Drawing Comics Faster
Progress on my comic Float is coming along well. As I mentioned in my previous post, the goal of this comic is to focus on speed. So far I’m extremely impressed with the results! In the past month I’ve managed to finish ten pages, plus a cover, plus sketch and letter the remaining 7 pages. Considering my last comic took me over a year to complete, this pace is absolutely incredible.
I keep ask myself how am I so much faster than I was a few short weeks ago? The answer is: I stopped caring so much...
Halfway through my last comic, I realized I was focusing way too much attention on tiny details. Details no one will ever pay attention to. Have you ever read a comic and thought about how long you stare at each panel before you move on to the next? I hadn’t until recently. But for me, it’s not very long. But whenever I would work on my own comics, I would meticulously clean up my lines and make sure no color bled out into areas they weren’t supposed to be. I would zoom in WAY too close to the canvas and edit tiny little pixel! All of that may be okay if you’re working on a large illustration or print, but for comics (especially pages with small panels) that’s totally overkill…
A mantra Mr. Jake Parker always says is “Finished, Not Perfect”; meaning things usually feels better when they’re finished rather than in a perpetual state of production because you’re seeking perfection. Finished, Not Perfect is something I repeat to myself a lot these days. Whenever I want to zoom in to a tiny corner of a panel and erase a line that overlaps something it shouldn’t, I think to myself “Does it even matter? Will anyone notice that? And even if the do, will they care? Will that little line put a blemish on their entire reading experience?” Spoiler alert: No.
At the end of the day, I would rather have a portfolio of 100 finished comics that are riddled with imperfections rather than one single comic that could be considered “perfect”.
My work on Float will continue in the coming weeks (interspersed between working my day-job and taking care of my two month old…) but I’m looking forward to completing it quickly because I’ve got a lot more stories I want to work on. Thankfully I’ll be making my way through them much quicker now :)
