I started working on Payday on what I think is the week of 4-20-2009 (my first post about it was made on 4-24-2009).

It’s been my policy to draw for at least an hour every weekday morning, which isn’t a lot of time, this was implemented with the consideration of a few things:

1. I have a ton of projects that I have unwisely started, and this is my way of helping me to prioritize.
2. I need to learn to belt out a page, so a time limit forces me to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time.
3. If I don’t give myself a time limit, I may not stop which means impeding on my other tasks.

I’d say, since starting Payday, I had done fairly well for, oh… 60% of the time? Maybe 70%? That’s not a good grade. That’s a D or a C, depending on what percentage you go with.

I did take a small break to illustrate Fighting David Parrot, written by David Hopkins. But I count that as time well spent. Other than that, drawing Payday became less and less of a constant as I began to grow frustrated with the scriptless experiment I committed to, as I’ve stated many times before. The fun was leaving.

At what point does one admit that an experiment in the creative process isn’t working and that one should go back to the norm?

I’ve decided that if I don’t make some sort of significant progress in penciling the pages by 4-24-2010, then I’m going to give up the experiment and write out a script. What is significant progress? Well, I’m on page 22. Yes, that’s it. Page 22. And I’m pretty upset at myself about that, especially when there are other comic projects I have that I want to work on but won’t allow myself to start until Payday is finished. In any case, that gives me 14 weeks. I’ll commit to completing 28 pages of pencils, which is two pages a week, drawing at the rate of an hour to an hour-and-a-half every weekday morning. That’s a lot of work. We’re not even counting weekend mornings, which would help me stay on top of things. This would bring me to 50 completed pages, meaning I could finish the rest of the pencils by the beginning of May. If that happens, I can go back and finalize the dialogue for the entire graphic novel.

If it doesn’t happen, if I fail, I give up the experiment and write out a script for the pages I have and the pages that are thumbnailed before returning to penciling the unfinished pages..

There. It’s in writing. Now I have to commit.