After 10 months I finally may say I finished drawing first chapter of Circles and I’m ready to proceed with colors. It was a really busy time, with a lot of walls that I had to crush through with my developing comic skills. A lot have been learned and these are the things I wanted to share.
This panel totally gets it.
Drawing Time?
10 months is about 3 times more that I thought it would take. With 35 pages, it’s 3,5 page a month! Excluding weekends, it is over 6 days for a single page drawing. Sounds ridiculous to me now and I’m sure I’ll spend some time now analyzing what went wrong with my plan :)
Statistics. I was spending around 2-3 hours after work and sometimes few more during weekends. I originally assumed I can easily finish drawing single page in one working day which is around 8 hours, which is 3 to 4 days and I would have finished chapter in 105-140 days – four months.
drawing and Life
So what happend? Life. All random things, family, vacation, being sick, friends, jobs and just simple low-battery state. Everything combined took half year of off-the-job time for me. When I think that out, it is not really that strange anymore. It’s not day job and this shows how much time combined with energy I actually have in my bank. How much I need in future. For now, I’m just medicore at production planning. Lesson taken.
Anyone is different and I’m pretty sure someone would actually complete my original plan of four months. I’m just saying that we are not machines and math is cruel. Always add some reserve time.
Circle
I’m so happy anyway. I have still whole coloring to do, together with few other things like translating, organizing for web publishing, creating cover etc. Couple months more of this adventure. Probably most difficult thing with Circles, up to this moment, was being consistent. Not only to draw characters the same way for 35 pages, but to not wander too far from january drawings with october drawings. 10 months were enough for me to evolve a little as an artist and comic maker, and I just do things differently. After 30 pages I did one really big redraw of whole chapter and recently second, significally smaller. And I’m still doing small changes to dialogues.
For all aspiring authors and comic makers like me. Don’t procrastinate or hesitate too long. Planning is one more things we have to learn and we should learn that fast, so other plans could be planned properly.
Have fun during november and see You probably during promised coloring stream!
Just a little recap of drawing process.
Kamil
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