Lately I’m of two minds. I have to be thinking of the site and keeping it updated regularly. I also have to be thinking about the comic itself and the book it’s going to become when it’s printed. If I rushed an update through “just to get it done” and wasn’t happy with it I’d have to deal with seeing that lesser page in the book. Likewise I’d have to deal with seeing it in the archives on the site. The immediacy of a regular update is lost when I show that work down the road and get a “meh” response.
There’s only a few pages left in Chapter 1.0. After that I’m going to try working on the next sub-chapter as a whole before pushing the updates on the site again. I can work in weekly batches until I get 1.1 done. I need to give myself time to thumbnail layouts and spitball character/prop/set designs. It’s very different when you have time to develop and tighten the imagery versus when you have to constantly be putting something out. You all deserve something better than just what I can manage.
5 full color comic pages a week is a nice goal to strive for but it’s also a lot of work. (Plus I’d like to launch other new projects on the site, both by myself and possibly some from other creators in the future.) But I need to get further ahead in production before that can happen. It might even be a good idea to cut back the number of updates so that buffer lasts longer when I do push updates. I’m not bringing all this up to be whiney or to offer an excuse. The reason I’ve got a blog going is to involve more people in the creative process. Figuring out how to manage a production schedule, how to build and maintain a buffer, these are things to deal with and should be shared. I know I like having a buffer and feel better when there’s work loaded ahead of time. How big it needs to be is something I’m still considering.
I’ll blog while I’m working, maybe even bring back the progress meter I had. When I’m coloring and working digitally I’ll try streaming. Of course I tend to work in the mornings EST and that doesn’t seem to be a popular time for webcomics fans to want to tune in. We’ll figure something out. I want to make the act of creating the comics as engaging as the pages themselves.