Since it's one day past when I had previously designated as my publishing deadline, I thought it'd be appropriate to give a quick update on the status of things and new plans going forward.

To state the conclusion first:

Schedules

The ideal one

In a perfect world where I am always able to follow the probably reasonable schedule I've laid out for myself, keeping in mind work hours but pretending that exceptions don't exist, below are the stages and timings for drawing a 10-page episode (around 70 panels):

1. Layout, Panelling and bubbling - 2 days
   (The layout used to be a separate stage, but I found that just making the actual panels and bubbles is easier than roughing them out and getting OCD over their edges)
2. 3D backgrounds and pose references - 5 days
   (Ideally I would already have all the backgrounds made before drawing, but in reality I only have some of them made. Getting the pose right also takes a long ass while)
3. Rough sketch - 5 days
4. Lineart - 7 days

Omitting colour and shading for reasons that will be explained below, this is a total of 19 days. —Which is over two weeks! In an ideal world! Surely some weekly-update artists have full time jobs off webtoons??

Would I literally just have to finish drawing the entire season before posting???

The actual one

In the real world, for the current episode:

1. Layout, Panelling and bubbling - 2 weeks
   I had no time lol
2. 3D backgrounds and pose references - 9 days, with one where I was able to do absolutely nothing
   Had to make new backgrounds, and also fully rendered an establishing shot because I couldn't stop myself
3. Rough sketch (current step) - 5 days...with only two of which I actually had time to do the sketches
4. Lineart - Fuck if I know

So it's been a whopping 28 days and I've literally only done 2 pages for the rough sketch!! ARRGHSDHUAHDLadsdf

Not only this, but my sleeping sched has also been having a stability worthy of the richter scale. Even if I went by the ideal schedule—which basically cannot actually be accomplished, ever—if I were to have to finish two more episodes before having enough to take the next step with, it would be some time in December. And that next step is...

Hiring assistants

Eg. where the left-out colour and shading comes in.

I stated in the last post that I was thinking about changing jobs. It's happening! Haven't started the new one yet, but this is what will be helping me pay people for help. The only uncertainty is whether or not this will decrease my production time even further; my current job is actually quite good on the time department, it's really just random external factors that have been causing the business—but I'm hoping that it'll be the opposite. Or, maybe because there's less freedom in hours, I'll actually be able to get my sleep schedule in order and achieve some semblance of a stable day-to-day.

Either way, it's going to happen, and I will be posting the info when I have enough completed lineart for people to fill. I really want to say that it's going to happen at the end of December...but given my current progress, and the job change that will be occuring very soon, it's honestly looking a bit bleak.

I am going to at least try to schedule tasks as usual, just so that I'll concretely know what I need to fulfill every day (instead of just having a far-off "finish the stuff" deadline), but it's worth noting that I had initially planned to publish...at the beginning of this year lol. I did somehow had more time back then, but was quite lax about actual production, and I definitely did not have my current diligence or task management systems.

So, in conclusion:

What it's like to draw comics while having a full time job

It takes so fucking long what the fuck???