Monday, February 04, 2008
THE LIMITS OF MY ABILITIES
Every time I start working on a new comic project, I try to set goals for myself on how long it should take me to finish different portions of the work.... I'm always a lot faster in my head than I am in real life.
Good news is, every project gets me a little closer to figuring out a schedule that works for me. At this point, I've learned, with my current set-up, I can put out a page of quality sketch work a day, without burning out all together and wanting to stab my pencil in my eye.
When I get behind, I will usually try to get back on track by doubling up on work. This never works. I always think, "Well, I'll take off today and do two pages on Sunday." The reason this doesn't work is because something else later in the week always comes up that causes me to fall another day behind which gives me three or four pages to do on Sunday. Then Sunday rolls around and when I put pencil to paper, the pressure from all that work on my back causes everything I draw to be fairly poor and difficult. It doesn't always work like this, but it's happens enough to want to avoid the situation altogether.
Last week I set a modest goal of tight sketching one page a day for my latest Filthy Habit project and it worked out pretty well. The backgrounds were all pretty loose, but I still had a lot of the day left over to goof around with, before or after I was done, depending on my mood. It ended up feeling less like work and more like doodling and having fun... like it should. This week, I'm going to see if I can knock out full page sketches and tighten up a previous sketch page to finished pencils. Hopefully working on different pages will keep it fresh and fun for me. We shall see. Marlena is due to have the baby any day now and the last thing I want to do is try to ink pages with poopy diaper hands.
Tonight I am going to sketch out page 29 of 32 for the Fithy Habit book so I am doing pretty good. Maybe I'll post some of my rough sketches later.
On another note, my late night sketching routines and recent Cable TV upgrade have put me together with my new favorite TV show Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. It airs around 1:00am Central on Cartoon Network and it seems it was made just for me. It's a BBC send up of poorly made 80's horror/adventure/hospital tv dramas. It's brilliant. I have no idea why more people are not talking about it.
Good news is, every project gets me a little closer to figuring out a schedule that works for me. At this point, I've learned, with my current set-up, I can put out a page of quality sketch work a day, without burning out all together and wanting to stab my pencil in my eye.
When I get behind, I will usually try to get back on track by doubling up on work. This never works. I always think, "Well, I'll take off today and do two pages on Sunday." The reason this doesn't work is because something else later in the week always comes up that causes me to fall another day behind which gives me three or four pages to do on Sunday. Then Sunday rolls around and when I put pencil to paper, the pressure from all that work on my back causes everything I draw to be fairly poor and difficult. It doesn't always work like this, but it's happens enough to want to avoid the situation altogether.
Last week I set a modest goal of tight sketching one page a day for my latest Filthy Habit project and it worked out pretty well. The backgrounds were all pretty loose, but I still had a lot of the day left over to goof around with, before or after I was done, depending on my mood. It ended up feeling less like work and more like doodling and having fun... like it should. This week, I'm going to see if I can knock out full page sketches and tighten up a previous sketch page to finished pencils. Hopefully working on different pages will keep it fresh and fun for me. We shall see. Marlena is due to have the baby any day now and the last thing I want to do is try to ink pages with poopy diaper hands.
Tonight I am going to sketch out page 29 of 32 for the Fithy Habit book so I am doing pretty good. Maybe I'll post some of my rough sketches later.
On another note, my late night sketching routines and recent Cable TV upgrade have put me together with my new favorite TV show Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. It airs around 1:00am Central on Cartoon Network and it seems it was made just for me. It's a BBC send up of poorly made 80's horror/adventure/hospital tv dramas. It's brilliant. I have no idea why more people are not talking about it.
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Man, this sounds like the same problem I have. Plus the additional 12- 15 hours of freelance work I've been having lately has Astronaut Dad book 2 way behind. Good luck with everything.
Brent
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Brent
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