After another break, I am finally back at drawing comics. But this time, I have actually made a few changes that will hopefully allow me to have a consistent upload schedule.
As I already said many times in the blog posts of the old KromycKs website (I didn’t bother bringing those back on the new website because the content was only relevant to the moment they were posted), for quite a while now, I have been quite irritated by the whole process of drawing comics. The way I was doing it seemed rather inefficient and the results were never really up to my expectations. So it isn’t that I don’t have inspiration or desire to draw them anymore, it is just that it ends up being a pain in the a$$ to do.
So now that I finally got the motivation to start drawing comics again, I needed to make some changes to be able to enjoy it. Here is what the changes are:
Use the right tool for the job. Over the years, I’ve used a few methods and softwares for drawing my comics, I started with stick figures in black and white and quickly switched to more detailed drawings in color. I made some of them with vector graphics while some others were made in raster graphics (pixel-based drawing). What I recently found out, is that nothing prevents me from using multiple tools on the same drawing, by using the appropriate one for each type of job. What it means, is that instead of struggling to draw everything in a single software (characters, texts, bubbles, borders, etc), I could make each individual part with the one that is more suited to the job.
Do what you are good at. As I became more accustomed to the tools I was using, I always wanted to do a little more each time. In my case, a little more meant adding more details and drawing better shapes and characters. But I am not good at “details”, I’m more of the “big picture” type. So because the attention to detail is not natural for me, I ended up spending so much time getting everything perfect that I started hating the comic before finishing it. What is also particularly interesting about this is that I have always felt that my drawings were bland, even if I spent a great time “polishing” them. Then I remembered, when I used to play pool (billards), if I took too long to aim, I would generally miss the shot. My best shots were the ones where I didn’t took time to think, I just did it. This is the minset that I want to apply to my comics now, at least from the drawing perspective, do what feels right without overthinking it. This will make comics that contain many imperfections but will hopefully result in drawings that are more pure, more true to myself.
Have a good delivery. So as I said in the last paragraph, I want to think less about drawing and just do it. But I don’t want to apply that to the actual delivery of the “message” or “punchline” of my comics. The reason why is quite simple, finding ideas can be done at any moment of the day while doing anything else. And while I think about comics, I’m not thinking about the end of the world, so it’s a win-win situation. Also, thinking about the best way of presenting the comic is something that I enjoy doing, so I don’t consider it a nuisance. Ok, so the jokes won’t change much, but there will still be a change, and this change is closely related to the previous point. Because drawing is the most time consuming and annoying part for me, the choosing of the best delivery will depend on the complexity of what has to be drawn. So until I get really good at drawing, or more patient in general, I will find comic ideas that won’t require drawing complex scenes.
Recycle. This one goes hand in hand with the delivery. As you may have already noticed, most of the recent comics I made used the same image at least 3 times. This is something that I will try to prioritize in the upcoming comics, because it saves me time. So recycling panels and focusing a little more on dialogues. It doesn’t mean that I will completely stop making visual jokes though, because I still enjoy it, it only means that it won’t be the main focus.
As for the schedule, I want to keep the same as before which is to publish a new comic every week, around monday or tuesday evening. I still have many other projects, like writing articles, making music, working at my real-life job, so I can’t commit to more than that at the moment.