic]

I just finished GCSEs, which is kinda like finishing senior year, only youre 16, and have 2 more years of ????? to go before youre allowed to quit. but it means im enjoying a 9 week summer holiday, which is when im doing most of my work right now. after that ive chosen a fairly low maintenance course for the next two years, so... I'll see how it goes.

Last year, I'd tried to work a very high maintainence comic at a weekly schedule, on top of GCSEs (including an extremely demanding art teacher) - that just didn't work, and I cancelled the comic last summer. Overall, though, I'd say it was a good learning experience. I learnt to keep a low maintenance style (aka not intricate shading and bright colours and busy busy panels) and keep my schedule on a monthly basis, for room for depression, delays, and school.