Far Out There

Well now, THIS was certainly a chore. In case you missed my little edited note on the last page, my first attempt at drawing today’s comic… well, YESTERDAY’S comic is more accurate. Anyway, I had to completely throw out an entire first draft of this one because, well, it SUCKED. It just looked HORRIBLE. Even take two, as seen here, looked pretty terrible in its pre-edited state, but at least that could be SOMEWHAT salvaged in post. The first one was just completely and utterly unusable. It was astonishing.

And I know what was wrong, too. You know how I said I was scrambling to get a whole load of Conventional Wisdom comics done before the weekend was over? And how the whole reason there’s no Voting Incentives at the moment was so I could focus on finishing that stuff? Well, yeah, I’ve kind of spent EVERY SINGLE WAKING SECOND OF THIS WEEK on that, and MAN did it ever catch up with me. I hadn’t really noticed, since I sort of use a different part of my brain for the editing than I do for the actual drawing. It’s one of the things I like the most about messing around in Manga Studio: when all I’m doing is prettying up details and polishing and idea that’s already basically done, I can do it almost on autopilot. It’s just a straighforward task to perform, I don’t have to “feel” it. But when the time comes to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and actually create something from the ground up? That’s something else. That kind of raw creativity is where I actually have to worry about stuff like “inspiration” and “motivation” and “actually having a normal sleep schedule” and “maybe going outside into the daylight at some point over the last seven days,” and in the absence of all that, I just had NUTHIN’.

Don’t worry, though, that Conventional Wisdom slog really is almost done. And come April, I’ll be able to focus both on more Far Out There stuff AND some basic mental and physical self care! It’ll be NEAT!

(Historical Notes: You know, for all of Past Me’s complaining about everything, that IS a good point about how editing uses a different part of the brain than drawing.  That’s honestly why re-editing and re-posting all these old comics over the hiatus has been so good for me.  Even if it is “work” and can get tedious after too long, it’s still a LOT more relaxing to correct little details and chug through automated routines than straining to conjure up something entirely from scratch.  Don’t get me wrong, the latter is a LOT more rewarding after it’s done… if it’s done WELL, that is.  But after over a decade of constant straining to keep it up, I REEEAAALLY needed that long stretch of the calming, zen-like state of just editing little details.)