The Need For Speed

People often talk about comics as an industry, the comics industry, but that sounds wrong somehow. If it is an industry, then it is one unlike any other. First, the so-called information age changed the way we design books. The combined effects of image-making software and the internet made producing and distributing a comic book accessible to anyone. Yet, aside from the studio method, making a comic book is still a lonely, artisanal craft. Designing comics alone is slow, despite new tools. Throw perfectionism into the mix, and drawing comics will take ages. You can find several comic pages, attempts, and ideas in my drawers. Some have been there for years. Spending most of my time working for clients slows my occasional progress even more. Then, interruptions and the absence of visible progress affect my motivation too. To draw a somewhat ambitious comic book, the line between making slow progress and postponing everything can get thin. On the positive side, I have many ideas for (long-form) stories to illustrate. The problem is finding time to work on them. There are no excuses. For this project to bear fruits, the question becomes: how can I speed up comic book making?

Forsake perfectionism

The first step is to deal with perfectionism. If you think about it, being a perfectionist about comics-making is ridiculous. There are major world crises and pressing problems that require immediate attention. Thinking about comics is in itself a luxury. True. Then again, if you are going to do anything, you should do it to the best of your abilities. Otherwise, why bother? The problem with this thinking is that it leads to delay, and delay leads to creative paralysis. One should break this cycle.

One shouldn’t aim at perfection. Try to focus on an efficient drawing style instead.

Simplify. Then simplify even more, but beware of simplification itself. Any attempt to get perfection will lead to more perfectionism.

Draw in tiny frames

On top of sheer speed, the advantage of drawing small is accuracy. Tiny sketches are often powerful and more accurate than large drawings. You can draw smaller to create storyboards faster.

The point is being fast. You could draft your entire story in less than one month. Think about it. Use small drawings—by the thousands if need be. That way, you can explore a story from many angles and pick the one that best fits a sequence. It forces you to concentrate on the whole without getting lost in details. All this allows you to quickly test different visions of the same scene and see which would work better. Small storyboards help you structure a strong composition. Thumbnail drawings are your secret weapon.

To gain something, you often have to sacrifice something else. When you draw at a small scale, your arm is not working as a whole, shoulder included. The drawing result can become intricate and messy. Too many details will not fit in a small drawing. Compensate this by concentrating on proportions, accuracy, dynamism, and general composition. In the second pass, you can trace over your enlarged initial sketch to add details. Scan and print out at a higher resolution if you are working with traditional drawings.

Sketches as final

Chiseled work tends to lack essence. That is a common concern for many illustrators: the draft is better than the finished piece!

To keep the energy of your initial sketches in the final piece, enlarge the drawings and redraw over. You can draw and discard rough sketches fast, like notes, without worrying if the page looks unfinished. Many people love rough sketches precisely for their raw, unpolished quality. Keep in mind: a high level of polish hardly matters as much as your ability to tell a story. When you overdo a drawing, it looks stiff; I prefer lively sketches over polished pieces anytime. Genuine drawing skills beat tracing over photographs in my book. Complete the first draft to get your point across. You could even tell the whole story in that form.

This first version lets you judge what needs to change. What’s needed now? A few refinements or even a complete makeover?

Skip penciling

Ink everything directly on the page to work faster. I like to draw in multiple passes, over and over, until I am happy with an illustration. Tracing paper is my friend. Unfortunately, the beauty and life of the initial sketch usually get lost in the process. Keeping the primal energy of the first sketches is always a challenge. Redrawing passes is also time-consuming and inefficient. Inking directly on the page is an answer to that problem. If you still need a blueprint, ink, or paint over the rough sketches.

You could also do without penciling and coloring: skip that or make it an integral part of the final art.

Skip colors

If you are drawing a comic book, chances are that coloring is slowing you down. Being a good colorist is a skill worthy of a separate profession. Now, you could skip coloring artwork. Black and white comics are great. However, removing the color stage means abandoning a powerful narrative device. You could also decide to use a single color or a reduced palette.

In the end, it is all about choice.

Skip Lettering

Lettering is another time-consuming task. It may be worth spending time to design a custom hand-lettered font, an investment upfront that will save so much time later. Fortunately, it is only relevant to a story with dialogues. Their title aside, wordless comics have no use for much lettering.

Skip writing a script

Make the comic itself become the script. If you are in a hurry, start drawing without a story. Make it all up. Draw the comic as a rough storyboard. Still readable, it has aesthetic qualities in itself. It’s a visual script that contains the story. It might stand up as it is, not as a finished, over-designed book, but as an original blueprint. You might spend ages turning it into a fine art book later on. But at least you’ll have both the comic and the story, not just a vision in your head.

Design stories as visual narratives

The above point is an excellent start to avoid perfectionism and get started fast, but replacing a written script with pictures or a storyboard is also a viable approach to storytelling. Miyazaki adopted this strategy to create the story of Ponyo. Instead of beginning with writing a screenplay, he started with mood boards. His visuals only began forming a cohesive story afterward. Other authors were successful with this strategy: Hergé worked like that for a while on serial strips published in newspapers, not knowing exactly where the story was going. This approach lets you avoid becoming entangled with a script. You could go wrong or right either way. Comics is a visual medium, and drawing is a legitimate way to tell a story.