Friday, May 21, 2004


Doing a comic book the brazilian way




PART THREE: No excuses.

Deadlines are for super heroes. Those magazines survive mainly on the addiction of fans who need their fix every month. If you need to have your book out every month, you need deadlines, and if you have to draw five to ten pages a week, your main concern in that the pages get done, but if you are an independent creator, you can take advantage of the more flexible schedule and make sure your work is the best you can do.

If you're doing your own thing, you'll publish and you'll sell it, you don't have to hurry, but you can't take forever either. You have to tell yourself that the work needs to be done, and that no one else will do it for you (or even pressure you about when it will be ready).

This week was crazy and a lot of work landed on us. Illustration work, the one we do so we get money to pay our bills, and the one we do so we only worry about doing the best comics we can, even if we still aren't getting paid. My point is, I didn't draw as many pages as I wanted. And I know next week will be even crazier, so I don't know how much work on our story we'll do then as well.

So what do I do?

I keep writing down that I'm doing this magazine for the San Diego Comicon, I say in interviews that I will have a new comic for the San Diego Comicon and I let everybody know what I'm doing, so I have no excuse but to do the damn thing.

Because that's what making comics is about: realizing you're the only one who can stop yourself from telling your story.

adding to the above

So far, I've been doing these drawings to start getting into the story's mood. This last one was a more serious one, to be used as a reference for all four artists to follow. Next week, I'll try to post drawings from the others.

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