After just finishing up something I was working on, I noticed something about myself when it comes to making a comic page. Whenever I'm throwing in the finishing touches to my comic or whatever I'm working on, I get this sudden rush of exhilaration. In fact, sometimes it's to the point where I actually have a to take a break because I rush my work a little bit too much at the end.

I'm curious, does anyone else get this too? I would suspect most people get that motivation when they start out their new page, since they're working on a new idea or topic. For me it seems somewhat of a chore at first but once I finally get into it, everything sort of smooths out.

Anyway, just wanted to see what you all felt in terms of emotions as you are working on your comics!

heh… yes…. yes very much so. Actually, if you look at most my coloured comics you can totally tell what I coloured last because I usually get so anxious just to get it up that I'll just steal a single monotone colour and just paint it in with no shading :P You can kind of get away with doing that with clothing or shoes but I really should break the habit

I don't know how many of my characters have shoes the same colour as their hair :P LAZY! *slap self upside head*

Sometimes it's exhilaration, sometimes it's just eager to finish it. It often shows in my backgrounds where I have a lined texture, the lines often mess up at some point.

I get this all the time. I start out my comic fine, I get to about the third/fourth pannel, and then I start to get… Hmmm… Exhilerated isn't really the word, its more… Giddy, for me. I usually draw up the fourth pannel, stand up and walk around a lot, running the joke in my head for a while, (sometimes saying it aloud in crazy voices) to see if its still funny. I can do this several times, just getting up half way through and walking away and pacing up and down the room, talking to myself really loudly, or figuring out the image in my head, and then I'll sit down and draw a little more.

And then when I'm finished, all the giddiness goes, and I'm ready to make another comic.

YEP.

It happens quite often for me, except replace “before finishing a page” with “finishing a stage of production”, like penciling/inking/shading, etc. Because mine's a graphic novel I prefer to work in batches, everything seems to flow better that way. So by the time that I'm done doing a certain part, I get all lazy and am like “i can haz do something else tiem nao?”

I feel where you're coming from but I've managed to keep that in check these days. Mainly because I looked at one of my old works and noticed a lot of stupid little mistakes all over everywhere. Stuff that I should've seen before but didn't because I was getting too excited that it's almost done. These days even when I'm getting hyper, I just force myself to slow down. And then after that, I give my work the once over.

Then the twice over.

Then the thrice over.

Rockeign
Mainly because I looked at one of my old works and noticed a lot of stupid little mistakes all over everywhere. Stuff that I should've seen before but didn't because I was getting too excited that it's almost done.

Happens to me too. I get better and better with every new comic, and then I look back at the old ones and I go: “What the hell? These are shit, look at all those mistakes!!”

Actually I seem to be the opposite. I start off rushing as my lest favorite part can be the sketches. Unless it's a particular scene I really wanted to draw. When I get to stuff I really wanted to do I work a lot better. Sketching is my hardest part so I might rush or take forever due to lake of motivation.

Next step is inking which I enjoy and then coloring which is my favorite process so I don't really start taking shortcuts at the end because I'm having the most fun. I take shortcuts at the beginning sometimes and I look back and HATE it! Which probably makes me hate sketching even more :P

I tend to be way too negative and critical with my work and I usually don't end on a high note. It took me a while before I was even willing to post pages as I never liked how they looked in the end. So now when I'm finishing a page I'm usually pretty spent and not really on a high, looking at it and seeing details I'm not happy with. I try to fix some things but usually it ends up making it worse and creates a cycle where I just keep going back to change something. So I try to keep that to a minimum and see it as a learning experience.

I do pick up emotionally though as I start the next page. Going back to my script and figuring out the general layout of the page and how I see it all coming together is my favourite part. It's just that I find the final product just doesn't match those initial expectations for me.

I am in perfect self-control during all parts of the creation process.

It's during the uploading process that I get “giddy.” I want to immediately post up all the pages that I just drew, buffer be damned. My co-artist has much better self control than me in this regard; he can draw all his pages a month in advance, and not be in a hurry to post them.

This is why I draw pages 1 at a time now, rather than a bunch at a time (pencil 5 pages, ink them, CG them, and viola end up with 5 finished pages all at once).

I wish I was drawing my comics. By time I get around to putting together the page I've gone from 20 or more photos to five or six panels and edited them digitally until I can't feel my right arm.

Putting togther the page is the last 100 yards of a 26.5 mile marathon for me.

I get antsy, get up and walk around a little. I do it to clear my head and focus. Getting started is the big problem. It usually takes two-three hours of solitaire before I can get myself to open up any files on the computer.

Then I go back again and again like Rockeign says to edit and reedit. Usually after my antsy jaunt I can approach and edit a page unself-consciously.

There's creating the page and then there's the tweaking of said page.

Somebody once said that a work is never finished, only abandoned. By getting up and taking that walk I formally abandon the one page so I can move on to the next.

Yeah, for me the final moments of working on a page are the best, there's a feeling of accomplishment and all I wanna do is show it off as quickly as possible! problem is I usually end up missing some wrong detail like a misspelled word or an off pixel and end up having to go back and fix it like ten times after its already gone live just cause I feel so excited to see what people will say about it!

Ah, this is the great thing about web comics, you get that excited feeling about putting it out there right away instead of having to wait months for a printed version <3
I get that feeling too, its also a good way for me to gauge whether I should continue doing a comic project or not- since I've done a few comics now and really just enjoy doing them most of the time nowadays, if I'm only feeling ‘oh man, I HAVE to sit down and get this done’ then I know its probably best to rethink how I'm approaching it 0_0

I have to agree with Theorah and expand on what they said, because I have a webcomic and can get feed back straight away after posting it (rather than waiting months to release a printed version), is the biggest motivator for me to finish a page. It helps me keep on track, because I know that there are people waiting to read it once I'm finished, and I always get excited because I want to know what others think.

I forcibly rein myself in on the last part of the last panel by moving away from my work area and just taking a few…..then I go back and finish it at a modest pace.

The euphoric feeling of a job well done is still there and I probably tend to sit and admire the finished product a bit too much, either on my table or on the monitor.


EDIT: I should add that it's during this “admiration of the finished product” when my hyper critical eye sets in and I start seeing the “mistakes” that I immediately start beating myself up for. It's a roller coaster of neuroses for me.

I don't really get into a groove until I've lettered the dialogue. Maybe it's because at that stage it's starting to look like an actual comic.

I always get a bit nervous when I'm doing the matte colorizing for my stuff(I do my shading as a seperate stage), because without the shading it always looks a bit off to me, even when my linework looks good without the color.
I can tell the art for a page is done because I get this really “zen” kind of feeling when I look at it, because there isn't anything I can find to bother me.

I don't know why, but I totally read the topic title as "Fail Moments of Making a Page" and was thus expecting a much different conversation. xD I had many answers for that.

As for the emotional roller coaster of making a page: In the beginning, I'm all structured and organized. I have a layout, design work done, the script is a finished product…so I'm very optomistic. (Oh, only the sketching stage, then lines and color to go! 3 steps, not a big deal, I'll have it done by dinner!)

Generally, optimism last until about hour three or four when I realize that I've done some very basic, but fundamental thing very wrong…like screwing up layers, or not keeping the template in mind. (The fail moments)

Around hour five I crack down hard and start really working, getting into my groove and working around the fail moments. I'm very determined and little distractions mean nothing to me.

Hours 7-9 switch into really liking how its all come together. Look how much my coloring has improved! I've done really well with fingers this time! I'm gonna be awesome and people are gonna be all like, “Yeah! Wohoo! That's Cool!” (The high, the exhilaration.)

And then hour 10 hits like an apathetic stepmother. Am I really up for this? What are people gonna say. My fingers look all wonky. Holy crap, my word art is boring. I then obsessively check over it for mistakes and decide to post it up on hour 11. I'm hungry, planning my next meal and checking my authors notes and comments for grammatical errors and edit and update. I make sure it looks good finished a few dozen times before finally running to eat.

Then I sit and wait. I wait for that first little comment. That first little, "Hey, that's kind of neat." Then I smile, I'm reaffirmed that the day was well spent. And I start over again.