Full sized!

We’re leaving Torgo sooner than I had planned, however, we’re now leaving at a much better time. When formulating the ideas for story arcs and character arcs I typically start with an idea of how much time I want in between some of the bigger moments. Event A happens, I want three stories for it to sink in and come around before the Character survives Event B, which leads to Event C right away, but then things can chill for a bit before Event D and someone gets their face burnt off. So then I write Events A, B, C, and D for that character, and then figure out which Events for the other characters will slot nicely into those in between times until it’s all planned out.

Of course, then I start drawing and that delicate house of cards falls apart. At first I was struggling with the limitations of space. I was updating five times a week, but there wasn’t much to each update. It became hard to keep track of everyone day to day, 17 heads are hard to fit into one single strip. So I went bigger, but it wasn’t necessarily better. The half page size five times a week was a little too much for me, things started getting rushed and the story fell apart because my time management is not the world’s best.

So here we are two times a week, but a nice full page to enjoy and I’m hitting the story beats I want, but it’s only two pages a week, so can I really afford to let that conversation stretch another page or does it need wrapped up today? It’s the best kind of problem.

Right now I’m sitting on the outlines of the next five stories, with a page-by-page breakdown of the next two, and an almost full script of the very next story that starts on Monday.

Also, my first two page spread, what an experience. It took me almost as long to erase the seam between the two pages as it did to draw them.