www.nathanschreiber.com

Power Out Panic Attack

SO I had a panic attack the other night - I realized I have almost 120 pages left to do of Power Out before I finish, and the work I've accomplished since I've been in Santa Fe has been slow going.

the art is getting better, or at least I think so

I know a lot of this has to do with the pages I've been working on have been pretty labor intensive - the bee cave in chapter 3 has been murder, particularly when drawing the environments. It's taken a minute to get back into the style perhaps my standards are higher now, and that's slowing me down.

this page took forever

And the time I haven't been working on Power Out has been productive, like contributing to the sketchblog Drawbridge and working on my new webcomic Sumfin Silly.

a sketch on Drawbridge of Mike Dawson's Troop 141

But still, I need to redouble my efforts - I already spend a great deal of time working on the project, the key now is to focus efforts on using that time more efficiently. Here's three steps I'm going to implement:

-not obsessing over minute details
-showing more work online, which will encourage me to keep a schedule
-integrating perspective grids into my roughs to save time on backgrounds

making the computer do things in an instant it takes me a while to do with a ruler

Here's an example of the last one in action - this should make drawing the backgrounds a little bit less of a chore. I put a lot of work into my thumbnails - I ink them and everything, so when I light table them I don't have to worry about composition. Now, just by adding two rings of emanating lines in Illustrator, I can get a good two point (or three point with a third ring) perspective without using any tedious vanishing points.




I'm going to start a Kickstarter project, either this Friday or the next, to try and raise funds to print my book for MoCCA. I want to purchase most of the equipment so I can do this work myself; it will be like my own "print on demand" service. I want to get a decent color laser printer, a book binding kit, and paper, and hell, maybe a little advertising too.

I'm going to try and do a longer form blog like this every Sunday - mainly to chart my progress and give myself an extra "carrot" to motivate me to be productive. I need to finish this book - I don't know if I could forgive myself if I couldn't. But there's a whole lot more work to do, and I feel a little overwhelmed. Hopefully, breaking everything into little, week-long chunks when I update on Act-I-Vate (and here) will help with the long hard slog.