How do you keep it up? oo-er missus

[Steverules]

I would recommend going weekly with your next 6 strips. This will give you a few weeks to recharge. I, personally, love the weekly format. You can do an entire month on one Saturday then work on other projects. Once you find your mojo again you could work on a buffer and increase to twice a week or more.

[Leko]

If you think coloring is taking forever and you don't like it, try doing a few black and white comics and see how it works out. I mean, what's the audience going to do to you? Come to your house with pitchforks and torches because a few comics weren't colored?

Maybe all it needs is something as simple as a format change. Do you draw the panels in a straight line? Try a cube. Do you ever draw your character below the shoulders? Try a full-body shot. Tiny changes like this keep both you and your readers cming back for more.

I did that just recently, using my 100th strip as the excuse. I'm loving it. Sometimes I do seven panels or if I don't feel like it I'll just draw a one panel gag. As long as you're having fun, who the hell cares what the readers think? You're not getting paid for it, are you? Well, then.

[Steverules]

Color-Black and White-Weekly-Daily-Stick Figures-Detailed Drawings-It all pays the same.

[AsterAzul]

I think the most important thing is that, when you're done with the whole thing, you can look back a few years later and be proud for having completed a creative work like a comic. You could slave away for years at your paying job and never be more than a blip on the radar, but if you write a comic that even a hundred people have read, that's something.

[LibertyCabbage]

You can regain some interest by introducing a new character. That should be fun.

[Kirb]

I have yet to lose inspiration, or my creative juices, but that may be because I wrote most of the entire plotline before actually beginning. You'd think I'd have some sort of buffer. Now, I'm not sure what I can say to do about a gag comic, because I have no experience in maintaining one. But I wouldn't go against taking a small break. As long as it isn't a hiatus.

[AsterAzul]

Gags are hard! It's difficult to be funny on the fly.

[Ryuko]

I save my funny for Wednesdays.

[AsterAzul]

That's good. One gag a week isn't so hard to keep up, I think. Doing gags more often than twice a week would give me a tummyache, though.

[McDuffies]

I really don't know how I got this far with mcDuffies. For past several months I had some problems with restarting writing, I really really wanted to work on other things. But when I figured a different direction to which my comic will go now, and started writing new stuff, had a bit until I got to old character's shoes, I started enjoying it again.

[AsterAzul]

[eagerly awaits McDuffie's new productions]

I think the characters should suddenly have mid-life crises and realize that
they
don't
know

themseeelllves.

[McDuffies]

That's exactly what I was planning to do.

[Levi-chan]

I dunno, a friend told me something like this:

Cooks cook. Tailors tailor. Carpenters carpent, err...build. Artists do art.

Stop making excuses. Burned out? Run out of creativity? No more inspiration? Bullshit, you're just making alibis. Get over yourself and do what you dig.

Mind, I don't know if it's actually right. But it worked for me.

[McDuffies]

Artists artify.

[AsterAzul]

That's exactly what I was planning to do.

I think you've actually gotten a lot better ever since you started the fable storyline. Your story suddenly became... real. Like the characters had begun to question their own motivations and identities instead of taking them for granted like most characters do.

[Anywherebuthere]

Having a bit of a lull doing my comic at the moment.

I wondered if any of you experienced the same and how you got over it?

I'm thinking if I'm getting bored doing my comic I'm sure readers will feel the same.

Its a first time for me switching from single gag comics to a strip format.

Any advice?

I withhold lovin from myself when I fear I will miss an update. I have found this threat to be all the motivation I need.


However, I am told this does not work for everyone.

[Anywherebuthere]

I have up to 6 strips drawn in advance at any one time.

Its just the colouring that takes the time and slows me up.

Plenty more story to go but it just seems to take soooo long.

Allright, in all seriousness try this.

Work on the parts that intest you the most NOW. If you feel that there's a part of the story that you REALLY want to work on and develop then write out a script for it. Even if it's a story arc you want to run a year down the road. Commit it to paper, work on it, roll it around in your mind.

Then, take a look at where you are now. And figure out how to get from point A to point be.

I quite literally have the end of my comic already written. The last dozen or so strips are out on paper, some rough art is done. I KNOW that it's about 4-5 years away, but it's something that really motivated me to write.

There are OTHER shorter story arcs that are in my head that I commit to paper. Some are stand alone gags that I just jot down on a word doccument and store on my hard drive. Then when I feel tired I already have this really cool stuff stored there that I can look at, work on, and go "huh, well in order to get to HERE I'm going to need to do this, and this, and this"... Before I know it I'm looking at a few weeks worth of strips. One or two of which are actually good strips.

You cant dictate when inspiration strikes. However you CAN make the most of it when it does.

Cheers

-Jason

[AsterAzul]

Wow, ABH, that's exactly what I do. Creepy. I've written my whole story out of order. It's sort of hard to put together, sometimes, though. I'm afraid I'm going to look at the art in my "later" storylines when I get there and just sigh.

[Dutch!]

Officially School Spirit is a 40 odd page fully blown musical script, so the original story is complete and may only need a few touch ups when it's produced a second time in a few years.

As for what it's become in the comic version...most of the characters are present, some have been created for it, and others have been removed and never mentioned. It's the same basic storyline, but I have the chance to expand on areas I didn't get a chance to do in the original script. There's no definite ending in sight, but a few events I wouldn't mind tackling later on. I don't want to bring them in too early though because I think you need to get comfortable with the characters and the setting and all that before anything too drastic pops up.

But writing gags (I wish someone would make up a better term for them) three times a week isn't too bad if you plan your writing time. Have one idea for the current story, then brainstorm as many funny phrases or situations you can think of about it. Take the ones you like and can work with, and there's up to three or four weeks of jokes about one thing. Write them up in a few days and you've got a few months up your sleeve.

Incidentally, you can tell a continual story at the same time as telling jokes if you word it properly.

[Telecoda]

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys.

For a change I took off for the evening on my mountain bike with my music jacked in a trashed about across the fields at sunset. Instead of sitting in front of the comp colouring my strip.

Most refreshing.

Then I came home and coloured my strip and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I'd sent a long time drawing characters in the same location lately.

And thanks for the tip off about the missing archive, I'll have to sort that.

I'm not sure if I could do my strip in black and white or greyscale because I love the way it looks in colour. Maybe I'll try to experiment on the format though.