There are a lot of web comics out there that are updated daily, or very often, e.g. Skullbie's amazing web comic, Plastic.
For me, I struggle if it's once every week!
I mean, I can't even use high school as an issue. There are high schoolers still managing to update their comics more than I do. Doesn't help that I have a demanding mother who is forcing me to study every night, and I want to make sure I get the best grades so I can go on to uni.
However, that being said...I do a helluva lot of it on photoshop, and I do a lot of colouring and lineart. I don't mean to make a hideous stereotype, but I've noticed a lot of people who either use gray scale, screen tones or just inked lineart have it a lot easier, and maybe that's why they update so quickly? or is that general statement a bit skewed by my lack of experience? I found it easier when I just sketched out my comic, but now with colouring, it's tripled in time.
It's just bugging me, because me and my best friend have had this story all planned and plotted out since 06, and only started to make it into a comic just at the end of last year. There is so much I want to get into, so many ideas buzzing in my head. But because it takes me so long, I'm beginning to feel really down about it. I only have 5 pages of the comic up, currently working on page 6, but I'm worried the speed of the updates will put readers off.
any tips or advice anyone could give me to help give me a kick up the backside?

A regular updating schedule is more important that a speedy one - once a week is fine, as long as your readers know it's going to be once a week, and you keep it up as best you can.

And you've hit the nail right on the head with your assumption - doing a full-colour comic does usually take longer than doing greyscale or lineart-only; the people who update daily have adapted their style to suit the schedule, to some extent. Also, I assume a lot of them built up a buffer of comics before they started updating - I certainly did. In my case, I drew out twenty-four pages before I put up my first one - just to be sure that I could handle whatever troubles real life threw at me and still not break my updating-schedule.

Pick a schedule you're comfortable with, and one you can manage with a minimum of trouble, and then just plug away. :)

Daaaaw :3

Also if you are a slow sketcher and want to get better: http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html
It'll make you faster in under a week, but don't get carpel tunnel.

Anywho, I like your comic in color, and if it stresses you out switch to greyscale i suppose.^^

Frostflowers
A regular updating schedule is more important that a speedy one - once a week is fine, as long as your readers know it's going to be once a week, and you keep it up as best you can.

And you've hit the nail right on the head with your assumption - doing a full-colour comic does usually take longer than doing greyscale or lineart-only; the people who update daily have adapted their style to suit the schedule, to some extent. Also, I assume a lot of them built up a buffer of comics before they started updating - I certainly did. In my case, I drew out twenty-four pages before I put up my first one - just to be sure that I could handle whatever troubles real life threw at me and still not break my updating-schedule.

Pick a schedule you're comfortable with, and one you can manage with a minimum of trouble, and then just plug away. :)

Alrighty! Thank you for replying to this topic! I think once a week will actually do, now that I'm getting the hang of my graphics tablet. I think I'll see if I can do it each week, and if i can I'll make it my little routine. <3
thank you very much for the help! :D

Skullbie
Daaaaw :3

Also if you are a slow sketcher and want to get better: http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html
It'll make you faster in under a week, but don't get carpel tunnel.

Anywho, I like your comic in color, and if it stresses you out switch to greyscale i suppose.^^

heh heh, your welcome! your comic is so addictive! x__X
and yeah, I think I'll stick to colour. It's probably really obvious, but you'll notice our first few comics were experiments. me and xXCammiXx had a look to see what was better. I'm a quick sketcher, so no doubt if I completely hand drawn my comics, I'd be updating at least 4 out of 7 days. But we tried sketch, grayscale and colour, and I personally think the colour looks the best. To me, I think it looks cleaner. not only that, but most of the characters have really odd colours of hair, and I don't think grayscale would help! XD but colour gives the comic a nice touch, and mood can really be set in this. I'm a smelly silly artsy person, so the little things always matter to me! XD

but that's an idea! doing the thumbnails on a smaller scale...and ink! Now where do i get the cash for this? n_n;; *go robs an old lady* >_<
but I know what you mean. it does looks neat! and I can still play about with the hue/saturation! Thank you!
And I think I'll have a little nosey at that link! Thank you very very much! <333

Hmm. There are a lot of tradeoffs. I have a near daily webcomic and a 3/week webcomic, plus freelance illustration work. For me, it really came down to my self-publishing experience; I had to force myself to work as quickly and efficiently as I could in order to meet print deadlines, sometimes at the expense of quality.

It's not a good practice to get into, but if you actually use it as practice, it can be educational. The more work you do, the more practice you get. The more practice you get, the more tricks you become comfortable with, the quicker you can do the work. The quicker you get at doing the work, the more time you have to practice more refined techniques. Net result is that the first 500 drawings are lower quality but twice as fast, the next 500 drawings are back at par but twice as fast, and the following 500 drawings are both faster and higher quality than when you started.

It doesn't always work that way, and it's definitely not an approach everyone would endorse, but I'd rather make a 100 drawings that take an hour each than make one drawing that takes 100 hours. It's all about exercising your skills.

my drawing is like alcohol...when i start to draw, i just forget everything that's going on, and just get wrapped up in it....and that's how i've managed to do it. i just get lost in it, and when i realize what time it is, i'll have like a comic and a half done....

what's a schedule? ^_^

Skullbie
Also if you are a slow sketcher and want to get better: http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html
It'll make you faster in under a week, but don't get carpel tunnel.

... Thank you so much. I'm not a slow sketcher, but I sure do need to practise my lifedrawing, and that link is so nifty! Thanks, Skullbie! :)

Time management for most I assume. For me, I just go on weekend long comic binges and get as much done as I can in as little time as possible. It doesn't make for super high quality, but I get my shit DONE.

I'm one of those people you might say has adapted their work to fit the time frame. Because of my format and my humour I purposely created Last words with very simple characters and basic colour pallets. Because I chose to do that, it cut down my creation time to about an hour a day.

But if you look at Nightmares ( Not that I have much up at the moment.), I use more colour and do more with the artwork itself. The current page that's up took me 20 hours worth of work because I sat there screwing around with techniques for about 4 or 5 hours. If you need to pump them out quicker I'd suggest taking extra time now and exploring new ways to either reduce the number of small details in your work and simplify or find new ways to create the same visual effect in more efficient ways.

And as skullbie said, hand inking drops the ink process to a quarter of the time. And you don't even need really high end pens to do it with. I've discovered a good gel pen and a sharpie work just as well as my more expensive india ink pens. And it's a skill I'd suggest learning anyway if you have plans of continuing on in art. It's always a good thing to be diverse in your technical abilities.

I've discovered a good gel pen and a sharpie work just as well as my more expensive india ink pens.

Alternatively, overhead projection markers can work as well as a sharpie but without any fumes to worry about. It's easier to do drawing binges if you don't have to worry about fumes or ventilation :-p

Personally, I just make a page whenever I can. Work at the pace you feel most comfortable with, and whenever you have extra time, make extras, so you can relax when you need to.

Like say if you had your comic update on Wednesdays. It's a weekend, and you already have next week's page(strip) done, you could work on the upcoming comic(s) and then relax. It's like a just-in-case thing.

lba
And as skullbie said, hand inking drops the ink process to a quarter of the time. And you don't even need really high end pens to do it with. I've discovered a good gel pen and a sharpie work just as well as my more expensive india ink pens. And it's a skill I'd suggest learning anyway if you have plans of continuing on in art. It's always a good thing to be diverse in your technical abilities.

Haha, gel pens here too, and I pick the cheapest ones I can find at the supermarket, as long as they give a solid black line it's all fine.

I won't have any schedule problems for about two months since I'm 20 pages ahead to what's online.

Also, as others have said already, practice makes perfect :D

First pages took me up to 8 hours to color and letter, now after changing the method a bit and learning couple of tricks it's down to 2-3 hours.

acadia
Time management for most I assume. For me, I just go on weekend long comic binges and get as much done as I can in as little time as possible. It doesn't make for super high quality, but I get my shit DONE.

Same deal here. I get about two weeks worth of comics done on a good saturday, while simulaneously maintaining some decent quality. And yes, I'm in high school, and I update thrice a day, but I don't "draw" my comics, so I suppose I don't count for much. I'm 100% pixels from start to finish, baby.

I find that the pages that take me hours are the ones where I find small detail after detail that I want to get perfect. If you want perfect pages, then plan a full days work for them. If you want a lot of pages, then stop tring to perfect and use as many little shortcuts as you can. Sometimes they look even better.

Like take this piece of crap thats page #1 for me:
http://www.drunkduck.com/Avatar_of_Fire/index.php?p=304336

This probably took me a couple hours, if you can believe that

Now, I can churn out high quality lameness, which, if you try to follow my new story arc on the 24th, probably takes less than an hour, depending on all the fiddly bits..




Except now that I take a glance at your comic, Niki, I see that you shouldn't listen to me...

Hmmm... You could probably cut it back a little without sacrificing the work...

Thats just my take on it...