State of the Summer
I’ve been trying to convince myself that I can manage multiple solo projects at once. That I can do it all, that I can have it all. I’m still convinced that I can, it just requires proper planning. Let’s talk about it.
As I type this, I’m looking at where I am with Eyes Of Heaven #1. Pages filled with art, much of it ready to move from final pencils to final inks. I love the process of making comics because it gets me to see a project coming together. Despite all my challenges with Clip, this book is still going and I can’t wait to start getting pages up for folks to read. Seeing my book like this also shows me where I can improve my overall process so that the next book doesn’t take nearly as long to do, and how I can really highlight my characters and my scenes in ways that make sense, how I can plan my scripts, and even my whole production schedule! It also shows me my opportunities for improving my process.
It has taken me a couple of years to get this project this far. Too many setbacks, too many times when I let distractions take over, too many days lost to stress and competing projects and priorities. I want to chop my timeline in half for the next book. Eyes Of Heaven is a 6-part series and I’m only on the first book! After two years, if I were running this book how I want to right now, I’d be on the fourth book by now, and you would be reading some very different words here! But I can’t sit here and lament what I haven’t done for two reasons: 1, start where I am, and 2, I’m here now.
So here’s what I’m thinking. Through July, I want to finish all inking. Backgrounds, foregrounds, all final base art is complete. I’m a good ways through that right now with backgrounds but I can’t take my days for granted and I can’t afford to be slow about this. Progress and forward movement needs to happen right now. Because in August, colors need to be done. Really, the whole book needs to be done by the end of August, but I’m giving myself fully to the “end of summer” which, by calendar days, means the Autumn Equinox. So inks through July, colors in August, and all final words and text by mid-September. With this plan, I can do that for sure. After that, I’m going into Eyes Of Heaven #2.
Yeah, the other books I think are going to be de-prioritized in favor of Eyes Of Heaven. Because this series is the off-series from everything else, but is also the kickoff, I don’t know that I’ll ever come back to giving it the energy it deserves once I get moving on everything else, especially because I was so ready to shelf this thing many times before. Plainly, I need to focus on one project at a time (publicly) while still working through everything else. My whole reason for even setting up all these projects at the same time was because I thought it’d be cool to have four series running concurrently. Me, with all my creative energy, wanted to tell a multipart story, with each part running at the same time. Back to what I said at the top, it is possible. I’ve done this before, and I know where I need to tighten my screws to make this happen now. But I want to get this book, this series, out now. It’s taken long enough and it’s time to be done.
The other four books will stay in-progress in the background while I clean this up. I can work on their scripts in the meantime and make sure that when I’m ready to actually take action on them, all those ideas I have for them will be ready to be realized. As mentioned on Friday’s stream, years ago, I had so much time to sit and get a comic from concept to print within the space of a month. I had time, energy, and nothing else on my plate to get through, including other projects! But as my ideas started coming to me, and as my academic and professional careers started picking up, I had less and less time to make art and I had to pull together both time and energy for just a few hours a day to do what I wanted to do. Nowadays, I have a set schedule, and so much better time management controls on my life, that it makes no sense for me to not finish a book the way I want, when I want. I’ve just not been managing it well enough.
So consider this also an inventory of my labor hours and what I can commit to, and a renewed promise to myself to finish work on one thing before moving on to the next. Here’s what I’d like to do: finish Eyes Of Heaven #1 in September, take a month to get into a weekly posting habit for the pages during October (is that a launch day I’m saying??), and start Eyes Of Heaven #2 in November. And I’ll tighten the screws on my work! I can get in with the pre-production now (scripting, page design and layout) so that when November comes around we can jump in with page work (starting with the cover). In the meantime, I can also put some lesser energy to early-production of the other titles and make slow progress on those (a bit of sketching here, some inking there, that sort of thing) and still feel like I’m doing what I set out to do. That will be especially needful to take in a change of scenery when I need to.
I don’t want to scrap anymore projects. I don’t want to refactor anymore schedules because I wasn’t managing my time well. I want to keep moving and improving my workflow because this is important and because I have so many other things I want to do! Setbacks slow my down, obviously, but also I don’t want to keep talking about a project I’m doing and not show you. So let’s move forward on this work and close out this summer on a strong note.
Thanks for the talk!