This half page took about 3.5 hours with breaks to schedule clients, wash clothes, and cook. I'm still having technical difficulties which are aggravating to the max. For some reason I'm obsessed with speed; if I were to slow down and enjoy the process my output might improve. Why speed? I'm staring at 500+ half pages (many alien pages are not even written or sketched yet) of rough drafts that need to be printed as empty text/panel pages, inked by hand with pencils, light table, and fine tip fountain pen (fun but labor intensive as I'm still fleshing out each character [costume, physiognomy, age, skin color, size], scanned, colored (fun and highly labor intensive as I continue to flail around in the deep end of this digital pool), shaded (not fun as I haven't a clue at what I'm doing both technologically or light/shade and value-wise), merged, and posted. If I increase my speed to 3 hours per half page (an ambitious estimate at this point) that's 1500 hours. If I work 25 hours a week that's 60 weeks. Even though I've been hacking away at this graphic novel for 15 months (with a 3 month hiatus), can I sustain interest for another year+? Speigelman took 11 years to draw MAUS but he was young when he started. I'm racing against my biological clock which, once the alarm goes off, I'll be infirm, decrepit, and unable to conceive--IE., manipulate pens, mouse, touch pads, scanners, etc. Also, there's a weird symbiotic relationship between my wife's deteriorating health and my obsession with mental challenges. Distracting myself with 101 tasks of creating a graphic novel is therapeutic, or so I like to believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment