Jason at Work
A lot of people, not necessarily just artists, find themselves working in cyclical patterns. Massive consumption, then massive creating and back. In the artistic sense, you could view it as a manic/depressive attitude but I think you should embrace both sides of the cycle. Your work is influenced and informed by the things you do when you are relaxed whether that is driving bumper cars, watching 30 Rock or playing on Gaia. The mind recharges as it is relaxed allowing for you to work harder when at your drawing table, computer, keyboard, etc. During that week betwixt Christmas and New Year’s I got sucked into some online video game. It consumed a lot of my time, time I would usually spend on comics. Once the mania of the obsession ebbed, I came to a realization and knew exactly how much time I misspent and how much time I actually have for my artist endeavors! I learned the hard way.
Alec Longstreth talks about setting a schedule that plots out your day hour by hour. If that doesn’t work for you, then the next day try a list of things you hope to accomplish. Trent Hamm over at The Simple Dollar also wishes you to not waste time (he is less on the fun stuff though) and spends each morning planning his day. Since we are in the webcomic business here at Rare Bits, we plan our workdays according to our comics. I view my work as the whole week, reaching certain goals by certain days: thumbed comic by Sunday, penciled comic by Monday, inked comic by Wednesday, production on Thursday. My other various activities and day jobs add to the ‘fun’ and there are many nights I am up into the wee hours of the morning. There are only so many hours in the day, so many days in the year and we are but blips on the Earth’s time line.
In short, we work hard, we play hard.
oh time, what a lovely and awful thing.