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.)
Posted by fredrin on June 18th, 2009 :: Filed under Daily Blogging
Tags :: creativity, megatokyo, productivity, writing
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June 18th, 2009
While I don’t sit down and write things out, I do tend to have sort of an outline going on in my brain. I do a loose planning of arcs and scenes but I generally leave the dialog to a more spontaneous generation. I think things feel less rigid by doing this but in a good way. I think that sort of style works well for a web comic.
Now, for something that’s going straight to print, it’s another story all together. Luckily for me, my wife does all the writing for Animal Faith (our space opera epic). It’s different type of mechanic when you’re reading a series of comics over a number of pages when compared to a web comic.
Riding that boundary with a web comic is something I find rather difficult. I often feel tempted to make too many jokes. Comic relief is good but I don’t want BS/OD to become a joke comic. After all, not everyone thinks I have a good sense of humor.
June 18th, 2009
Have you thought of using storyboarding in plotting out your comics ahead of time? It’s a method often used in animation and even in film-making, where you create a very rough sketch of what you want the scenes to look like. This way you could rapidly map out several comics in a row for a scene and have a good idea of where you want to go before you actually get around to drawing the comic.
Using these roughs can also give you a bit of an idea where camera angles and perspective points would be for each scene. While you don’t need to remain true to these roughs (which should be minimalist in nature – only the most basic background details (like building frames or the like) and basic shapes (even stick figures work here) for the characters (though you might want to label them or the like if you use minimal detail for this).
These storyboards are for your reference. You don’t draw on them further to expand on the scene, and if you decide at the end you want it to look a little different, that works just as well. But it allows you to have a good idea of what the story will look like without spending a lot of time drawing out every scene. Basically… it’s a drawn outline of sorts, rather than a written one. ^^
Rob H.
June 25th, 2009
That sounds fairly cool and agonizing. It appears to be that the smaller (less well-known) the project is, be it comic, animation, or artwork of any kind, the less structure there is. I.E, big-budget things like movies, Manga, music, and the like, are planned and chiselled out a good deal, whereas webcomic artists, garage bands, and Indy filmmakers just go with what happens to happen, and to varying degree, where you might not even finish on time, or at all. It seems that you have enough dedication on MT to actually see it through. I almost never finish, as most of my “work” isn’t usually imminent enough for me to bother (except for musical projects). I like to draw and weave neat stories, but until I get paid to do so or others depend on me to, I won’t be publishing anything real soon.
July 8th, 2009
See u used a munch of big words and me gots confuzzed BUT it was still very intresting to hear how u could come up with just random ideas then but them down on paper and have them work. Any language arts/english teacher would get mad at you
.
August 2nd, 2009
I know what ya mean Fred, in school they always pressured everyone when writing an open response essay to plot out your main idea and supporting ideas/arguements in a outline, then use that to construct your response. I never could, plotting it out felt like a waste of time and never really clicked together, however writing it just writing what came to mind without really planning it out usually worked better and faster than the generally approved method.
September 4th, 2009
I understand how your thought process works when it comes to writing. When I DM tabletop RPGs I find that overplanning causes the game to cease to be fluid. Whereas it’s important to have goals and landmarks planned for the storyline, sometimes the spontaneous generation of inspiration makes it that much more fulfilling.
September 13th, 2009
I have trouble doing multitask drawing whenever I am drawing…but it doesn’t look like it’d be a problem for you, you’re so good at this comic thing.