Day 3: Things to do!

So... I took yesterday off so I could have a day to be on vacation instead of trying to fill it with more work, and it was a good day. No regrets. In fact, I think it should be how I spend the rest of my time away from the dayjob. Unfortunately, I know that will not happen at all, and this whole seven-day challenge will easily turn into a "when I get around to it". The problem is that my day off REALLY should have been tomorrow, my birthday, meaning I should have done work yesterday so I could only have to take one day off this week, on the day that matters. Okay, maybe one regret. Because I'm taking tomorrow off, too.

So where are we with this seven-day journey? I started every day this week in panic mode, realizing that I'm not going to get 56 pages done in seven days. Not right now, in this iteration of me and my process. Maybe a future me will look back and say, "Aha! This is what 2021 was preparing me for!" More than anything, and I'll keep saying it because it's true, this seven days is a benchmark test, to see how much of my process I have control over, to see how long it takes me, at my current skill level, to take one book through each stage of the production process, to complete one comic project. It's a "how fast" but also a "how to" on sharpening my skills and getting me in the mode of where to trim distractions, how to build a production schedule and a pipeline for future IOF comics. Because there will be more IOF comics, and I want to be ready for them.

Day three should really have been for the pencils. 100%. Instead, it's for finishing up the layouts and page designs before going into pencils. I already knew the pencils would take me two days, so I gave that to myself at the outset. But for layouts to do the same? Even with a script? Oooh right, this is the actual hard part, where the real art is created as a draft, with themes and details and angles and elements and clothing and hairstyles and facial expressions already worked out. THIS is the two days of drawing that I set aside time for, not the actual drawing these pages at full-size, because that'll be literally me copying from one page to another. I won't have to think my way through that!

I'm honestly glad I'm doing this because it's really eye-opening just what I should be doing with my process going-forward. Making comics is all about a time and energy investment, and that's what this week really has taught me. Knowing the intense amount of mental and physical labor that goes into producing a comic, especially as a solo-creator, I appreciate having days off to just do nothing. Much like my day-job, having them in the middle of the week to break up where I am (and giving myself weekends off because I already have that corporate-life pattern ingrained in me) will be the refresh I need from week-to-week to keep my work sustainable for my long-term health.

Okay, that's it. That's all I have. See y'all on Day 4!