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The buffers for Station V3 and Z7 are often minimal at best, but they still manage to stick to their schedules (daily and MWF). I'm on 'vacation' this week, so I'm trying to get a couple weeks done and uploaded.

I live on the bufferless edge. At most, I'll get one comic ahead.
Comic work tends to expand to fill the time for me. Say, if I had three times as much time as usual to work on a comic, I wouldn't produce three comics - I'd probably end up doing ONE comic with three times the detail.

I've never had a buffer except for when I first started doing a comic back in late 2000. At the time I had somewhere around thirty comics done, that quicky was depleted when I got dissinterested. Now I don't think that the term buffer even applies, I don't have a set update schedule. If I get three pages done I put up three pages the next time I update. If I were putting up things I've had drawn for months I'd always be down on what was on the page. That is to say it'd always be, "wait untill you see what's coming," from me. Generally speaking that would not be a good thing so far as keeping me motivated. Were someone doing a comic with a more buisness-like intention than myself I could see why a buffer would be a wise thing to have, but as things stand now I'd just be somewhat confined by having to have such a thing.

Jeffery McLean wrote:What "buffer" do you use?

I use vanilla, but I know many use chocolate.
I don't reccomend the strawberry though, it's no good.

No buffer, I don't like it...Also not doing it as my friends love helping me with story ideas and I try to catch them offguard then

YarpsDat wrote: I use vanilla, but I know many use chocolate.

Icecream dosen't make for a very good online comic.

when I started BOMC, I had a buffer of four months. Thanks to my current computer troubles, I now have a buffer of less than a month (plus a bunch of drawn but not scanned strips).



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

seriously, I don't know how any of you guys can go without a buffer. My comocking mood is very finicky. Sometimes I won't draw for a week, then I will sit down and draw 10 comics.

Uh, one week, if I'm lucky... I should have been smart and drawn the entire comic before posting it.

Oh gawd, what a nightmare. I love drawing my comic, and I keep thinking about it when I am on public transport or eating lunch... but I've just finished a panel that took me the best part of three days, for next monday. I think that I've bitten more than I could chew when I set my updates at 3 times a week, with full colour panels everytime :/
It's just that my drawing isn't that strong in itself, quality-wise, so if I don't colour, shade, etc. it doesn't look good.
Boooh oooh booh, I wanted to play City of Heroes tonight! The reason I want to update 3 times a week is because I have all this story in my mind and I want to move it along, but I am struggling

Keffria wrote:Uh, one week, if I'm lucky... I should have been smart and drawn the entire comic before posting it.

That's my plan then...
Draw all of Neko homeworld before launching the comic.

Thank you everyone, This was all very helpful and educational
Preticularly the "Buffer? Hahahaha" comments.
Clearly while a Buffer is wanted and desired creating and maintaining such a thing is a bastard.

Okay, so, I drew the coming Monday's comic on the first of January this year, and am only just scanned it in and started coloring it ect. today.
So year, I rarely miss an update. If I'm lucky I can keep it up.

So yeah, I drew the whole current storyline before potsing it.

Jeffery McLean wrote:

Keffria wrote:Uh, one week, if I'm lucky... I should have been smart and drawn the entire comic before posting it.

That's my plan then...
Draw all of Neko homeworld before launching the comic.

See, that's what a good friend (whose pen-and-ink art is positively angst-inspiring) of mine is planning. Problem is, for a comic that will run for a respectable amount of time, you'd likely spend years drawing it, then hate it before you even started to post...

Now that we've moved School Spirit onto Keenspace it's updating twice weekly, and we've yet to miss an update since April (when it was on another site and only weekly). As for a buffer, we're right till the start of Spring (September for you lot in the wrong hemisphere), so I think that's about three or four weeks.

I find it a little tricky sometimes to find the time to do a strip, but I'm getting quicker, so each on usually takes less than two hours, and I can do it in front of the telly if I need to. I also need to balance that with planning classes for a gaggle of 9 and 10 year olds at the same time, so school holidays are great. I got about 10 churned out in one storyline in five mornings before I got a visitor and the lost the rest of my two weeks.

If I can keep finding the time to draw and prepare between 1 and 3 cartoons a week I should be right...hopefully...

Dutch! wrote:Now that we've moved School Spirit onto Keenspace it's updating twice weekly, and we've yet to miss an update since April (when it was on another site and only weekly). As for a buffer, we're right till the start of Spring (September for you lot in the wrong hemisphere), so I think that's about three or four weeks.

*Was about to honor you until realized he lives in the "wrong" hemisphere*

Damn. Fall is coming soon. Too soon.

You think you're in the 'right' hemisphere? I'll prove the southern hemisphere is more important...

Just think...if it wasn't for the southern hemisphere all of the water would fall off the edge of the world...

And it's called Autumn, not Fall! 8)

Keffria wrote:

Jeffery McLean wrote:

Keffria wrote:Uh, one week, if I'm lucky... I should have been smart and drawn the entire comic before posting it.

That's my plan then...
Draw all of Neko homeworld before launching the comic.

See, that's what a good friend (whose pen-and-ink art is positively angst-inspiring) of mine is planning. Problem is, for a comic that will run for a respectable amount of time, you'd likely spend years drawing it, then hate it before you even started to post...

Yes, there's several good reasons for not doing that:
1. It might take too long.
2. Catching up with the buffer isn't so hard as it looks, specially if you set it to realistic schedule. Or if you're unsecure you can finish half and then start posting while finishing the rest.
3. It stops you from going back and fixing old pages that you not like anymore. No matter what people think, looking back at finished pages is not good.
4. It makes you practise regulary.

Keffria wrote: you'd likely spend years drawing it, then hate it before you even started to post...

Thats more or less what I did.
It sucks.
Mind you, I'll be doing it again...

I only have scanner access two days a week, so I try to keep a week's worth of strips waiting in the wings, and have a batch ready to be scanned by the time those have all gone up. Once upon a time, when I was still running daily strips, I also had a two-week buffer. Free time, how I miss you...

What a difference a few days make...

I've spent most of this week working on comics--because I've got nothing better to do--and by the end of today I'll be two weeks ahead. My buffer is suddenly a posibility. More than, in fact.

CW