Now that we've established some ideas and guidelines to go by we should talk a little more about sticking with your schedule. Things happen in our lives that we must always put first but we still need to find a little time each day if even 30 minutes. Taking baby steps is better than taking no steps after all.
Finding ways to challenge yourself is a good idea to keep yourself motivated. Take for instance, indie comic book creator Kevin Cross. He has challenged himself to make his personal comics at least 30 minutes every day for a 100 days on his youtube channel. He uploads a new vlog each day telling his subscribers what he did that day on his personal comic and shows his progress.You can watch them all here... Kevin Cross. Not only has this forced him to work on his comics every day, it has helped to inspire many others to take the challenge and push themselves as an artist.
Watching the creation process has also helped myself and others to see how someone else creates their comics. This gives you options on ways to tackle your projects by watching other creators methods of creating. Some other great vlogs to watch is Peter Palmiotti's channel Peter Palmiotti. Peter is a well established inker but has branched out to take on all of the artistic chores of making his personal comic "Bright Eyes." He has also became a spokesperson for indie comics and has a podcast called Independent Road where he chats with different indie comic creators about comics, their creative process, and whatever else comes to mind. This is a great podcast to listen to and get some insight on other ways that creators tackle their creation process. Check it out here... Independent Road.
If you are more of a digital artist and use Photoshop or Manga Studio then you need to check out Jonathan Rector's youtube channel at... Jonathan Rector. He shows a lot of his creation process as you watch him draw. Jonathan also has some tutorials on Manga Studio 5 if you are needing some insight on getting more familiar with the software.
Some other ways to challenge yourself is to set a reasonable deadline for your lifestyle. A pro artist does this for a living and can pencil a 22 page comic in less than a month. If this is a personal comic for you, then you are probably taking on the writing, pencils, inks, letters, and editing. Being realistic with yourself will go a long ways here. You are working a full time job and have a family so you will need to be take these things into consideration. Give yourself plenty of time to do all of this but still push yourself to get done before your deadline. I would say 6 months to do everything from start to finish is a reasonable deadline but you may be able to do it quicker or you may need more time. If you take this deadline serious then you will get a lot of work done. You may not finish in time but that isn't the point. The important thing is you pushed yourself and made time for it even if you finished a month late.
Actor Will Smith said that his father made him and his brother rebuild a brick wall in front of his business when Will was 12 years old. It took them a year and a half, but they built that wall. How did they do it? Will said," You don't try to build a wall. You don't set out to build a wall. You don't say,"I'm going to build the biggest, baddest wall that's ever been built." You don't start there. You say: "I'm going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid." And you do that every single day, and soon you'll have a wall."
So, take this idea and use it to creating comics. Start by doing the best art you can on every comic book panel on a page. Do that 21 more times and you have a finished comic book issue. Apply this idea again with inks and lettering and it's essentially done other than some editing. The key point is to keep moving forward doing the best work that you can do.
That's it for now, I'll be back next week. See you then.
-Kenny
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