How difficult is it to draw a twenty-page comic book?

How difficult is it to draw a twenty-page comic book?

What's the most number of pages an artist can realistically produce in a month?

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Depends on the quality of the work and what the artist is drawing.

A shitton depending on the quality, at one point Ottley was drawing Haunt and Invincible at the same time that's like 40 pages and he's not sloppy. I bet an artist could get up to 70 before the things started to look like utter shit.

depends on the amount of detail, if it's realistic, and if it has color. Depends if it's full time or a hobby.

>How difficult is it to draw a twenty-page comic book?
Lazy fuckers like Greg Land and other tracers can get it done quickly
Meanwhile, look up actually skilled mangaka who do more on a shorter time span (their lives are hell though)

Not that hard. Them Chinese people do over 100 pages in a week+ though

They have tons unamed assistants that help them hell some one piece chapters aren't even drawn by oda at all

With backgrounds. There's a thread about one punch where the guy 100+ pages with shit backgrounds by himself. Saying it'll take 3 days just to submit the finished work

I mean if you do a page a day you can totally do it monthly at least.

Mangaka doing a weekly series put out 20 to 25 pages a week. As they age, health problems start hampering the work load cutting down on the number of pages they put out.

False. The publisher needed to contractually mandate that Oda take breaks due to how much he overworks himself. He draws pretty much everything.

Also most mangaka only have at most 5 assistants at a time and those assistants mostly do inking and applying screen tones. Hardly tons of assistants.

Only super successful ones have assistants. Most are either on their own or doing the grunt work for someone else.

>136 pages in 26 days

Not sure how much of that has been done by assistants if at all. He pretty much live streamed the whole ordeal.

I think Ottley is like the Mark Bagley of Image. What happened to Bagley now? Ill or on vacation?

A great injury-induced example is D.Gray-man (switched from weekly to monthly with breaks).

Western artists should have an easier time because the penciler just passes the page layouts to the inker who then passes it to the colorist.

Most of what makes American comics so slow and full of delays tends to be how dispersed things are.

Writer -> Editor -> Penciler -> Editor -> Inker -> Editor -> Colorist takes a lot longer when they are all spread across the country.

>How difficult is it to draw a twenty-page comic book?

Well that entirely depends on the artist. Dragon Ball for example was 14 pages every week (more or less) for about 9 years. Biut that had fairly simple designs and backgrounds, plus assistants after a while. Then look at Kirby and it's all super detailed, maybe overly so, and he had to do it all himself.

Sean G Murphy says he works 9 - 5 M - F with weekends off and he's currently doing Batman - White Knight ( 8 issue mini ) writing, pencils and inks ( Hollingsworth does colors ).
youtu.be/JC5PoAZRbHI?t=3554

And he's not one who traces, pastas, or skimps on details/backgrounds as well as being 90% old school ( he draws with an actual pencil and then inks with a crowquill and/or brush and actual ink before doing some cleanup in PS ).

>Sean G Murphy says he works 9 - 5 M - F with weekends off
This didn't prevent Tokyo Ghost from getting a delay.

does email not exist in whatever universe you're from?

Am I right in thinking that the inker does the most work in producing good comic book art?

He's the one that has to make chicken scratch sketches look good.

It's hard. Just having the skills alone takes a lot of time and effort. Layouts take a lot of mental energy. There are so many things that go into a comic page that many don't even realize. It can be very time-consuming. You barely see anyone during the day, if at all. Fatigue can set in, and you can't stop because of looming deadlines. The deadlines can be very stressful. Also, for most the pay is shitty. Even with all that it can still be fun.

the fact that you think penciling is just chicken scratch sketches means I'm not going to answer you.

I was wrong about the amount of time then. Didn't really jump in that thread. Sorry senpais

That would depend if the artist inks his pencils himself.

Even with email and mostly digital production shit takes time to get to people. Any analog work just makes things take longer as they need it be scanned before they can be emailed. The penciler is usually sending batches of pages to the editor to check and the editor then forwards the pages to the inker who sends the inked batch back to the editor who then sends it to the colorist.

This is vastly different than having the writer artist and inkers in the same room working in a single page conveyor belt manner with the editor only really checking the name (story boards) and final product.

Around 35.

>hell some one piece chapters aren't even drawn by oda at all

I can't believe no one called this out. Why are you spreading bullshit you shitposter?

Also assistans are named in the back of the book sometimes.

You're thinking of breakdowns and finishes. That practice doesn't really happen anymore.

>put out 20 to 25 pages a week
Weekly series are 18 or 16 pages. There are some monthly manga with a 24 pages basis.

>That practice doesn't really happen anymore.
Except for the very first issue of IDW Micronauts and a few select DC Rebirth issues

>unamed assistants
Their names is always there at the end of the book.

There are so many people on Sup Forums who need to read Bakuman to understand how mangakas work with their assistants.

If you're Murata you can pump out something like 300 hyper-detailed pages a month

8 hours per page is the norm.

22 pages is the normal length of a book.

So, ideally it'd be like working a 9 to 5.

But things are rarely ideal in the world of professional art, and the more independent you are, the more work will fall on your shoulders.

>The end of Shonen jump the artists give little weekly updates
>This one artist kept talking about his health problems and how he would pass out and wake up on the floor and shit every week

That looks awesome, what is it?

Nevermind, it's literally there on the page

Do comic book artists actually make drawings so large? I thought the page was done directly in its final size.

I produce about 30 if I have enough time.

I dunno if the page size King Kirby drew on is the norm, but usually artists draw on something bigger. You can get more detail in and it's probably better for resolution on smaller print after scanning later.

Depends on the artist.

Looks gud, bud

What is it?

A graphic novel about monsters and wrestling. you'll get more info there unbound.com/books/felix-and-macabber

>fuck i hope he doesn't catch the Japanese cold

The Japanese are fucking insane. I can respect their dedication to their work, even if it means dying for it.

Posting Murata is just cheating
I don't think there's anyone else close to his tier

The fuck is going on there?

It took me about a month to finish just a goofy comic book of.mine and then ink it and color it doing everything except.the. Coloring by hand but I'm still learning so I can't even compare to the artists who churn out 3-5 pages a day

I hope not, trying to fit anything on an A4 sized paper is murder.

He's an exception due to being their golden goose. They would have let others literally work to death.

FUCK Shueisha.

Except how there's at least five books every month that do that.

That's because of assistance and no need for coloring.

>implying western artists have no assistants

Bagley's only 60 but it wouldn't surprise me if he retired, can't possibly need money at this point.

They do, but its different, since its color oriented.
So the workload on the main artist will be the same. But all the color and inking might not, depending on how they setup their production flow.

Take it from someone who does it for a living - it's not easy. Mind you I've only been drawing full-time for a year so I'm still not as regimented as other pros would be.

But yeah, the average deadline is usually 5 weeks if you're doing pencils and inks as I do. Factor in social distractions, con appearances, bad days and other shit and it's more like 4 weeks in the end.

If anyone has any questions about my schedule, work ethic or anything, shoot

How many hours a week would you say you work?

Probably 60-70 hours if I work 6 days. I get up late, start working around 2/3pm and continue to 4am (with breaks and meals of course)

Damn, and that's for 20 pages in 5 weeks?

What's your opinion of manga and its weekly deadlines?

Not trying to diminish your work at all -- from everything I've heard, mangaka life is hellish and shouldn't be some standard that we hold creators to or anything.

More or less, 20 or 22. Sometimes there's other small bits I've to divert my attention to. For instance, right now I'm inking a cover for one series, about to start layouts for another, and just wrapped up a creator-owned pitch tryout yesterday

I love manga, some of my biggest influences are Japanese artists (Otomo, Tezuka, Taniguchi, Matsumoto). I think their work model is scary as fuck though, no amount of success or money is worth shortening your life over. Especially at the super competetive Shonen mags where readers dictate your tenure by popular vote, fuck that.

I also wish there were more colour works, and graphic novels free from the chains of anthology serialization.

Which big name artists are still drawing on paper, as opposed to going digital?
I know that Capullo and EVS does, but Gerads, Pacquette, Manapul went digital
Also, doesn't drawing digital take away a sizeable portion of your income, because obvs you can't sell digital pages?

>Also, doesn't drawing digital take away a sizeable portion of your income, because obvs you can't sell digital pages?

Sure, but at the benefit of being able to work faster (and possibly take on more work as a result)

I have seen people talking about doing artist proof one-off prints of digital pages so I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes more popular as digital gets more widespread

Try to remember a page has to be thought up, composed, drawn in rough at least once (almost certainly more), redrafted at least once more, and then inked.

It's gotten worse with manga mags falling for the Western "detail = good" mentality. A weekly schedule is livable with the stylization, simplicity and use of white space common in the 60's and 70's, but modern manga demand an absurd level of detail and so many artists have to cheat like crazy or outright kill themselves just to get by. Astro Boy on the weekly is totally understandable. Bakuman is not.

>They have tons unamed assistants that help them hell some one piece chapters aren't even drawn by oda at all

Oda draws everything that has motion. People, wind, cloud, smoke, and water effects, animals, and vehicles are all down by him.

His assistants mainly do inking and some background elements.

>What's the most number of pages an artist can realistically produce in a month?

I think Osamu Tezuku once did something like 350 pages in one month; assistants just did the inking for them.

If you're doing only the pencils and you want it to look GOOD, a page a day is reasonable. Two pages a day is possible but you're gonna burn out really quickly.

We don't deserve someone like him. His work is simply god-tier.

I imagine that it's VERY difficult if you need to do 20-something pages in only a few weeks. Especially if you're also doing layouts, inking, coloring, even the lettering. Probably doesn't leave you with a lot of free time if you want to keep a roof over your head.

Kirby and some of his contemporary peers drew on large boards close to 14'' x 21'' in size before the engravers that converted the art into printing plates discovered they could get more pages on film if they were smaller. Kirby apparently didn't take to the change well.

One thing that stuck out in that recent manga biography is Tezuka directing his assistants to draw panel layouts by phone with graph paper from San Diego. Before fax machines were a thing.

> 30

with draft or without it?

Are you also writing?

Next chapter is going to be 143 apparently.

>Writer -> Editor -> Penciler
That's all instant transmission. Script and notes over email takes no time whatsoever.
>Penciller -> Editor
The only gap here is if the artist actually draws on physical pages, because he has to scan them. If they're digital, it's as simple as email all over again.

>Editor -> Inker -> Editor
This would be the biggest hold up, if the inker is actually working directly on the original pages. But very few inkers actually do that anymore, as far as I know.

>Editor -> Colorist
Pretty sure all coloring is digital now

easy

learn how to draw expressive, quick caricatures

for backgrounds use negative photos

it will look better and sell on the same shelf as soy coffee

have at least one rape scene
protag is unathletic
that's it.

It takes 3 days to submit that, yet it takes me 3 days to complete one page. Maybe two if I don't end up getting distracted by this website.

On top of that, it doesn't even look as good.

Man, why does everything good in this world legitimately has to be bad for you? I feel awful for these guys who churn out 100s of quality pages in a few days but as a result they can't have barely any free time.

I guess practice doing quality things faster

To be fair, it takes 3 days to scan and send, not to draw. I mean, he's still pumping out 5+ pages a day, so it's insane either way.

I manage to do one page a day for my comic. Whole process takes about eight to ten hours. Then again I do pencils, inks, and colors. If I had an assistant it'd probably take as long, but I'd do more details.

a super fast comic book artist that dont need to repeat panels can make 52 pages in a month

a super slow one that needs to repeat pages or panels can only do about from 17 to 25 If theres not much to drawn a month

>as a result they can't have barely any free time.

Look up Eiichiro Oda's work schedule sometime; he's now forced to take some time off but it used to be insane.

you also could probably bother doing backgrounds most of the time instead of only once every planetary alignment

it's a full-time job

>70 hours/week

wtf, I love my job now

Trips of truth

But yeah it's long, often isolated hours. Shit gets even more stressful closer to deadlines. I got serious burnout towards the end of my last series

Where on earth are you pulling those numbers from? Nobody can do 52 pages in a month

>can't possibly need money at this point.

I think you vastly overestimate how much freelance artists get paid

I wouldn't say NOBODY, but that user is absolutely retarded. At his peak, I bet Bagley could've put out 50 pages a month, but he was a machine.

he probably gets heck of residuals from Ultimate Spider-man

In 2015, this survey (fairpagerates.com/year-in-review-2015-survey-results/) found that the average page rate for a Marvel artist was $372 and $450+ for a cover. It was almost certainly lower 10 years before that, but even if we assume that Bagley was only making $100 a page and $200 for a cover, he was putting out 250+ pages a year with 12+ covers, and that's a bare minimum of $28k...

Yeah holy shit, even if he was getting paid three times that, it's not all that much money. Sure, he also got some back end money for TPB sales and selling his original art, but shit.

Rin is also another manga about making manga that's good.