Starting October 4th 2010 SPY GUY #2 became a full-time job. This is the first time in my life I’ve been able to dedicate the entirety of my “work-time” to a comic. Even when I took two weeks off to complete SPUD & HARRY I was still doing videogame contract work on the side. Two weeks and two days in I can say it’s been an interesting experience. Suddenly there is time to think about the work. Pages that have been sitting idle for over a year are suddenly coming to fruition. That said: There isn’t nearly enough time to do all that needs to be done. On my white board, I wrote all the things I hoped could be accomplished. In my delusions of grandeur I had thought since the comic would replace the “Clark Kent Day Job” that suddenly side projects would replace the time spent making comics. I thought blog entries would come quicker, and the SPY GUY: Minis webcomic would suddenly go live. But you know what? It takes A LOT of time to make a comic. Not quite as much time as it takes to make animation. But more time than enough.
As of this writing, I’m averaging at two days to complete one page, which happens to be the same amount of time it took to complete the SPACE Anthology pages. As I move forward with this comic, it’s becoming apparent where the time is being spent, so it is the hope of this artist that as time moves on the process will become streamlined for maximum speed and productivity. Part of the trick is being able to make snap decisions. Having a solid script helps. Having solid thumbnails helps. Having reference material on hand helps immensely! The rest of it is being able to execute on demand. That trick is a little more tricky. My hunch is that skill will develop as more pages are completed. I’m noticing that having drawn convention sketches has helped a lot. It’s a great format of experimentation in figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
Today’s agenda is putting the final inking touches on the first half of SPY GUY #2 and scanning the pages, turning them into print ready files. This is what the drawing board looks like as of this moment. Note some of the items in the picture: The corkboard full of ideas and reference. The photo of my children. The rulers for drawing perspective and speedlines. The tape for tracing paper transfers. A tracing paper transfer for Page 9. Post it notes full of dialog (for placement on the page). Star Wars Manga book 2 for speedline reference. And Pages 4-10 of SPY GUY #2!
Enough blogging.
Time to get back to work.
