Emphasis on “unscripted”.

I just got finished pre-dialoguing (is that a real word?) the first 19 pages of Payday. I’m going to wait to ink everything until I’m finished with the book, because I know the way I’m drawing it is slowly evolving with each page. Therefore, by waiting to ink until the end, I should be able to give everything a unified look.

One thing I’m finding is that doing an unscripted book, working from just a basic plot, is not much faster than writing out a script first, which is what I prefer. Because I only have an hour and change every weekday morning to draw comics, I thought maybe doing an unscripted book might be faster; I wouldn’t have to sit down and write a script, which would prevent me from drawing. Well, I can tell you, making up the pages as I go along is not my favorite way to do things. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just slower.

There’s nothing wrong with slow, but in this case it’s too slow. Had I written a script first, at least I would have completed one aspect of the process. In the case of Payday, everything is being done at once, so the accomplishments are spread far apart.

I’m intent on seeing this through as I began. However, I’m going to change things up a bit by incorporating comics into my other tasks. I’ve put a ream of paper by my computer so I can work on layouts when I need a break from writing or composing music (which seems like an obvious thing to do, in retrospect, huh? And I know I’ll have plenty of downtime thanks to my slow-ass computer not being able to handle the robust Sibelius 5 music notation software). I think this way I’ll feel like I’m accomplishing more when I’m drawing. Instead of spending so much time figuring out the next page’s layout, I’ll actually be able to draw.