HI. My name is Stacey and i do a daily comic.

This thread is for us- the crazy people who do it every day.

How do you do it?

For me, it's all about getting the strip done first thing in the morning. I set my alarm for dawn (a thing i had never seen before doing a daily comic) and try to get it done before I have to do other things. Of course, this often doesn't work, and the strip gets done late in the day (that is, AFTER i've done all the other things! - like, you know, work and stuff).

Also, my daily is "Business days" only. i take the weekends off. i dont do a strip on any holidays. When I started, I *did* do strips on holidays, but now i am older and more exhausted, and I have learned my lessons.

BUt I love the discipline of it. i think my art has really been improved by the daily effort!

So - What has doing a daily strip taught you?

I tried to do one... monday through saturday, full color + full page on sunday. The comic was an homage to older newspaper strips like Pogo and Krazy Kat. It only lasted 26 days before I said "enough is enough." I'm in the military so my schedule can change with the drop of a dime and it just didn't work out for me.

The first week I did them one a day but when I got to Sunday and I had to draw a full page and color it, I got completely burned out. I had the day off on monday, so I drew the whole weeks worth and penciled sundays, inked and colored it the next day. After 2 more weeks of doing this, my schedule punched me in the face and I stopped.

I never did post them on drunk duck or show them to anyone really. I just did it as a test. It's really challenging working on strict deadlines and I felt that my art really improved in three weeks. Not only could I draw better but I also did it faster with less mistakes. I encourage anyone who wants to get good at speed and precision drawing to try a daily comic even if it's only for yourself.

Just don't cheat.

I update daily, but I had over 200 pages before I even considered scanning them. Now I try to have a week of pages pre-uploaded all the time.

In the afternoon, I script and draw a page. I try to do one a day. Sometimes I do two. Sometimes, I go a week without drawing anything. Every day, I try to do the digital clean up of a page or two (takes about 30 to 60 minutes per page). Coloring usually takes at least two days, but I don't have trouble maintaining my handful of pre-uploaded pages -- especially coloring only the first page of each (mini)chapter. I still have nearly a 300 page "buffer" of scanned (but not yet cleaned up with text changed) pages, so I can stay laid back without any deadline pressures.

I have to find other motivation to keep me from falling into a slump... I can go months without drawing and still not miss any updates. That's kinda dangerous.