Comic Progress (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

Thought I'd address something since I've been receiving a couple of DM-s asking me the same question regarding the current CaitVi comic, that question being "why is there only 1 page a week?"

Comic of this scope and detail is a complicated, and a very time consuming process so I'll share the three steps I take every week, usually starting as early as Sunday, and hopefully by the end of it you'll understand how things work :)

1) Planning - this is something I need to do every week if I were to keep a consistent schedule. My days are usually fairly busy, so planning ahead on which days I can afford to draw and on which day for the week I'll be able to drop the page is essential. So this takes some time. And sometimes those plans fail because life gets in the way, of course. And I need to fit it in with other obligations I have. 

2) Concepting - this is probably the most challenging aspect of comic drawing, conception begins with the idea in the head which I write down, like a little summary. Then, I pull out a piece of paper and doodle quickly and roughly what the page is going to look like. This can take a lot of time and iteration, and you need to take into account not only the composition, but also ask yourself things like "how do I forward the story in a visually pleasing/logical manner", where and what is going to be drawn on the panels, how are the panels themselves going to be structured, how much information is too much, keeping in mind the speech bubbles so there's enough space for them etc. 

3) Digital drawing. Final stage where I turn the concepts into life and slowly build the page. Once I'm through with rough sketches they need to be cleaned and a new layer of lineart drawn over it - that's the crisp clean lineart you enjoy seeing. Then obviously comes the coloring, shading, effects etc. 

With this CaitVi comic in particular, I have decided very early on I'll be going for a fully shaded route, because I felt like I wanted to do the original scene justice by capturing the mood, lights, and colors of the original (albeit mine is a little bit enhanced in that regard, specially with color saturation and brightness of the scene).

So with all that being said, this is essentially like painting multiple fully rendered drawings all in one go, every week. Sometimes it's so exhausting and demanding that I need to take very frequent breaks, but this is a process I thoroughly enjoy and in no way I feel chained to this, rest assured!

We're now past 40 pages and I want to throw in a little bit of a surprise towards the end (I want at least 50 pages for this one, I feel like that is a good number to start truly slowing down/ending it).

So, hopefully now you have a bit of insight how this all goes every week and just how time consuming it all is. Trust me, I'd love to draw two pages a week like I did before with some of my previous comics, but they weren't of this scope. And I'm a lot busier since living alone, but luckily my amazing girlfriend is staying with me for couple of months and her being here has been a huge boon and help for everything. 

Thank you all for your understanding, patience and being on this wonderful journey with me. I love giving you all these updates and it makes me happy that you eagerly await each page.

Hope you have a great weekend! ❤️❤️

ArtKitt