Text piece on comic-creating PRODUCTION SPEED (or the illusion thereof)! (Patreon)

So! 

The following text piece is a collection of speculative blithering that I wrote for the  Empowered webcomic's commentaries back when vol. 8's serialization was wrapping up. I've cleaned up this pseudo-essay a bit, but no doubt the transplantation from the commentaries has left the resulting text a tad scrambled in places.

Note that the addressed topic of production speed is very much on my mind of late, as I'm currently embroiled in the third g-d week of penciling and inking a single Harley Quinn short story. (I should clarify that I wrote the story, too, but that task was completed a month or two ago.) I knew that drawing and inking full-size comic pages again was gonna be a slog, but had no idea that it would be this much of a grind; for some reason, I had a lot less trouble with that Wolverine/Man-Thing story drawn in the same format for Marvel back last summer.

Anyhoo, as I wheeze into the final quarter of the HQ story's pages, here's my webcomic rant re: production speed. Enjoy?

I cranked out this entire climactic story from Empowered vol. 8 in a feverish three months (or possibly a bit less) during what was easily one of the most intense creative experiences in all of my 33-odd years in comics. After getting warmed up writing and drawing  the book's first-half string of Hell-related anecdotes and short scenes, I hit Emp's and Spooky's ill-fated odyssey running, and plowed through the most pages I've ever produced at one time—I wrote and drew 44 pages in August 2013, which is more production than I'd ever managed before, or ever will again.

Note that I did say "wrote and drew," as I was laying out, scripting & drawing one page of this story at a time, very much in the manner of—irony of ironies!—a webcomic, as opposed to the process I'd always used on my other comics work—that is, laying out and dialoguing an entire issue, then sitting down and penciling the issue, followed by the discrete stages of inking, screen-toning or color guides, and so on.

Cranking out this climactic story by writing and drawing one page at a time—though based on an outline already well-established in my mind—was a vaaaaaastly more compelling and immersive creative experience than any of my conventionally formatted work in mainstream comics, which was produced in the laborious "write the whole issue, then draw the whole issue" approach that always front-loaded the truly creative stages of writing and layouts then condemned me to weeks or months of non-stop artistic gruntwork with the comparatively unfulfilling stages of pencils and inks.

I know of Western comics creators who will write an entire g-d graphic novel worth of 150-200 pages at a time, then pencil all those those pages, then ink 'em and so on. Believe me, I'd sooner g-d hang myself then spend month after month after month doing nothing but g-d inking—but, hey, some comics creators actually like that approach, believe it or not. God bless 'em, but that ain't for me, at any time in my comics career.

Now, time to address an interesting issue that I'd completely forgotten about—namely, the true nature of my seemingly super-high production speed in the summer of 2013 as (to repeat) I barreled through vol. 8's climactic story at the peak rate of writing and drawing 44 pages per month(!), a number ne'er reached before or afterward.

See, I recently realized that, even as I scratch and claw my way through the back half of Empowered vol. 12 with a max production rate (so far) of only 15-odd pages per month, I'm probably not much slower at writing and drawing than I was in 2013. "How can this be?" you no doubt sputter, perhaps even popping a monocle into your champagne glass in disbelief. Wellp, lemme explain, figurative reader apparently cosplaying as The Monopoly Guy!

What I only recently remembered about my seemingly sky-high production speed back in 2013 during this climactic story is that, despite the deceptive numbers in terms of pagecount, I probably wasn't all that much faster back then strictly in terms of how quickly I can write and draw comic pages. On closer analysis, I worked then, and still do now, at a pretty much fixed rate of production; for example, laying out and dialoguing a page usually takes me about an hour or so, and I sincerely doubt I was any faster at that task back in 2013.

I have two ways that I can seemingly work faster.

Speed hack #1: Shortcuts!

Yeahp, I can kinda-sorta increase production speed by "taking shortcuts"—by leaving things out of the comics page, whether that's eschewing backgrounds or crowd scenes or complicated dialogue or complex perspective shots or detail in general. The earliest Empowered pages—especially the first-draft pages that predated the ones you've seen here—were cranked-out, sketchy doodles featuring just enough artwork to get the jokes (and cheesecake) across. Hence, early on I could easily hack my way through 2-4 throwaway proto-Emp pages in a workday, or fraction thereof.

However, I can tell you that I was taking no shortcuts whatsoever as I was racing through Empowered vol. 8's feverish finale. So what was 2013 Me's secret?

Time for Speed Hack #2: Waaaaaaay more work hours!

See, I can't actually write and draw comic pages at a greater speed, as such—but I can generate the illusion of production speed by working much longer hours with fewer interruptions. And lemme tell ya, folks, during that feverish late summer of 2013, I was living this volume's climactic story with no interruptions whatsoever as I pared my meager existence down to nothing but (ahem) The Work.

That summer, I rarely left the house except to pick up mail and groceries; no trips to "the city," or anywhere else. I stopped working out entirely—no walks, no cardio hikes, no lifting, no nothin'. I didn't watch movies or videos, barely read any non-fiction books or manga, and never talked (or communicated, period) with any friends. (Social media down to a minimum, I'd assume.)

Thus, I was able to jack my work hours up into the tough-to-achieve range of a "true 12 hours" of pure writing & drawing—or even the fabled "true 16 hours"—for weeks and months at a time.  I say "true 12 hours" because I've seen many artists claim to be working in that range, when I know damn well they surely ain't, unless they're the slowest creators to ever hold a pencil or stylus. Squeezing the "true 12+" of pure creation outta your workday is no easy task, and represents a feat of discipline that deserves to be addressed with respect.

So, in retrospect, I wasn't actually working faster as such back in 2013 as I cranked through the breakneck finale of Empowered vol. 8, but I was working much, much longer hours with far fewer interruptions than I am nowadays, as I scratch and claw my way with seeming slowness through the back half of Empowered vol. 12.

Note that I only remembered this long-forgotten truth after I recently started timing my hours at the drawing table with a stopwatch, in the hopes of figuring out why the f**k my progress on Emp12 has been so g-d slow. (Or "slow.") And yeahp, go figure, the reality is that I'm not getting in enough nonstop, uninterrupted hours of writing and drawing to boost my production rate into the desired "20+ pages per month" range.

To be blunt, folks, I have too many other responsibilities nowadays to ever again achieve the stripped-down (lack-of-)lifestyle that enabled 2013 Me to crank out 40+ pages per month—responsibilities that include this very webcomic serialization, which consumes a few hours outta my limited workweek. (And this very Patreon, which can consumes waaaaaay more hours than the webcomic.)

And lordy loo, nowadays I even have interests outside of pure comic creation. Gasp!

So, with the ordeal of Empowered vol. 12 (and future projects after it), I never achieved the production rate seen during vol. 8’s finale, because I just couldn't scratch out the weeks and months of uninterrupted worktime necessary for such feats of artistic labor—nor, in truth, do I really want to crank up my work hours to such heights any more. (For one thing, I have several, very specific drawing-hand issues that arise only when I jack up my work hours into the "true 80+ hours per week" range for an extended period of time.)

I am, howeva, hoping to squeeze a greater degree of creative efficiency outta what work hours I can manage to eke out. More on this issue later, maybe.

If possible, as this volume wraps up its closing pages, I'll try to delve into why Empowered vol. 8's epic second half became such an all-consuming obsession for 2013 Me, as well as the somewhat bitter—or bittersweet, at least—lesson that the task taught me about creating comics.

Patreon Note: Wellp, haven't yet got around to that last bit. Maybe I'll do so here down the road?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Ehh, Friday's slot will probably see a li'l somethin' somethin' in the Distressed Damsels vein for the $5+ Patron tiers, I'd imagine. Could it be the "Flight Attendant Lily in peril" dealie I mentioned a few weeks back? Possibly!