So, 4-24-2010 is on the horizon, and the month that was March took a lot out of me, schedule-wise. Being indoor percussion competition season in the NCBA, and Easter being this weekend, our entire season was condensed into a compact month, and I was half-asleep for most of that month as a result.

Payday has been sitting on my drafting table for that month, relatively untouched. I took to sleeping in, to be quite honest, in order to not be too tired at night for rehearsals and lessons. Now that it’s over, I expect to resume drawing in the morning. However, the time away from the drawing board has given me time to think… again.

I will continue to work on Payday, of course. I would be remiss in not finishing it, after spending all that time completing what pencilled pages I’ve finished. However, I’ve thought about in what capacity I would consider Payday to be completed? Should I continued until the very end? That’s what I would like, but considering I only draw for an hour/hour-and-a-half each weekday morning, that could take quite some time (and it already has).

I could take what exists and turn it into a short story, but it would lose the intended impact if I got rid of the ending, which hasn’t been drawn yet.

What will end up happening instead is that I will continue to work on it during the week until 4-24-2010. Then, I’ll take whatever needs to be completed and move it to the weekends to make room during the week for another, more immediately achievable project. A project involving a format that isn’t really a priority to me in the world of comics; I’ve said before that what I really want to do is graphic novels. However, this new project is conducive to working for a short periods in the mornings, the output is greater and faster, it will sate my need to do comics, and the idea I have is interesting, entertaining, and has enough fantasy elements to give me a platform to explore different stories and keep me interested, long term. All of this is important to me because, right now, I need the immediate output and the more immediate achievability to balance out the long-term, gradual achievability of working on a graphic novel. And we all know that a good amount of output is important in the comic world. Plus, because I would be working quicker, the project would not get in the way of doing graphic novels on the side.

That’s right. Provided I go through with my grand scheme, I shall be making a return to webcomics.

I started working on Payday on what I think is the week of 4-20-2009 (my first post about it was made on 4-24-2009).

It’s been my policy to draw for at least an hour every weekday morning, which isn’t a lot of time, this was implemented with the consideration of a few things:

1. I have a ton of projects that I have unwisely started, and this is my way of helping me to prioritize.
2. I need to learn to belt out a page, so a time limit forces me to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time.
3. If I don’t give myself a time limit, I may not stop which means impeding on my other tasks.

I’d say, since starting Payday, I had done fairly well for, oh… 60% of the time? Maybe 70%? That’s not a good grade. That’s a D or a C, depending on what percentage you go with.

I did take a small break to illustrate Fighting David Parrot, written by David Hopkins. But I count that as time well spent. Other than that, drawing Payday became less and less of a constant as I began to grow frustrated with the scriptless experiment I committed to, as I’ve stated many times before. The fun was leaving.

At what point does one admit that an experiment in the creative process isn’t working and that one should go back to the norm?

I’ve decided that if I don’t make some sort of significant progress in penciling the pages by 4-24-2010, then I’m going to give up the experiment and write out a script. What is significant progress? Well, I’m on page 22. Yes, that’s it. Page 22. And I’m pretty upset at myself about that, especially when there are other comic projects I have that I want to work on but won’t allow myself to start until Payday is finished. In any case, that gives me 14 weeks. I’ll commit to completing 28 pages of pencils, which is two pages a week, drawing at the rate of an hour to an hour-and-a-half every weekday morning. That’s a lot of work. We’re not even counting weekend mornings, which would help me stay on top of things. This would bring me to 50 completed pages, meaning I could finish the rest of the pencils by the beginning of May. If that happens, I can go back and finalize the dialogue for the entire graphic novel.

If it doesn’t happen, if I fail, I give up the experiment and write out a script for the pages I have and the pages that are thumbnailed before returning to penciling the unfinished pages..

There. It’s in writing. Now I have to commit.

For those of you that frequent my web-bursts via this site or Twitter, you know that I postponed drawing full-sized pages of Payday in order to try doing thumbnail layouts. And you know that I have said on more than one occasion that I really, really, really didn’t like doing them.

In case you haven’t heard that before, here it is: I hated doing thumbnail layouts.

It’s not that they weren’t productive, overall. My last, full, penciled page of the book was page 19 (which didn’t get posted; I posted page 18 if you care to look). When doing the thumbnails, I laid out pages 20-52. That’s right, I got to page 52 in layouts.

The problem is, I lost my feel for drawing the main character, it wasn’t fun, and I didn’t sit down to draw the thumbnails in a consistent manner. The work was sporadic. So, while I don’t have to think as hard about what to draw for the next 33 pages, I still feel like I’m behind.

Actually, I don’t have to think too hard about the next 32 pages, because page 20 is penciled:

My general method for making comics is that I write a script for myself, then I go directly to full pencils, laying out the pages as I go along, often two at a time to make sure everything is visually cohesive. Since Payday isn’t a scripted comic, I’m making things up as I go along according to the story in my head. Doing layouts for this sort of comic was like a) writing a script, but not as fast, and b) an extra step.

On one hand, I’m glad that 52 pages of comic are solid and that there are only a few more pages to go after that. Using my thumbnails I should – should – be able to pencil through them quickly. On the other hand, the thumbails weren’t that fun to do, and it was a bit of a demotivator.

Time to brush it off, suck it up, and move forward. Page 21, here I come.

Emphasis on “unscripted”.

I just got finished pre-dialoguing (is that a real word?) the first 19 pages of Payday. I’m going to wait to ink everything until I’m finished with the book, because I know the way I’m drawing it is slowly evolving with each page. Therefore, by waiting to ink until the end, I should be able to give everything a unified look.

One thing I’m finding is that doing an unscripted book, working from just a basic plot, is not much faster than writing out a script first, which is what I prefer. Because I only have an hour and change every weekday morning to draw comics, I thought maybe doing an unscripted book might be faster; I wouldn’t have to sit down and write a script, which would prevent me from drawing. Well, I can tell you, making up the pages as I go along is not my favorite way to do things. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just slower.

There’s nothing wrong with slow, but in this case it’s too slow. Had I written a script first, at least I would have completed one aspect of the process. In the case of Payday, everything is being done at once, so the accomplishments are spread far apart.

I’m intent on seeing this through as I began. However, I’m going to change things up a bit by incorporating comics into my other tasks. I’ve put a ream of paper by my computer so I can work on layouts when I need a break from writing or composing music (which seems like an obvious thing to do, in retrospect, huh? And I know I’ll have plenty of downtime thanks to my slow-ass computer not being able to handle the robust Sibelius 5 music notation software). I think this way I’ll feel like I’m accomplishing more when I’m drawing. Instead of spending so much time figuring out the next page’s layout, I’ll actually be able to draw.

Pencils for page 18:

I like this page if for any other reason than the storytelling. I know there are no words written out yet (except in scribble), but the juxtaposition of the characters and the pedestrian traffic light makes for good implication in that particular scene, I think.

One thing I re-realized while drawing today is that I need to re-adopt the practice of getting the pencils completed just enough to be inked. The pencils aren’t the final version and yet I’ve been trying to get them to look semi-tight. Probably because I’m trying to beef up my illustration skills. I need to find a balance that allows me to practice illustrating while penciling, yet get them done well enough so that they’re ready for inking but aren’t actually finished pieces themselves.