10 Days to Finish a Comic Strip

Hah...

So... I'll let you guys in on a little "secret."

That oneshot "Clubbing?" I planned to release it on the 26th, the first Monday after "We City Folk" ends. However, as I went on with it, I slowly began to realize that wasn't going to work. At all. Had that moment of "project doom." There's still so much to be done, so much can still get fuzzy in production, and I am not about to rush this thing.

But here was my issue. I'm just coming 12 weeks off of nothing but Monday speedpaints. I want to upload something different. I want to upload another comic. But the only one I had coming down the pipeline was still in production and not nearly ready to ship. What to do, yes?

WELL...

I was dead set on having a comic bracket off "We City Folk." I am dead set. So a few days ago (Thursday, I believe it was), I hammered out another idea. A shorter comic. I came up with the idea, refined it a few times, converted it to a script, and planned a line of attack. It had to be a single page, essentially 12 panels, to be as quick and easy to produce as possible. There had to be just the right balance of action and nothing happening. From the time I started this and wrote out a plan, I had about two weeks to 10 days to get this done from start to finish. Here's the play-by-play:

Thursday - thumbnail and pencil the comic.

Friday - blueline and ink the characters.

Saturday - finish inking the characters.

Sunday - ink the background (there's only one major background)

Monday - create clipping masks

Tuesday - flat the comic

Wednesday - render the comic

Thursday - finish rendering the comic

Friday - add finishing touches

Saturday - finish adding said touches

Sunday - edit it together

Monday - finish editing and upload

There are two pluses to this. Yes, if I get it done in time, I'll have my comic vid up on the 26th. But if I can get this done, it will also mean that I feasibly can produce a short strip in two weeks to 10 days. Knowing that, I can finally start incorporating more comic material on my channel. It's funny. I just watched a video on Lynda by Dermot O'Connor in which he said that improvement in animation is like going up steps: first, you're this level, and then suddenly, you're a higher level, and you manage just fine. Granted, I'm not animating anything, so it's not a one-to-one, you know? But completing this, God willing, will place me just one level higher.

I'm already two days ahead, so I hope to be able to get this done on schedule, unlike bloody "Clubbing." I'm still going to work on it, but it's going to be a later to-do. Much later. As it stands now, I have 10 days to finish it.

More details concerning this experiment will be coming soon, God willing. Unless I get eaten by a velociraptor tomorrow or something dreadful. I just can't seem to avoid doing two comics at once, can I...?

Thanks for reading.

#strip #comic #project