And having a little sit-down to breathe.

To begin, have a present. This is music by a friend of mine that’s become very much a staple for writing and drawing Prophecy of the Circle and lately it’s seen frequent rotation on my iTunes. I must share! I must. I shall. Beautiful music for creating to. Take a listen and support a fellow creative type, if you’re so inclined. 🙂

Now, explanation-wise: If you noticed me being slow to respond and scatter-brained to the extreme lately (more so than usual; crazy, I know!) it’s because I’ve spent the last month or so working extra hard each week behind the scenes, and I think I’ve finally achieved a tiny, silly little workaholic’s daydream: I’ve got a comic buffer! I’ve officially bought nearly three weeks worth of time for myself and it means so many things. So many glorious things!

Primarily: I have time to do even more work! AHAHAHAHAHA.

…yes.

*ahem*

So.

Here’s how it stands, somewhat. Every week I still have to do a comic to maintain that buffer, but I’ve learned a few tricks that make it easier and faster for me to keep on top of things. It’s been a matter of identifying the stages in comic-creation where I stall and procrastinate and making those fewer and further between. Took me a while to figure out a pattern that works and to get it running smoothly, but I’ve finally got one.

When I sit down to sketch or ink or anything except painting, I don’t just do one page like I used to. I write maybe a whole scene in great detail, all in one sitting. I’ll do the pencils for five or six pages in a single evening. I’ll ink all of those pages in another evening. By the time I’m done that over the course of three days, I’ve got almost two months of pages that only need to be painted, scanned, and assembled, so-to-speak, which I can typically do in one day per page. The faster I get that done, the faster I can get to building another batch of pages, and the buffer grows!

And if I need to take a day to do something else it’s now guilt-free. That’s things like building a solid portfolio for career purposes (those who remember my earlier fears about income… I have indeed found some degree of stability, sorta, but things are still precarious and being worked out on my end; ongoing saga but my head’s currently above water), or attend to comic side projects like more merchandise designs or adding a fanart page to the home site, or even just maintaining the encyclopedia. When I get a little further ahead than I am now, it’s going to be an even bigger relief because I can start squeezing in a day or two here and there to do things I want to, rather than need. Prophecy of the Circle is great – it’s my baby, after all – but it’s like if you had to eat the same thing every day. I do come to miss variety. Got art and half-finished novels and project ideas I’d love to toy with and renew that creative spirit of mine.

The first thing I’m doing, though, is taking a pause for a few days. A real complete total pause. We’ve got a long weekend here in Canada, and tomorrow evening I’m off to Vancouver for a quick holiday. Just family, my sketchbook, and a real paper book to read.

And it’s going to be glorious. 😀