The end of a beginning
As this project’s timetable comes to a close, I find that my own project is just emerging from a highly distended pre-production phase. In fact, it still has pre-production parts left undone. If I am to judge my progress based upon having a complete item, then I have failed massively. However, I am not going to judge myself based upon that. Given that I had about six weeks to create this in, I find that I am only mildly retarded from where I could expect to be. Most professional comic artists work in teams, doing thirty or so pages a month, as a full-time job. There is usually one person writing, one or more drawing, a colorist, an inker, and often even one person just doing the lettering; and even that is the small teams. One-man or two-man projects do happen, but they usually do not put out an issue a month.
In my case, the story is too long and complex. The amount of work writing it, creating a believable world and set of characters I could feel proud of was just too much. I trivially marginalized that effort at the outset, but that way my own mistake. However, even if the writing had been easy, the idea of designing, laying out, and drawing finished comic pages for it all in the short time I had set aside was just plain absurd. The sheer amount of drawings necessary would have required me to output error-free panels constantly to have even come close to covering the entire story that evolved from this project. So, taking that into account, I had about two months to go from zero to done. Even at the outset, I did not think I could do it all. I had at least hoped I could get rough pencils for the whole thing. Even that goal was far in excess of what I actually did accomplish.
I do not view this as a failure of the project. Only a failure of my own ability to reign in my own judgment of what I can do in a given timeframe. If I could operate at the same level of quality that I was satisfied with all those years ago, I might have accomplished more. But I am not the same person who doodled out comics in high school and on lunch breaks more than half a decade ago. I made an enthusiastically over the top assumption of my abilities, and then found that I had put myself to a higher standard than that assumption was based upon. This project is not finished, but I am not finished with it. Instead, I view this as a progress report. I have blown my initial estimate quite handily, but I am on a solid track, and have a calmer, more realistic head about it now that I have experienced the immensity of my task. I made a mistake of inexperience. I have learned from that.
Moving from this point, the project still has pre-production issues to be resolved. The script needs editing and completing. While some scenes are complete, they are not finalized. Finishing this is actually the highest priority, even though scenes like the opening can be completed to comic pages. The next order is to finalize the artistic design. There is still research to be done here, such as on period and cultural weapons and armor, as well as finalizing the various character ideas from the wisps in my mind. Finally comes the comic itself. While it will require much deft to complete successfully, it actually has the lowest priority at this time. I had tried to rush into it, with only minimal designs and a mostly complete script. This proved to be less successful than if I had approached it more cautiously. I should think and commit to page the ideas of panel composition before I just leap in; or, at the very least, commit to page the vague ideas that I have.
The future for this project is bright, even if where it is now is very bleak.