A Burst of Energy!

I posted the first page on July 5, and this is Aug.22. That means the second page took me about a month and a half. Not terribly fast, but I'm actually picking up speed,since the first comic (Cellphone Shock) went up on April 30,meaning that Page 1 of A Walk in the Dark took me a little more than three months! So I actually cut my turnaround time in half!

OK, this is all a bit silly--I'm generalizing from a very small sample, and there are so many factors governing how quickly I'm doing pages,and the major thing is that I'm keeping up a steady effort at any speed and learning a lot by the experience. It's way too soon to be timing myself. Still, just for informational purposes, I'm going to keep light tabs on this.

And I have the third and final page pretty well planned out. I'm feeling a little more like just doing it--though working on these comics has me filling up sketchbooks pretty quickly, as I try different ways of setting up a panel and practice drawing things for the comic. That's a very good thing: as a rough guide, the more pages I do in my sketchbooks, the better. it's a pretty good indicator of how much drawing I'm doing, so really, that's very good!

Now, tonight, after I finished Page 2, I penciled and lettered another entire one-page comic! I'm ecstatic at having done that, though the pencils are awfully rough. How long it will take me to convert that to a finished comic is a good question,but I'm trying to do this one as a breaking news comic--why will be evident once it is posted. I got the idea last night and scripted it this morning while waiting for the bus.

I usually come up with an idea and try to come up with the first images and then get a rough idea of how the whole comic will play out,and do one complete panel at a time, but this is the first time I have actually roughed out the entire thing at once. Which is more how the pros do it--not that I will necessarily bind myself to working that way, I have to do what works best for me, but I feel like this was an incredibly productive night!

Stay tuned!