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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Editing/Revising Issue #2

I'm not sure how others work, but for me the process of writing and drawing a comic is very long and repetitive, with endless iterations of things as you inch along towards the finish line.

Last night I finally finished drawing page 33 of the second issue, thereby completing it...and then today I printed off my very first copy of the finished product to begin rereading and editing it in it's finished form. I had intentionally avoided going back and reading it as I went, trying to give myself a fresh perspective for when I was done.

It worked pretty well, and I felt like a lot of what I read today was not how I remembered it, which is probably exactly as it should be. I then spent a couple of hours going through marking up endless updates and modifications...text change here, background needs to be added there, this word balloon is too wide, this one too tight, break this dialogue into 3 balloons instead of one, and so on.

I figure I've given myself a good day or two of changes to make across all the pages, at which time I'll then need to go through it again fresh and see if it reads and flows better. I really have no clue how this reads and if its fun and enjoyable or horrific and sad.

At the same time I'm also working on writing issue #3, which means my brain is going back and forth with the past and the future simultaneously, which probably only helps confuse things.

At times like these I greatly wish I had a professional editor working alongside me to help me sidestep and polish this stuff earlier. I really half expect that when I am finally finished with this entire series someone who knows what they're doing will read over it all and suggest 50 pages of new content, rewrites, and polishes that will greatly improve it and take me 4 months to complete...