200 pages finished!

I've reached a milestone! KON Volume 2 has just reached its 200th page. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing your pages stack up. Each page is over a day of work. Months of planning, and after years of repeating this cycle, a book is finally made. Honestly, I did not realise how long the process was going to be. I wouldn't have imagined making a book would take 2 years. Truth be told, I could finish it sooner, but I'd be dropping quality. With each new installment, I learn a couple new things. I get ideas on how to speed up the process for the next book.

If you plan on starting a comic, here are some things to keep in mind.

Your work hours are longer than anyone elses. You finish the day when you have something to show for. Maybe you did a bunch of storyboards that day, or finished up linework on a full page. Only then can you wrap up the day.

You have to plan waaaay ahead. The audience enjoy smart stories. If you allude to something in chapter 3 and it finally happens in chapter 46, then you're thinking ahead. Just having cool looking characters with fun action sequences won't only bore the reader, but turn you off from your own idea.

Balance quality and quantity. You can have beautiful pages, but if takes a week to produce a single page, then you'll have to reconsider your approach. Likewise, you might be pumping out 3 pages a day, but if they look rushed, then you're going to struggle selling your book. I'm fairly quick. I can finish the linework to a detailed page full of characters in crowded background shots in a day. But I still have to spend extra time for screentones. This leads me to my next point.

You're faster with partners. Whether one of you is the writer and the other the artist, you'll always be faster when you have a team. It's incredibly difficult for me to find assistants who are capable of recreating my style, so for me, another artist is out of the question. However, I might have to partner up with someone who's competent with colors and screens. You might have to think about the same things.

For now, my goal is get by books as wide as those in my bookshelf. Can't wait till you can finally read what I've been working on!