G’Day Vigilante Nation! I come to you today while still inside my house. It doesn’t look like the vicious covid-19 is letting up anytime soon, so I remain in quarantine. I hope that you are all still staying safe and protected out there during these trying times.

I wanted to share some advice to you that changed the way I do things. I have to warn you that this work is still very hard to live by today, but it’s something that I try to do and apply in every aspect of my daily life.

I had heard this many times growing up but I never really put it to good use. One thing my dad used to say was “The harder you work the less you get paid.” I had no idea what he meant by that. One day when I was in High School he finally told me.

You see, a ditch digger works his but off all day. He sweats, he ends up with calloused hands, he gets paid minimum wage. The owner of the company sits in his office for a few hours a day and then plays golf. He makes millions.

Granted, we here are in the artistic world and there is such a thing as “Starving Artist.” So how does this apply to all of us?

The artist that are masterful perfectionist are slower by nature. They only produce a cover a month. The covers are so beautiful that they bring in sales but that is an illusion. This does not convey the work that is inside.

They get paid by the picture.

On the flip side is the artist for the internal work. On average, there are 6 panels per page, 26 pages per comic, 1 month per comic. This means that the interior artwork should have about 6 different images done per day.

The artist in the interior has to cut several corners and learn some tricks to produce the work. Therefore, they are the smarter artist getting paid more per month than the cover artist.

This entire blog post will show how to become the smartest artist that you can be. Enjoy.

Time IS the Only Factor

With all things in life, time is a factor. When it comes to producing a comic, time is the only factor that should motivate you.

While talking with a great creator Gerimi, he laid down his work ethic and time tables for producing a comic. He has an amazing work ethic, BTW, but he also has a full-time job in order to do things such as eat, have a place to work, ect.

If you are working professionally as a comic artist, this is a different story, but for the sake of argument, we aren’t. We have to divide our time between work and our passion. If you have a family, that adds more restraints on our time.

Here are some tips in order to increase your workflow and time management.

Fail faster

I recently found this amazing video Youtube called “Fail Faster.” Granted it is based on Game Design but it really applies to everything that we do in life. Wooo, that was deep.

Keep in mind that no idea comes out fully formed. It might take a few iterations to get something workable. If you look at CryptoComics, it started out as something completely different. Our comics are the same thing.

By testing our ideas, we can see where it fails and where it takes flight. Tell people your ideas (for you writers out there), show some mockups of your hero. Get other’s opinions.

I once started drawing a character for a comic that I was writing and one of the major critiques was “Is that a muscle-bound version of you!?!” I was horrified. I sat and sat thinking about this. The character’s look led directly to his personality, so having him represent me was a nightmare.

Eventually this led to a full-fledged melt-down. We are talking “Karen Level” tantrum. I had failed. After all my crying I had a choice redesign the character or revamp his personality. I did the latter.

My creation took on all of my best characteristics, as well as my flaws. He became not only everything I wished I could be, but everything I am. I knew how he would handle any situation as well as how he would react.

My failure became a win pretty early on in the design process mainly because I now had something “real” to work with.

Pick Your Battles with the Details

This is something I still struggle with. Having an idea in your head tends to solidify that idea. It turns it to concrete, the unmovable unwavering idea. The problem with this is that it’s all in your head.

Not every panel must be a masterpiece. If you don’t believe me take a look at Tonoharu by Lars Martinson. He applied the 19^th Century illustrations for his entire book. It looks masterful, but it also took him 13 years to make it. Yes folks, 13 years.

Not every panel needs to marketable. Even in some of the top selling comics, there are only a few pages that are used to market the comic itself. Best foot forward and all that.

Think about Superman #75 (the Death of Superman) by Dan Jurgens. I love this comic. It actually filled me with dread as a kid. Although each page is a work of art, the only pages that we see used for marketing is Superman laying there lifeless with Lois Lane screaming while Jimmy Olsen snaps a picture.

Let each panel be something that you can be proud of, it just doesn’t need to be a postcard unto itself. Let your work as a whole define your level of artistic merit. The more you produce, the more you get paid and the happier you will be.

Not to say that every once and a while, stretch your legs and put in the extra effort to make something that you want to hang on your walls. Just take your time on the pieces that really matter.

Pick Your Battles with the Settings

This may come as a shock to many of you but having a million different setting or locations for a movie is extremely expensive and exhausting. It is the same for us comic artist. Slimming down or combining locations will save tons of research hours and put your creative juices where it needs to be.

Yes, your locations can be a character that is just as flushed out as any main protagonist. Look at Gotham City. It has a very “Urban Dystopia”. It has a mixture of ancient and modern architecture with a little gothic decay thrown in for good measure.

This didn’t happen overnight. This took almost 80 years to get down. You don’t have that kind of time. Just add your flare to a small spot and let it go.

Now with combining locations, keep in mind K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple Stupid). I like to think of it a little differently, Keep it Stupid Simple. Make it stupid simple.

Let’s say you have a scene where 2 long lost lovers finally reunite. They lock eyes. They move in and hug (yep, keeping it G rated here).

You could put it in a location such as a busy supermarket with a ton of people trying to walk past, some people looking at produce and some chasing after a screaming kid. That would be lifelike in it’s portrayal but does it need to be there?

Could it not be in an empty park that seems to fade into the background? Less detail, less traffic. Faster drawing that gives you more time to focus on the main characters or time to move on. It doesn’t need to have all the detail in the first scenario, does it? This brings me to my next point…

Let Nothing Be Sacred

In order to save time, don’t let the 2 scenarios above rule your life. If it is not a direct adaptation, or specific to a scene that is required, allow for some fluidity.

Think about the movie “Clerks” by the legendary Kevin Smith. The scene where they are playing hockey on the roof would not have made sense if they were at a park. The scene required that specific location.

Another example is if you were to draw a comic about a war; let’s say Man VS Invading Robotics all Terminator style. You have the president and the joint chiefs meeting to discuss strategy. This is the time when the robots attack.

In this unlikely event, you could not have them sitting around a dinner table with plain walls and a few plants and a window. This is something that would happen in a war room. You would have to add the appropriate details to the surrounding environment (monitors, maps, armed guards, ect.)

The point is, if you can reuse a simpler location and the story makes sense, do it. Save yourself the headache.

Give your story the wiggle room it needs to survive. Compromise lets your creatives to be malleable. There is something to be said for the artist who won’t compromise his (or her, or whatever you like) ideas, but there is something to be said for those who get done in order to get paid so they can move on.

Embrace a Faster Workflow

Before I began to work on my first comic, I remember looking at various artist that could produce 2 or even 3 books per month and I would think “sell out!” Then I started working in the industry. Boy, was I wrong.

The show Battlestar Galactica was made famous for cutting enough corners and still producing a great show. It is for that reason that in the show all paper has the corners cut off. A little tidbit of info for you.

I decided to go and find out what the other artist are doing that I’m not. They had some great advice. For example, reuse an image if you put a lot of work into it.

Ethan Van Sciver did this in the first issue of Green Lantern Rebirth. This scene was very important for exposition. Hal Jordan visited his old friends at Yankee Stadium. The pictures of the crowd are in fact the same image with the only Hal Jordan changed (gone in this case).

Just because it is the same picture used twice, doesn’t mean that he put any less work into it. A little Photoshop magic and presto!

In powerful scenes and as page fillers, use a full page or double page spread. This isn’t a cop out. This just means that you can do in 1 panel what normally would take 4 or 6 panels. Just don’t overdo it.

Draw like your rent is due. You can generally use less pencil or ink strokes and let the colorist pick up the slack. A good colorist will do the exact same thing weither you have 50 marks from cross hatching or 6.

This means that you can save some time and allow others to help you with the heavy lifting.

This is all for now. Come back on Wednesday for part 2 where we discuss one more piece of advice that will change your life in a profound way. Until then, check out some of your fav indy comics here on the marketplace and check out this great message from our Creative Director Andrew Frey.

C U soon my friends!