Vacations, Deadlines, and other Related Stuff

Well...now I'm feeling the heat.

I'm sitting at 10 days to finish 13 strips. Perfectly doable I think. I have about half a weeks worth already uploaded, the "BIG" mega strip is done, and the rest is all pretty much smaller filler.

Untill I get around to DOING the strips themselves, and then I realize that they all feel...too...short.

My first strip after the mega strip winds up being three times as large as a normal strip. Pain in the arse I think.

The second strip winds up being six pannels instead of four.

Hurm, I think.

The third strip...is four pannels, but they're very large pannels.


And I don't like where this is going...

So I plot out my next three weeks worth of strips. "Hokay," I think, "most of these can be done pretty quick. I think I can do all of this as my basic 4 pannel stuff. No problem, easy as pie. A few "select" strips will be longer in format, but hey, it's allright...I can do this.

And then, I look at September 9th, and I realize...I hit 200 strips.

And THEN I look at the story arc, and I realize...I have a fairly major event in the Dude's Life scheduled to hit on the 200th strip.

And THEN I realize...OH CRAP, that's going to be at least a two pager.

And THEN I start to panic, because I leave for vacation in ten days. This week, I'll be writing the bulk of the strips to cover my bum while on vacation. Next week...I guess I better get cracking on that mega strip.

And now, I'm breaking into cold sweats, because I REALLY do NOT want to miss a deadline.

At the same time I'm doing this, I'm also dinking around on the next MASSIVE Mega-Strip. It's something on par with the Guardian Devil strip. But what's worse is that it's a VERY dynamic strip. There's a lot of movement, a lot of various angles to the characters. EVERY FRAME is going to take a LOT of effort. A LOT of stuff that I have to find scads and scads of referance materials for. So a LOT of my doodling time has been spent drawing mark up sketches. And I'm not planning on running it for a few MONTHS at least. Yet, given the gravity of the strip, I NEED to keep a steady pace on it to make certain it comes out right.

Note to self, bring a few sketch pads on vacation with you. You're going to need them...also bring an arseload of pens...

Some days, it just doesn't pay to be a bastard.