What is everyone's strategy to stay motivated? How do you bring yourself to not just start, but finish a comic all the way to the end?


I always find the finishing line to be the hardest part. I'm very quick to start new projects, very slow/unlikely to stick with it to the end. The longer the project, the more likely it will peter out eventually. I've abandoned more comics than i finished, and i hate myself for it. :T So here's how i try avoid my personal pitfalls.

- Don't over-scope ideas. Plan for 10-20 pages, but not beyond. If after that time you still wanna go, you can still go then.
- Keep designs simple. You're gonna have to re-draw this stuff a lot, keep that in mind with the initial design & style.
- Put realsitic expectations on yourself as far as productivity goes.
- Cut your story down to its essential parts, cut the bloat. If a scene is not that relevant to the story, why have it in there.
- Don't worry so much about the art's quality. It will never be perfect, so don't aim for perfection. You don't *have* to stick to a specific style, mix it up if one style starts to bore you.
- Remind yourself what you even wanted to accomplish. Why did you start writing this? What was your initial inspiration?

Don't hate yourself! There's no shame in stopping a project if you're not feeling it and let's face it, if you're not feeling it readers are not likely to be feeling it either.

For those times when you really want to finish the job, you have some very good tips here. On the writing side I've found what works for me is plotting but not writing. I want to know how it begins and how it should end, with some landmarks to see on the journey, but I also want the fun of all the discoveries to be made along the way and the characters I'll meet there. If I write the whole thing out as a full script it starts to feels like a creatively dead exercise after drawing a few pages and the next project becomes irresistable!

Take a break if you need it! Everybody hits the doldrums now and again. Ponder what interests you most about the story and its characters and have at it again. Don't lose sight of that big badaboom ending.

Good advice,
Also, don't get bogged down with world building. Things like maps and building layouts can help to come up with ideas initially but you don't usually need to know where the protagonist's uncle goes to the bathroom.

Just do it anyway.

Keep telling yourself that and persevere. Perseverance can be a magnificent achievement in and of itself.

And stay off social media. Nothing wastes valuable time better than social media.

Relax. Take your time.

By trying to not end up becoming a slave to my work, which unfortunately, happens to me quite a bit. I have . . . commitment issues, let's say. I can't commit to one single project for too long, otherwise, I start to become bored with it and lose interest - this was why, despite taking an animation course for a couple of years during my high school years (this was back when Flash was exclusive for web animation, such as HOMESTAR RUNNER, and had yet to become an industry standard like it has in the New Tens), I came to realize just what taxing, tedious, and tiring work animation really is, despite cartoons being my first love as an artist - I lack the patience and passion that animation requires, so I opted to not pursue it as a career path as I aspired to as a kid . . . however, for the little indie animators out there, whose whole lives are build around animation, like John R. Dilworth or Danny Antonucci, I have the utmost respect for.

Even now, Season/Chapter 2 of VAMPIRE GIRL has been in the works since January . . . of 2021 . . . and even though the whole story had been planned in advanced, I still have about half a dozen strips/pages I still need to complete, but I've had so much else going on at the moment, I haven't exactly felt motivated to work on them. Luckily, I've planned so far in advance, that there's no exact urgency to get to them; according to my schedule, they don't need to be ready until mid-to-late spring anyway, so surely I can get to them before then.

One thing that has helped me during the creation process is that because I had each individual strip/page planned out, and I knew exactly how the story would play out, rather than work on each one chronologically, I sort worked on whichever ones I felt like I could work on at any given time, or the ones that I knew would be particularly challenging and needed to be gotten out of the way, or even ones I was particularly interested in seeing if the layout and composition could turn out as I had envisioned it in my head.

TheJagged wrote:
- Keep designs simple. You're gonna have to re-draw this stuff a lot, keep that in mind with the initial design & style.

Unfortunately, that's not me. At all. I'm very detailed-oriented, because I like it when styles are visually engaging and captivating . . . not that there's anything wrong with simplicity, mind you - some of the best-written cartoons or comics had the simplest art styles (case in point: Rocky and Bullwinkle). But still, I also prefer an art style that really grabs you . . . in my case, particularly as I've worked on Season/Chapter 2 of VAMPIRE GIRL, I want each and every single panel to look as though they're a screencap from an animated series.

TheJagged wrote:
- Put realsitic expectations on yourself as far as productivity goes.

I try to, I really do, but very often, difficulties arise that slow down my productivity, if not bring it to an absolute halt, and this is particular true of my YouTube productions. Not only is the latest entry of my MORON LEAGUE miniseries of fan films over a year late, but it's production has stalled over the course of going on five years now for a variety of different reasons, one of which has been because this was meant to be a collaborative project, and a number of collaborators keep bailing out on me . . . at least some have had the courtesy to explain why they are no longer able to commit to the project, but others have just ghosted me altogether, which puts me in the position of having to find replacements for them. It's been very, very frustrating.

TheJagged wrote:
- Cut your story down to its essential parts, cut the bloat. If a scene is not that relevant to the story, why have it in there.

This has definitely been one area I've needed to work on - sometimes I tend to go a little overboard with plot exposition and the like . . . I guess because I've grown up watching a bunch of old shows that have been butchered for more commercials, that I feel like I need to make sure no single detail is overlooked or goes without some sort of explanation.

TheJagged wrote:
- Don't worry so much about the art's quality. It will never be perfect, so don't aim for perfection. You don't *have* to stick to a specific style, mix it up if one style starts to bore you.

This much I accept, although I still like to try to maintain some sense of consistency.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
I came to realize just what taxing, tedious, and tiring work animation really is, despite cartoons being my first love as an artist - I lack the patience and passion that animation requires, so I opted to not pursue it as a career path as I aspired to as a kid . . .

Boy i know that feel… my biggest inspiration was the Disney rennaissance, animated movies were my life. At age 6 i tried to animate a single stickfigure. All my dreams died right there. After realizing how ungodly tedious animation is, i settled on comics instead. :U

FWIW, the first year of the course was some of the most basic things you can achieve in Flash animation: blinking eyes, balls bouncing, lip movements and syllables, and even some very basic pre-production planning like script writing, storyboarding, etc. The second year took it a step forward with the production process from writing and storyboarding, to actually animating our productions. Unlike other students who attempted just the most basic little bits of animation you could imagine, I actually attemped an animated short: a sci-fi comedy about a planet of super-evolved space bunnies . . . even over the course of an entire year, and it only being a 4-minute short, I still never completed it (although I was still graded for it).

In case anyone's interested, here was my last attempt at a full animated production:
BUN: DEFENDER OF THE BUNNY PEOPLE

lothar wrote:
Things like maps and building layouts can help to come up with ideas initially but you don't usually need to know where the protagonist's uncle goes to the bathroom.

I am very interested in building layouts and would very much enjoy knowing where the protagonist’s uncle releases the bowels.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:

lothar wrote:
Things like maps and building layouts can help to come up with ideas initially but you don't usually need to know where the protagonist's uncle goes to the bathroom.

I am very interested in building layouts and would very much enjoy knowing where the protagonist’s uncle releases the bowels.

Might be an important plot point along with where auntie goes to powder her nose.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:

lothar wrote:
Things like maps and building layouts can help to come up with ideas initially but you don't usually need to know where the protagonist's uncle goes to the bathroom.

I am very interested in building layouts and would very much enjoy knowing where the protagonist’s uncle releases the bowels.

Don't put it in the story, but package it into “bonus content” and sell for extra cash. Win win!

My strategy for staying motivated first and foremost is to have a clear vision of what I want to accomplish with my comic.

If it's not even reached that point once, it has to keep going.

As for how to stay motivated, there's that, then there's just using your intuition.

If you use that, then you'll know when to work on it and when not to.

But yes, keeping the art style mostly simple, and making it so you can easily cut corners is also important to keep a consistent schedule.

Some days I don't work on it at all after coming back from work.

Others I'll work on it for 3 hours, then some, 45 minutes.

I know if I do a page in one chunk while working a 40 hour job, I'll burn myself out, so it's a question of pacing yourself.

If you're really not feeling up for drawing, nothing stops you from pre-planning future pages. That way, you did something, and it helps speed up the process of making said pages when you get to them.