I've wondered about this ever since I started my comic. It takes me about 7-8 hours to draw one page, but I've read comments by other artists that say it took them like 1-2 hours to draw the page, & some of those pages are better than anything I can do! -_- so, after getting over my jealousy, I'm curious if I'm the only one who takes this long to draw.

People lie about how long it took them to appear more talented/avoid being flamed by 'it took you X hours to draws that crap??bwahaha!', if they have a deviantart/are a teen girl it's almost a guarantee they are lying.

7-8 is fairly normal for a comic of your panel count/cleanliness. Most people who make pages in hours have sloppy half-assed art or a simplified style with few panels so be proud :)

Haha, I agree with Skullbie. I highly doubt anyone could put out something clean in under two hours. And if they can, then...Cool? But you never really know with these internet-types. XD

Anywho, I don't usually time myself, but from sketch to ink, I think it takes me at least 4 hours, and touch-up and toning takes me another 3.

'A';;;;

Aw damn, now I feel lame.

I-It only takes me about an hour...

A half an hour if I feel extra motivated.

*gulp* I-I think I should run now.

OH WAIT. It's okay cause my pages suck. *feels better*

Wait crap I forgot I'm one of the higher ranking artists...shit!

Well, I think it really depends on how efficient your comic-drawing process is.
With one of my comics, YU+ME, I change art styles every couple months. The first page of a new style takes me around 4 hours to do, but by the end of that two-month stretch, I've got it down to an hour.
Lesbian Pirates takes about two hours per page. The longest part is the writing, which I do as I draw.

Having a clear idea of what you're doing before you even put the pencil to the paper (or stylus to the tablet as my process is) cuts a great deal of time off. Since I use the computer, I have all my shortcuts set up to buttons on the side of my tablet, so I can move fluidly from one tool to the other. I know all my programs inside and out, and there are tools in Photoshop to help streamline the process.

I don't think the amount of time spent on a page determines how good it is, though. If you get what you want in 2 hours, there's no need to stretch it out to 6 just because someone says two hours is too short to draw a good comic. If it takes 7 hours to do a good comic, don't stop at 2 because some artists can get it done in that time. Just take exactly as long as you need.

I've always been pretty fast at doing things, both in comics and my graphic design job. But I do a good job, too. I just picture what I want very clearly in my head and let it out.

I was trying to cap my pages for both comics at 4-5 hours, but it's impossible... when I start going back and detailing or something, somehow the hours pile up. O_O (Although LF takes me significantly less time now, since I got Sai :D)

Good to know people are probably lying about how long it takes them to do things... >_> Because I seriously wondered...

It'll take me ages to get things done at that rate, but that's okay! All for quality! And I'm just finding my workflow!

Skullbie
People lie about how long it took them to appear more talented/avoid being flamed by 'it took you X hours to draws that crap??bwahaha!', if they have a deviantart/are a teen girl it's almost a guarantee they are lying.

7-8 is fairly normal for a comic of your panel count/cleanliness. Most people who make pages in hours have sloppy half-assed art or a simplified style with few panels so be proud :)

haha, I always wondered about those people. I'll keep that in mind from now. ^^

& I've started planning out my pages in my sketchbook before drawing in manga studio, so, that might cut my time down a bit. it was a little intimidating started at a blank screen trying to figure out what to draw. XD

the longest part is figuring out what goes on the page. That takes an hour.

Then actual drawing and inking... another hour.

Then coloring, another hour or 2.

So roughly thats 3-4 hours on average for my pages. Though sometimes, things like the number of objects in a panel, and the number of panels greatly affect the drawing time. And it gets cut down to 2 hours or less if I do simple pages involving only one panel.
such as this one:
http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=474732

I tend to take too long to draw pages.
I often end up drawing a rough layout, across five to ten pages
takes me ages to finish most pages, then scrap pages, re-write

about 2 hours a page to colour

If I'm fired up, drawing at high speed, I'll get a page fully done on 8-10 hours.

That almost never happens... I don't really know how long a page actually takes because I tend to work on and off. Ideally I like to do a page over 3-4 days, slowly building up each bit. And that's a good, fast, efficient speed for me and the sort of work I do. I haven't got back up to that for ages though.

so... does everybody here just draw one page at a time or what ? i tend to layout ten to 30 pages at a time , but i usually finish between 5 to 8 at a time , the others get stuffed in a drawer or trash can , i cant realy calculate how long it takes for one individual page , i've made 8 pages in 8 hours or 5 pages in 6 weeks . time is kinda irrelevant and clocks are annoying

lothar
so... does everybody here just draw one page at a time or what ? i tend to layout ten to 30 pages at a time , but i usually finish between 5 to 8 at a time

I sketch each 22-page issue on paper before I ever get to the inking, so if I change something, I can go back and fix it before it's inked.

We all have different methodologies. It would be difficult for me to put a time concept to my output because I do everything in stages whether I'm producing a comic book or a gag-a-day strip.

I rough everything out on a yellow legal pad from scenarios to dialogue and usually shoot for a buffer of twenty pages. Then I open up a word processor and rewrite each page of dialogue in order to refine things and lower the word count if possible. Finally I re-sketch a page onto my letter sized card stock, often using two 'pages' in order to get everything looking right, knowing that after inking, the individual panels will be transferred to the computer.

Then it's time for a minor amount of touching up the ink and for coloring and adding dialogue, word balloons, and sound effects. In short, I haven't a clue as to how much time all this takes.

I can produce a finished page in two hours, yes, but only from the point that the individual, already inked panels, are ready to be transferred to the graphics package. I'm guessing that it's between four to five hours from beginning to end, but I wouldn't want to swear by that estimate -- and that's for a gag-a-day strip; I do know that the comic book format work required at least another two hours per finished page from beginning to end.

The deal is that some people are just inherently faster due to better organization or because they are just that much better as artists. Unless one is striving to streamline his or her own process, however, it probably doesn't really matter.

ozoneocean
I don't really know how long a page actually takes because I tend to work on and off. Ideally I like to do a page over 3-4 days, slowly building up each bit. And that's a good, fast, efficient speed for me and the sort of work I do.

That's exactly what I do :) I'm also like Senshuu in the way my hours just pile up, I just keep detailing and changing things during the coloring process at times I could have already drawn a new page. lol!

Depends on how many panels and how detailed the shots are.

I almost always have to sketch the page a day in advance now (and MAYBE try to ink it too), trying to do it all in one day is very tedious now.

Here's a normal page process for me:
1 hour or more for sketching.
Then the next day 1-2 hours for inking.
1-4 hours for coloring/grayscaling.
Maybe even another 20 minutes for the lettering if there's a lot.

So....usually 3-8 hours in total.

It varies for me, but I do a strip comic. Some have been a full 8 or 9 hours, including making the digital versions to upload, and a few I've completed in 2 hours. Of course, mine is a fairly sparse greyscale/black and white comic.

Silent Academy: Around an hour

Vinny the Villain: Around a minute

I'm a lazy bastard.

How long does it take?
Forever!
The pages go through a lot of stages to get made for Harkovast.
First they are drawn, which takes a few hours.
Then gone over in pen, which takes only a few minutes.
Then Julie colours them in coloured pencils (which takes hours and hours)
Then I put them onto the computer and enhance them a bit and add text (which takes about half an hour, though can take more depending on the page).

So yeah, basically it takes forever.
If there was a way I could create them faster, I really would!
(ideas on a post card).

Used Books
~15 to 30 minutes for scripting
~2 hours to draw
~3 to 5 to clean up drawings, add text, fix things etc.
~2 or 3 hours to color

= 5 to 10 hours

Gelotology
~10 minutes to draw
~2 hours for digital stuff

= about 2.5 hours (Aside from the brainstorming, research, and scripting -- which is very sporadic.)

For me to do a single panel of Last Words usually ends up taking about 3 or 4 hours even though it's only about an hour of actual working, just because I spend a lot of time thinking about the writing of the joke ( On most days at least. ). On a storyline format page, I have been known to crank them out in about 2 1/2 hours but there's one story I'm working on that takes close to 15 hours for each page because it's done in a relief printing 2-colour process. It all depends on what media you're using, how steadily you work and how much practice you've had.

It takes me a good 2-3 hours to make a page depending on how detailed the page is. I usually make about 4 or 5 pages the day that I do draw them hehe xD. And it takes about 2 hours to color the page.

I like working fast :D

I noticed that the longer I stay on one page, the less inclined I am to work on another one. So a day when I pencil several pages has me all fired up and ready to work on the next day, on the other hand if I manage to pencil only half of the page,
once I am done with it on the second day I'm very likely to take a week off.

I also tend to get into details only once. Let's say I draw a character in hmm... for example native american clothing, with all the tiny details and patterns and feathers and all. Three pages later I'll be drawing only the rough outlines and shapes and lay down thick shadows to avoid the tiny details (and I chose this as an example because clothing like that can be very simplistic in the basic shapes, but also comes with lots of decorative details so you can draw it both ways).

As a result I have opted to develop a style that lets me draw fairly fast and I try to put down on the page only what's necessary to tell the story and create an illusion of a world, meanwhile establishing shots can be more detailed.
I also modify my coloring methods to cut down the time necessary per page.

This resulted in the last 21 pages of Din Krakatau being pencilled 4-5 pages a day, then they were all inked in a day and a half. Then I took the entire 32 page chapter, scanned it over a weekend, colored up to 8 pages a day and finally lettered in two days. Script and thumbnails were finished beforehand, when I was scripting the entire second half.

Results? Compare the last four pages (108-111) which are from this session with the first four pages, that were drawn one page a day (sort of, I rotated pencilling, inking and coloring/lettering but I was finishing a page a day), each one taking me 6-8 hours.

1. Working this way is more fun to me.
2. I don't have to worry so much about the pagecount.
3. If I spend too long on a page, I start to add lines upon lines until the whole thing turns into an incomprehensible mess.
4. If I screw up a page so badly that I need to redraw it entirely, I'm loosing an hour or two, and not an entire day of work.
5. At this point I'm drawing on A4 with the manga/digest sized 5x7.5 trade format, so at this reduction I don't need to put down too much detail. At least in theory, I still need to see my art printed.

If it wasn't for various problems (wrong size template, format change, the need to reletter everything, spelling/grammar mistakes, working on two versions, low hd space, backup problems etc) I'd be long done with this book.

Also, a lot of great artists worked fast...

Examples:
- Osamu Tezuka drew ten pages daily on average, totalling 150 thousand pages of manga in his 40 years career.
- Frank Frazetta painted on the last day of deadline, doing his work in couple of hours (the process was described by his son in the back of the recent Death Dealer comics hardcover by Image; the oil painting done the evening before was put into the oven to dry the and then rubbed on the back of it with a damp cloth to straighten it out as the heat rolled it up, quickly dried and mailed off couple of hours later).
- Jack Kirby was pencilling several pages a day, drawing up to 30 thousand pages in his career (and that number doesn't include years he spent in animation doing character sketches, designs etc. and quite possibly there were stacks of unpublished work as it often happened in these days).
- Curt Swan drew three full pages every day.

I noticed one thing. As artists develop, they either choose to go into detail, or speed. You get Joe Kubert, Kirby etc. on one end with their crazy, fast artwork which focuses on the dynamic and the essentials (sometimes diving into "caligraphy-like" linework that gives the illusion of detail)... and on the other end, you have Geoff Darrow, Juan Hose Ryp etc. who fill the pages with tiny tiny tiny details, thus being always behind the schedule (I don't think Darrow ever drew anything in time and every Avatar book drawn by Ryp is always late, to the point of 7 issue miniseries taking even two years to finish).

Aaaaaand I got carried away :D

Let's just finish it with my "2009 challenge". I don't know IF I will do it or not, but I'm pondering an experiment. Instead of a 24h comic book, do a 300 page graphic novel in a space of a month. That would mean pencilling/inking, scanning, editing and lettering 10 pages every day. That will require a full free month and a script written beforehand, so I don't know yet. But I'd like to try. At worst it'll be a good exercise in fast drawing and editing ...and at best might make a nice, thick graphic novel and lead to an interesting art style :)

before, i was able to clock myself at minimum 4 hours to complete a page.

now i find myself still doing that, but add 2-3 more hours arranging panels, redrawing panels, and setting the page up.

and then probably another hour just spent on thinking about onomatopoeias, which most of the times I'll omit. seeing "vrrrrbtbtbtbtbtbt" for a gattling gun looks silly.

On average...

Idea: 30 minutes
Script and rough layout: 30 minutes
Pencils: 90 minutes
Ink: 60 minutes
Colors: 60 minutes
Refining and touch ups: 30 minutes
Scanning and posting: 30 minutes (yes, I am slow when it comes to computers)

I've never timed myself because I do everything over a period of days but I have to say it probably takes me 7 hours to finish a single page and that's working fast. My sloppiest, laziest rushed page was close to 6 hours.

Guys like Kirby and Tezuka where insane but if Kirby had to ink, letter, and color his pages as well I'm sure it would have taken him much longer.

Skullbie

ozoneocean
I don't really know how long a page actually takes because I tend to work on and off. Ideally I like to do a page over 3-4 days, slowly building up each bit. And that's a good, fast, efficient speed for me and the sort of work I do.

That's exactly what I do :) I'm also like Senshuu in the way my hours just pile up, I just keep detailing and changing things during the coloring process at times I could have already drawn a new page. lol!

Twinsies.

Yep. My hours pile up as I re-do and detail stuff. Pile up into days... Weeks at the moment. With me part of that is just the artistic approach I take, but mostly it's a lack of discipline when I do the work; not knowing when enough is enough.

Aurora Borealis
Let's just finish it with my "2009 challenge". I don't know IF I will do it or not, but I'm pondering an experiment. Instead of a 24h comic book, do a 300 page graphic novel in a space of a month. That would mean pencilling/inking, scanning, editing and lettering 10 pages every day. That will require a full free month and a script written beforehand, so I don't know yet. But I'd like to try. At worst it'll be a good exercise in fast drawing and editing ...and at best might make a nice, thick graphic novel and lead to an interesting art style :)

I heard about something similar to that called the "24 hour challenge" where you're supposed to draw 24 pages in 24 hours! I think I like your idea a little more though, I get to sleep. XD I'm going to push myself a little this coming year, I'm hoping to have one chapter (which is about 20-25 pages for me) done about every 6 weeks.

Nikki0417
I heard about something similar to that called the "24 hour challenge" where you're supposed to draw 24 pages in 24 hours! I think I like your idea a little more though, I get to sleep. XD I'm going to push myself a little this coming year, I'm hoping to have one chapter (which is about 20-25 pages for me) done about every 6 weeks.

Yes, that's what I was referring to, I just mixed up the name :D

8 hours, roughly. I generally have four panels, and unlike a lot of people, I do a separate drawing for each panel and scan,color, and letter each one seperately. Two hours a panel is about right for me. But I try to do somewhat realistic-looking art, and the coloring is my favorite part of the process, and getting the levels and shadows the way I want them takes a bit of time. (I usually do a level for the line art, a level for the basic background, a level for the shadows and a level for overlay, for darker shadows and highlights. Then I reduce it down to the "working" size and apply gaussian blurs to the shadows and overlays, duplicate the lineart as needed, and then do a duplicate of the basic background and bring it to the foreground and set it to "color"....which gives a sort of colored-pencil effect to the lineart.)
Then I letter and do the wordballoons.
It's not perfect, and I'm still learning a lot. Yet that's my current process.
---Al

6 to 8 hrs.........but I slack off alot in that time too. I draw for 20 minutes, go out for an hr, come back for 2 hr, go out for 20 minutes. If I just sat for 8 hrs, and didn't move, who knows how long it would take me. I don't seem to have the attention span I used to have as a strapping young lad.

Nikki0417
I heard about something similar to that called the "24 hour challenge" where you're supposed to draw 24 pages in 24 hours! I think I like your idea a little more though, I get to sleep. XD I'm going to push myself a little this coming year, I'm hoping to have one chapter (which is about 20-25 pages for me) done about every 6 weeks.

The trick on the 24 hour challenge is to keep in mind that there isn't time to pencil and ink so you have to do one or the other. I managed to complete mine in about 20 hours this year by going straight up pencils. It's really not that bad if you do it with other people and have a good time with it.