#ymmv this is a very professional ‘I have deadlines to meet’ type of thing. because I had deadlines to meet lmao

[sforzesco]

how long do you typically spend drawing a comic page? I'm a perfectionist and I have a hard time keeping a reasonable working pace for comics

so I’m actually going to not answer this one (the answer is both less and more time than people think, and it depends) but instead I’m going to give you some advice on how to deal with perfectionism when it comes to making comics

the first thing is to see if you can kill your inner perfectionist, which basically means, can you get comfortable with imperfections? this is something that can be difficult to do, but it can also really take some weight off your shoulders if you can look at a line that’s a little squiggly instead of perfectly smooth and move on from it. there’s a whole page, a single wonky line, is like. fine, especially if you’re doing more than one page.

if not, that’s okay! we’re moving on to the 75%-80% rule, which is: figure out what giving 100% in art looks like for you, then find out what giving 70%-80% looks like. As a person, you can probably consistently give 80% to any given illustration, but doing 100% all the time is going to fuck you up in the long run. If you can get comfortable consistently giving a 80%, you can then decide when you want to crank it up for dramatic effect, or you can save going all in on something fun or a big project. if perfectionism is a hard habit to break, instead try it reframe it as giving a ‘perfect’ 80% instead of 100. it’s all about that overall visual consistency, baby!

comics can feel like doing seven or eight individual illustrations on a page (panels) and some people definitely tackle them this way, and that makes learning what you can consistently give without wanting to shove your hands into cement very important. If every panel is a solid 80%, the entire page looks Good (which means the entire page is working at 100% because you have visual consistency/coherency and that’s what matters)

ideally, you reach a point where you can gauge what a good 80% of what you can give looks like across an entire sequence. for me, Trikaranos is operating at 80% while Ex Voto is 70% (part of it is that Trikaranos is more demanding, while Ex Voto is more casual and vibes based, but for both I put a lot more work into formatting and lettering)

part of what can help with all of this is figuring out a good work pipeline that encourages finishing up a sequence to keep you from getting stuck agonizing on small details

a decent one is this

thumbnails > rough pencils > do tight pencils where you think you’ll need it (I do tight pencils on facial expressions, furniture if there are bodies on it, and perspective shots) > inks > colors > lettering

adjust it based on whatever your own needs are, etc.

what’s imperative to this is that you don’t do the pencils > inks > coloring stages in sequential order, but instead jump around so that you don’t burn your energy through it (in that there’s a drop in quality as you either get tired or start to rush). Jumping around lets you spread out your high energy points and it picks up the slack for when you want to just get it done, but also it forcibly keeps you from spending too much time on one specific thing. (which is why breaking it up into stages is important, instead something like finishing one whole page from pencils to colors and then doing the next one)

when I do single page comics, I usually alternate every other panel, when I do multi page comics, I’ll either alternate entire pages or I’ll do the first and last pages at the start, and then jump around the middle in whatever order I feel like.

whenever I find myself spending too much time on something, I will set a playlist that has either a 15 minute or half hour run time, and when I reach the last song, if I’m still fucking around focusing on one thing, I’ll make myself move in and return to it later. I do this the most with the inking stage so that I don’t over ink something (I find crosshatching relaxing, but it doesn’t often look good because I do too much in one place and it looks bad because it doesn’t work with the rest of the panels and then I have to start over), and then I can go back to a panel with fresh eyes later and decide whether or not more detail is necessary for the whole page to look good, or if it’s fine as is.

and ofc, the most important guideline of all: the Fuck It, We’re Done rule, which is at some point, you may look at a page and go ‘I don’t want to work on this any more, I’m tired, it’s not fun, I’ll be stuck here forever, etc’ and that’s when you put your pencil down, physically move back from the page, and figure out what the bare minimum amount of work you need to do in order for the whole page to be coherent is, do JUST THAT, and post it.

at the end of the day, it’s the whole page that’s important, not all the individual details, so try not to focus on too many small details early on, but instead go back and add them in closer to the end. You can clean up any line art mistakes that are bothering you here at this stage too.

finally, don’t zoom in too close on a digital canvas, especially if you’re doing pencils. there’s no reason for a reader to zoom in close like that unless you specifically want them too, spare your hands the agony of tiny details that won’t be seen when you upload it at viewer resolutions. I know artists who won’t go past 150% because those details won’t show up at print resolutions.

HEUGHGHHH this is so so long, but hopefully there is some helpful advice in there for you, anon