Since last summer, when I started Chapter 3, I began using the Pomodoro Technique, and so I decided to track my tomatoes on all my pages as well, broken down by task. Since I just finished Chapter 4, I made a new chart of the breakdown.
My total logged tomatoes for 48 pages plus cover was 740, which means it took me about 370 hours in total to illustrate this chapter. (Writing is not included in that number. That’s a whole different process involving many glasses of iced coffee.)
In Chapter 3, I averaged 9.96 hours per page. In Chapter 4, I averaged 7.55 hours, after changing things up and inking my pages with Manga Studio. So I’ve shaved just over 2 hours from my average, which is pretty amazing to me and giving me many things to think about going forward.
There were certainly still some pages that spiked as far as time spent (oh hello there, page 105, and your Thousand and One Backgrounds to Paint) but as I look back on the work, I felt a lot more efficient and fast-moving. Doing linework again helped a lot with readability, I think, and took on part of the burden that my shading/rendering on the figures was carrying. Shading is now a lot more simple and quicker to do now that I have lines to do some of the work for me, in other words.
Now just have to work on those backgrounds and see what I can do to get those to be quicker. I think my painting skills have improved a lot in the last year, and I’m feeling more confident about my backgrounds lately. I’m trying not to be TOO precious and meticulous, and remember not to zoom in too close because literally no one but me is ever going to see them at 100% zoom.
