ganging vs. singling
The last two comics each took a lot longer to produce than they should have. The biggest reason for the agonizingly long production time was that for a variety of reasons my blocks of ‘drawing time’ kept getting broken up and preempted (it’s hard to keep any sort of creative flow when you have to keep stepping away from it) but that’s only part of it. The other problem is one that plagues most of my comic creation efforts and is one i think that is unique to people who do webcomics – the problem of ‘one page at a time’.
I have a fairly open and organic approach to writing. There is no ‘master plan’ or ‘master outline’ for the Megatokyo story, just an extensive and complex series of ideas, characters and ‘history’ (existing comics) that are the biggest influence on where the story is going. That doesn’t mean that i don’t have particular places the story is going. It’s sort of like traveling somewhere and not over-planning it and letting yourself discover things as you get there and along the way… which sometimes can lead you to somewhere very different than you originally planned. It bears out my personal attitude about such things if nothing else – it’s the trip that matters, not checking off the fact that you arrived at your destination.
I’m sure that a lot of people who write professional gape in horror and revusion at my fuzzy wayfinding approach to writing, but more structured approaches have never worked for me. For me, i can have a story structure in my brainspace that when finally in comic form works fairly well. If i try to take that structure and try to write a simple outline for it, i often find i just can’t do it. When i try to grasp the structure that way, i find myself grabbing at air. When i scribble things out in complete illegibility and impossible to read scribbles, it works. In the end, i usually just have to rely on the muddled filing system in my head to get the things i need to get the comic threads woven out in drawing form.
Lovely as that sounds, it can be a real pain to keep pulling that out and putting it away each time you do a comic. If i were smart, i’d work towards doing big chunks of comics at a time – whole story arcs, get them laid out, diallogue roughly down, panels planned, etc, much like you would when doing a typical comic episode. The problem with webcomicking is that there is that ‘one page at a time’ thing that forces you to come to some sort of stop point at the bottom of each page while still trying to make sure that all the pages flow together in readable form, and the biggest problem *I* suffer from – the focus on producing just one comic at a time.
Usually, its more of a time constraint than anything, but i usually end pulling together and working on comics one page at a time. Sometimes i start drawing before i really have a solid idea of what the final comic will look like, or what the dialogue will really be (this is particularly a problem when doing comics that show one story but the dialogue is from another conversation). Other times, like the last comic i did, i know exactly what i want to do and it’s been something i’ve been planning for quite a while.
The crazy thing is, both types take for ever to do. The first, because i end up spending a lot of time drawing details and futzing around as i try to pull things together. The other because i have such a singular idea of what i want the comic to look like that it’s almost impossible to get the drawings to look right.
I think that happens because i end up focusing so much on just that one comic that its hard to keep a sense of the overall project in mind, especially something as long winded as Megatokyo has been. The indulgence of it taking a week to do a comic, however, is really not acceptable. This is getting rediculous.
Therefore, i’m working on trying to focus on bigger chunks of the comic at a time. Last night i wrote out and planned 5 of the next comics and adjusted the storyline accordingly. The result is, i have a good plan in place now and the frames laid out for friday’s comic, which i am going to start drawing right now. Usually, i am not in a position to start drawing until 10pm or so the night before a comic is due. This feels a lot better.
Of course, then i go off and write this long blathering thing. 
Anyways, with some luck and some effort, maybe i can get a better and more timely flow to these things. I used to be able to do it, there’s no reason why i can’t do it again.
(note, yet more attempts to get into the habit of blogging a little more about what i’m doing. It’s easier to do when you feel on top of things than when you feel the constant oppression of being always behind. If you see me blogging or ranting, it means i’m feeling good about the progress i’m making.)
