We’re not here to tell you how to live your life. If you want to post every comic page as soon as you’re done with it, that’s valid. But! A buffer of comic pages can help keep your comic on a steady release schedule, set healthy reader expectations, and prevent burnout or stress during the times when you can’t be at your drawing desk as often. So let’s talk about buffers!

In this Episode:




• What does your buffer look like? Do you always stick to your ideal buffer, or have you ever run out?
• What benefits has having a buffer had for you? Are there any drawbacks?
• What is your advice to someone who is trying to make a healthy buffer, but can’t seem to manage to keep it going?

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Episode Release Date: September 10, 2025

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (Varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Christina Major (Delphina) - she/her, sombulus.com

Kristen Lee (Krispy) - she/they, https://ghostjunksickness.com https://www.lunarblight.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:02.50

Delphina

Hello and welcome to Screen Tones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about buffers. I’m Delphina, I use she/her pronouns, and I make the webcomic Sombulus.

00:15.72

Krispy

And I’m Krispy, I use the pronouns she/they. and I make the webcomics Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight

00:22.79

Varethane

And I’m Varethane, I use she/they pronouns, and I make the webcomics Chirault and Wychwood.

00:29.69

Delphina

Okay, so we're not here to tell you how to live your life or make your comic. And if you want to post every comic page as soon as you're done with it, that's valid. But a buffer of comic pages can help you keep your comic on a steady release schedule and set healthy reader expectations and prevent burnout or stress during the times where you can't be at your drawing desk as often. So today we are going to talk about buffers.

00:56.15

Delphina

And so I’m just gonna throw this out to folks. What does your buffer look like for your comic? And is it hard to stick to your ideal buffer? Or have you ever run out? I'll throw it to you, Krispy.

01:09.65

Krispy

Hehehehehehe. I’m really proud of our buffer. So obviously we have the advantage of the fact that like Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight—we're a team. There's two of us, we do all the equal work. I said this a million times in Screen Tones but, you know, we both draw, we both write, both you know thumbnail, whatever, so that makes our buffer absolutely long as heck. So we usually have a buffer for about a year and a half. It's usually around that long. Like it could take either a half year or go longer.

01:45.06

Krispy

But how we work is that we do a whole entire chapter at a time because it helps with flow and stuff like that.

01:55.34

Krispy

So, the buffer gets made, we do everything in steps. So we write it. And then we kind of go back and forth with it. Then we do the whole thumbnail in a whole step.

02:07.95

Krispy

And then we do all the pencils in one step, you know, so on and so forth, so that everything's kind of cohesive. And with that, because we finished the entire chapter at a time, it makes our buffers quite...

02:21.15

Krispy

Buff. So it feels good to have something that helps us balance like the other things. So the other thing about being in a team is that we also really want to keep doing more comics. So this helps our kind of work

02:40.17

Krispy

ethic or our output more because we're constantly doing things on the sides, and I'll just be open with the fact that like comics are not our full time jobs, and because like our work ethic, our output is that, you know, Space and I like to work on a bunch of projects at the same time, so we're constantly going and, you know, being open about the fact that comics is not our full-time job. We have day jobs and stuff like that, so fitting in a buffer that works in tandem with the things that

03:23.25

Krispy

make us money and you know comics to keep us happy with that. I think it's just really important because when things kind of cut down to the wire and you're releasing a page per update, to me personally that's too much the pressure gets too intense, and when there's a lot of pressure I feel the burnout. I don't know, how do you feel about that, Delphie?

03:47.55

Delphina

Yeah, it is. It's a lot of burnout, like kind of being to the wire. And I think that's a very good system. So like a chapter is about a year for you or…?

03:58.78

Krispy

It depends. I think a chapter... cause like they range right from like 45 pages to like 90. It's like, okay, there's no specific page count.

04:13.39

Krispy

But something that's 90 pages will take us like almost a year to get through. And by the time that like, you know, we finished it.

04:20.33

Krispy

So it takes us about maybe two, three months to do something like that. And that is a buffer for about six to eight months. And then we'll probably be working on pages still in between that. So the buffer just keeps growing.

04:34.02

Delphina

Yeah, but that's a good point to have one cohesive chunk of stuff, whatever that looks like for you as a buffer so that you can have that space and you have it all to look over.

04:47.83

Delphina

And especially if you're doing sort of this batch process that you described, that makes a lot of sense. I’m going to throw it to you, Thane. What does your buffer situation look like? How does that work?

05:01.20

Varethane

Well, right now, my buffer situation looks pretty, pretty all right. It definitely was not always that way, though, because when I first was getting started doing webcomics with Chirault, all the way back when dinosaurs roamed the Internet and I was working on the beginnings of Chirault, I was in school at the time.

05:23.44

Varethane

And the comic was something that I just would bring everywhere with me in my sketchbooks. And I would just be kind of drawing it all the time. And I had a concept of what webcomics were.

05:34.58

Varethane

But the field was still pretty new at the time. So I knew that they would have things like update schedules. But I didn't really see that as something that I needed to stress too much about. So I was making pages in big batches.

05:50.36

Varethane

And then I would just post all of the pages as soon as I finished them. And I was working at a pretty blistering speed during those early days. Just like, I don't know, fueled by a lot of caffeine and obsession.

06:02.64

Varethane

So my homepage at the time, the way I was manually coding the whole thing with HTML.

06:08.32

Varethane

So every time I added a page, I would have to make a new HTML page and upload it and re-upload everything else to make sure all the links connected to each other. And I would upload batches of like anywhere between four and like eight pages, like, in a day.

06:24.48

Varethane

And then like three days later, it would be like, there's another four pages. And then like, you know, three days after that, be like, here's seven pages. And on the homepage, I had this little text box where I would update like,

06:36.17

Varethane

I added four pages. And then beside that, if it had been less than like a week, I would be like, and I added another four pages. And so it's like this little pastiche of like, I've done this many, this many, this chunk.

06:47.17

Varethane

Obviously that pace was not sustainable. I think I kept up that... weird approach for probably about six to eight months. And then, and then I was like, okay, you know, webcomics have these update schedule things, maybe I should also have one of those.

07:04.91

Varethane

And maybe I should not just dump every page that I make immediately and start saving them because at some point in the future, maybe I won't be able to make pages this fast anymore.

07:16.88

Varethane

So I set it to a three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. And like, I think I did that—I started the comic in May. And then I implemented the update schedule in like August or so.

07:31.57

Varethane

And it was a good thing that I did because come December of the same year, school was picking up and everything. And surprise, I couldn't make pages that fast anymore. So having that buffer of pages from when I was like, you know, putting them out like crazy, and then I would update them more slowly, it kept the whole comic like going while I was, you know, holidays, school things, tons of homework. And then eventually, you know, it kind of provides a little bit of a space between like your actual production and what goes up on the website, which can give you time for whenever life does anything.

08:13.46

Varethane

And it's really handy for that for that kind of thing because after, I think I was keeping up with the Chirault schedule for a good few years in that initial period, but then there was a point where I was, I went on an exchange program and got really busy, and I was like, okay, I can't actually work on the comic at all for like a year, and having the buffer let it keep updating while I was kind of off doing other things. And so I didn't really have to put the comic on any formal hiatuses

08:47.44

Varethane

really at all. I think there was one period in 2012 where Chirault actually went on a full hiatus for probably four or five months before coming back.

09:00.20

Varethane

And ever, kind of ever since that initial decision, I've always tried to have some amount of stored pages ahead of what's going up on the website.

09:11.91

Varethane

There was a period in the finale of Chrault where I started kind of running low on my buffer. And I was actually starting to make pages within anywhere between like two or three days to a week before they were going to go up on the internet.

09:27.35

Varethane

And it definitely does feel a lot more stressful. Like you, you feel like you have less control over what goes into the page because you just, you got to get it out right now. So like, okay, what if you, if you wanted to spend more time on the writing or massaging out like little story chunks or anything like, okay, well you can't cause it needs to go up like in two days

09:46.43

Varethane

or tomorrow. So when I finished Chirault and got started on Wychwood, I really wanted to have a much healthier buffer. So I actually finished the first three chapters in their entirety.

10:00.22

Varethane

And I was like keeping track of exactly how fast they were for me to make. Like, OK, so if this is when I started, this is when I finished the chapter, just to make sure that like I could set an update schedule that would actually reflect the pace at which I could make the pages because my intent is to basically be making pages and posting them at roughly the same rate, but I want to have at least like a minimum of three to six months in between my current pages and whatever's up on the website.

10:33.43

Varethane

And for a while, I was like a good year and a half ahead of what was up on the website. It's gotten a bit lower since then. And it kind of fluctuates a bit. I did actually reduce Wychwood’s update schedule to once a week. It started, I think when I launched, it was twice a week.

10:50.73

Varethane

And I've reduced it a bit just because life has gotten crazy. So but that's allowed me to keep my buffer pretty healthy. And another nice side benefit is that having all these pages stored up means that I can use them as Patreon rewards because people can read significantly farther ahead if they pledge to me, basically. So I like having them around for that.

11:17.07

Varethane

It's like, by the way, there's a lot more story.

11:19.78

Delphina

Yes, that's so smart, because I feel like it does both things, right? It gives you the buffer, but then it gives you like, okay, if you really want to read ahead, if you really want to, like, here's the tier where you can pledge to make that happen. And I feel like of the Patreons I hear about for webcomic artists,

11:40.00

Delphina

that early page tier is the one that that really is engaging to readers too. So like, it's good for everybody basically kind of having that sort of buffer. And I think too, just in terms of like,

11:57.27

Delphina

starting your comic because it's interesting because you've had Chirault and you had Wychwood and you were able to take a little time to figure out what you want to do with Wychwood and you had that experience of Chirault to build on. I do feel like the storage of pages that you have before you launch, that is sort of a buffer, but it's not quite the same thing.

12:22.85

Delphina

If you're If you're coming in cold and you're still building a readership and stuff, I feel like that burst of pages or whatever you start out with isn't necessarily the same thing as a buffer, but it'll help you for sure just figure things out. I think that's the thing for me too, thinking about my buffer experiences,

12:45.99

Delphina

is that I want space to figure things out. To Thane's point, I want space to figure out the writing. And also if I want to put a little extra oomph, a little extra time into any one page, I'll feel like I have the space to do that instead of, well, the deadline is right now.

13:03.25

Delphina

But I do feel like I am maybe slightly more deadline driven than you all because you're talking about year and a half buffers, year buffers. Like I can do a month.

13:15.20

Delphina

I have a month of buffer at any given time. That's good for me. And right now I don't even have that. So I am kind of feeling the pain and the stress of that is not good.

13:27.22

Delphina

But I am very deadline driven and I need to know that like, okay, there is some urgency here or else I’m going to find other things to do with my time. I’m a busy person. And so, so I do like having a slightly smaller buffer. I feel like that works okay for me.

13:49.02

Delphina

And it also keeps me connected with I guess what the community is experiencing or what my readers are focusing on, like I can, I can kind of be in the same place as opposed to mentally having moved on from that section of the story like a year ago.

14:10.49

Delphina

So I don't know. I think it's a little more fun, possibly a little more stressful, but I do feel like I do need at least a month and that does help with Patreon rewards. It helps with keeping things on track and being able to make edits and, the couple times where I've run out of buffer and I've just been doing it week to week have just been, yeah, you definitely get burned out very fast, especially when you get to the middle parts of your story where things are coming together and you have to figure things out. You don't want to be contradicting stuff that you did at the beginning.

14:52.99

Delphina

It's just, I feel like it gets harder the further in you go with a long form story. And that just makes the buffer all the more critical. With that, I’m just gonna ask what other kinds of benefits does a buffer have for you? Are there any drawbacks that people would have with having a buffer that you would warn people about?

15:22.50

Delphina

I'll throw it to you, Krispy.

15:24.75

Krispy

Definitely that point that you made about being mentally away from the story. So Ghost Junk Sickness is done as this episode has been recorded. I finished it with Space last year, actually. And it's still being updated to the site.

15:44.21

Krispy

it's actually, the day that it's being recorded now is the final chapter is being uploaded, I think it's about 100 pages. Regardless, like you know, there's still a ways to go but I’m finished it, so it's done for me but it's not done for a lot of readers who read it for free on the website. So I catch myself being like, “Oh right, that's happening.

16:11.47

Krispy

Oh, right, that's happening there. Oh, that's interesting.” And I guess not being as engaged in the moment. I think the other thing that kind of is a little different for me in this case, though, is the fact that we're doing two comics at the same time.

16:28.20

Krispy

So I think it's kind of hard to be in the same moment for both of them unless we want to risk a little bit more burnout being that close in page uploads. So I think that we have to be way much more strategic about the stuff that we produce and the pace that we do it in. Because I personally have had, you know, very rough time in the last couple of years.

16:55.66

Krispy

And that buffer has absolutely saved my biscuits. You know, there were times where I couldn't draw for a while because of, you know, life happening.

17:06.83

Krispy

And having that buffer was a godsend. Like it helped so, so much and it didn't feel bad. And one of the things that I feel like Space and I can openly brag about is the fact that we've never, ever missed an update from Ghost Junk Sickness in the 10 plus years that it's being uploaded to the site.

17:25.81

Krispy

And, you know, I think buffers and, you know, definitely the work ethic for that. And that's, it's just why we're always kind of working ahead. And I guess that's a little like, hmm, we're always thinking of, well, something bad might happen.

17:41.55

Krispy

And that's kind of kept us paranoid to continue. But, you know, I’m fond of it. It's something that's helped us as far as, you know, creating other stories, because that's our biggest thing is that we don't want to just be making one webcomic, we have a lot of comic ideas. And,

18:00.98

Krispy

buffers are really great to kind of balance that creative stuff because we've talked about this in other episodes where sometimes you'll have like the brain space for certain steps in creating, because obviously comics, lot of work. You have like the writing stage, the drawing stage, thumbnail stage, you have all these stages but they require different kind of brain waves yeah

18:24.81

Delphina

Energies, yeah.

18:25.93

Krispy

Yeah, to get into it. And I find that having that buffer there, it helps me focus on what I have space for that day. And I don't feel like, okay, I have to get the inking done this day because literally I need pages by tomorrow. Like we've never run into that. We used to in our old days.

18:45.67

Krispy

And I could say this is like a comic veteran. We've been there where it was like, you know, we used to do the pages a week. And then upload them as I go. And it was fun.

18:57.43

Krispy

It was very fun. Because you are pretty engaged. And I guess like the other drawback is the fact that, like,

19:06.41

Krispy

This is a Krispy personal thing. And I guess like, you know, a bit of an acknowledgement to what's going on in the larger kind of media aspect as far as TV shows and stuff like that, where they don't want the readers to kind of guess what's going on. They have their pulse on the reactions too much. And sometimes I find that creators do that too much where they're paying too much attention. They're like, oh, people guess that, I have to write it out or something like that.

19:33.01

Krispy

That brings me no joy. I’m just like, my comic, our story is the way that it is because it is. Unless there's something in there that's like, wow, that was completely dumb and it makes no sense or whatever. Like, obviously that's going to get fixed because webcomics are amazing and that can happen.

19:50.74

Krispy

But, you know, I want the true intent of the story from us to get to the readers without those changes while seeing them live react.

20:01.90

Krispy

So that's something that we don't take part in just because we do the buffer and we work very, very far ahead. But I don't know if that's a detriment. I don't know. How do you feel about that?

20:13.28

Delphina

I don't know. It's like, because I know there are specific comic formats that like, I don't know if Homestuck started that way. But the project that he did before Homestuck was like Problem Sleuth.

20:25.32

Delphina

And that was reader submitted questions or directions.

20:28.01

Krispy

hmm.

20:30.46

Delphina

So they actually did have to wait until they got a reader response to go in a certain direction. And yeah, that feels like a type of animal that would be hard to maintain the energy for

20:46.41

Delphina

over a longer period of time. It feels like it would be a fun one shot or like a smaller project. But the energy investments to that degree might be tricky.

20:59.81

Delphina

And then if you're not doing that kind of story at all, if you're just doing a normal thing and you're like but wait what if the readers like this character and I need to put more of him in because they're the ones that people are reacting to, I think that's a quick way to lose your vision and like kind of doubt yourself and your direction and maybe lead you down the path of following the squeakiest wheel because it's getting the grease, right?

21:30.77

Delphina

So yeah, even though you might have 100 silent readers who really wanted to read what you were already doing, maybe the one guy who was loud in the comments is getting more attention and you're misinterpreting that as the direction that everybody wanted you to go in.

21:54.59

Krispy

Exactly, exactly. I think about it like that. It’s something that, it kept me humble creating because it's just like, you know, I think it's a lonely time, most of the time, creating comics. There's always that discussion of like, I wish my comic had more comments and stuff like that.

22:07.50

Krispy

So if you do like someone's comic... definitely tell them, hey, it's pretty cool. I like what you're doing or whatever. But with that, it's also good to remind yourself that you know at the end of the day, you've got to do it for you.

22:21.29

Krispy

And you know what is your vision? What are you trying to say? And you can get lost in the sauce of like, following the squeaky wheels and changing updates to kind of match that so, I don't know. I don't know if I’m personally missing out because sometimes you can get a lot of traction from that when you're engaging directly with the readers and being like I’m gonna add this silly guy and he's gonna be such a big part because you guys like this silly guy or I don't know, you know, I’m just gonna go on this tangent, we're gonna pause the main story because, you know, you liked the silly guy or something. I don't know. And some readers will be really into that. Me, not so much.

23:04.52

Varethane

It's funny because this whole thing, to go to go on even more of a tangent and sound a bit of a nerd alert, it reminds me of what happens in a lot of manga productions where the publishers will put out polls at the end of every major story arc to be like, who's your favorite character?

23:20.43

Varethane

And like there's rules in, I’m talking like Shonen anime specifically, like stuff for Shonen Jump. The contracts with the artists stipulate that they've got to introduce this many new characters in each of the arcs.

23:34.74

Varethane

And then at the end of the arc, they'll determine who was the favorite of the new character. And that one's gonna get to stick around because they want to expand their roster and have more stuff to make merchandise of.

23:45.57

Varethane

And so if you see those at the end of some books, like volumes of manga, there'll be artwork drawn, like here's the fan poll, like here's all the rankings of the different characters, like which one's number one? Are there any like, you know, which one is your favorite?

24:02.33

Varethane

They do this whole poll system.

24:06.23

Delphina

Yeah, it's very rooted in capitalism and very like, I don't know, man, I don't—webcomics are free. We gotta keep this free. We gotta keep people like having their own vision. I think that's important. But yeah, buffers.

24:22.98

Varethane

Buffers, right.

24:24.16

Delphina

Yeah. What do you think about buffers, Thane? What benefits and drawbacks do you see in buffers?

24:32.20

Varethane

Uh, well, I think I mentioned earlier the thing about Patreon where having the buffer lets me kind of leverage it as like a reward, because it's not going to go up on my website all at once, but people can still read it.

24:45.40

Varethane

And I really like, I have a little discord section where people can like, like the people who are in that tier can talk. And when I post a new chapter, it's really neat seeing like the theories and speculation and stuff like that, like ahead of time and just be like, oh, see.

25:02.75

Varethane

And it gives me a little bit of an advanced kind of notice on like, okay, like how are things reading? Like what are the things that confuse people? While I was in those early stages, I’m doing a bit less of it now just because there's now so much comic that asking for detailed feedback is, it's a lot to expect of people at this point. So I don't do it as much.

25:25.89

Varethane

But in the early chapters, part of why I was really trying to work ahead very far was so that I could share those chapters with people and have them like read through it and just kind of let me know like where things are maybe not reading or like if things are confusing, just basically have a critique and feedback thing available ahead of time before I put it all up on the website. And it starts feeling like it's too late to edit, even though I know it's not actually too late to edit.

25:56.67

Varethane

When you do make major changes to something already live, it definitely has a different kind of, you sort of have to warn people like, by the way, this thing that you read, it's a little different now. So keep an eye out.

26:08.24

Varethane

So being able to kind of work out those things and make revisions to the story, there have been several times where I had a big buffer built up and I was working on more pages and then I changed something in a future scene or adjusted my outline, or I looked back at and at an older scene and I was like, you know, something about this is bothering me. I think I need to change things. It's like not exciting enough, or it's confusing, or like I just, I could add some juice.

26:36.90

Varethane

And I would go in to, and my buffer, like pages, a scene that was completely finished or could be completely finished, but I just want to make it better. And I could totally edit that.

26:48.77

Varethane

And I don't have to worry about what it's going to look like, on the website, re-uploading pages and then like making it a whole thing. Like “it's changed by the way.” So the only people who see that sort of thing now are my patrons.

27:03.19

Varethane

And one other point where I really, like my buffer was like, it served a very specific practical purpose was the finale of Chirault. I had been working on...

27:19.04

Varethane

Like there was a period where pages got really hard and I was doing them like, you know, within a couple days. And then I, once I started planning for kind of that final, like the conclusion of the series and I knew I was going to print it,

27:32.27

Varethane

and one of the things that I did deliberately was I tried to push my buffer ahead by at least like a month or so. I think it was more like two months,

27:45.07

Varethane

so that I could have enough pages to keep updating the website while I was doing the Kickstarter for the final book. And I wanted to launch the Kickstarter after the book was basically done.

27:58.09

Varethane

So I needed to have all the pages finished before I launched that. And the buffer made sure that I could do that. I didn't want to be running a Kickstarter while my comic was not actually updating because that's where it's one of the main places where people find the campaign in the first place.

28:15.35

Varethane

So if that was actually stopped and not updating at all, I feel like I would have lost touch with a lot of readers. And to kind of go into the other side of things, like the drawbacks, what Delphie was saying earlier about needing that deadline and the immediacy, I feel like when I have a long buffer, my brain definitely also works that way. So I have to kind of trick myself and be like,

28:42.75

Varethane

okay, well, it's not going to go up on the website for like, you know, a few months to a year. But like, I do want to update, I want to keep updating like for Patreon, I try to find ways of keeping myself going, but definitely the urgency of knowing that it needs to be like the actual for real for real hard deadline is so far away.

29:08.57

Varethane

It definitely has made my production rate slow down a bit now that I’m out of that initial kind of early project honeymoon phase where all the energy was keeping me going. So it's something that I've been, that I, I have been thinking about and I’m

29:26.89

Varethane

debating increasing my update pace to twice a week just to get like, I don't know, sort of force myself to grapple with that a little sooner.

29:38.21

Varethane

I feel like the once-a-week is nice and easy. I could definitely keep that up. There's lots of once a week webcomics, but I really want to go back to kind of twice a week. And I feel like at a certain point, that's going to start pushing me to make the, to step up the production again.

29:57.31

Delphina

Yeah, I’m in the same place. Like I went to once a week, but I think my story reads better at twice a week. And I’m just like, oh, gosh, I got to build it back up. I got to figure out a way to get my buffer back so I can have that space. And I guess that's just kind of leads me into my last thing. Like, what's your advice to someone who's trying to make a healthy buffer of pages,

30:24.30

Delphina

but they've lost it for some reason, life happened or whatever or they never had it in the first place and for one reason or another they can't seem to manage to keep it going? What do you do?

30:39.63

Krispy

Dun, dun, dun. That's hard. That's a hard question to ask or answer because everybody works different, right? Like, you know, Thane talking about having that honeymoon energy that keeps you going and making a lot of the comics really fast. Like I see that so much in the webcomic community. I mean, like I’m people, I've done that. Like, you know, when you're starting a new project you're like, let's go. It definitely helps.

31:04.68

Krispy

But, you know, gauging for the long kind of run, It's difficult. As far as what we do, a lot of planning helps with the way that I work with Space.

31:19.69

Krispy

Because we're able to gauge the length and the work required to pull off the stories that we want to do. Like this doesn't stop like rewrites or additional scenes that we're putting into the story either. Like just because we're so far ahead, it doesn't mean that we're never going to touch anything that we've created.

31:37.71

Krispy

This doesn't mean that we're going to stop anything, like touching any of the work that we've uploaded or anything like that. but it does mean that, you know, we're not as connected to a lot of things,

31:53.61

Krispy

as far as you know engaging with the readers, but building that up and keeping it going, I’m gonna have to say this but a lot of it comes to that self kind of discipline that you need to make comics happen, and figuring out what do you like about your process and what do you not like about your process. I think I said this in a previous episode already but if you do not like specifically this one part of comics, you don't have to do it. If you hate inking, you don't have to ink your comic. I’m giving you permission to throw that step out. You do not have to ink your comic. If you absolutely hate that step, I don't know why you're inking

32:37.59

Krispy

or anything like that. And that'll help, you know, get the process done a little bit easier and pave that way to make more buffers. I think it's just figuring it out and seeing if comics and that process actually works for you too. A lot of it is figuring it out. It took us two years to figure out...

33:01.41

Krispy

two to four years actually, it was a long time to figure out what actually works while we were creating Ghost Junk Sickness, and that just made us more powerful making the other comics as we go along. Just, you know, understanding how we create how fast we do it. And I don't like talking about speed because I don't like giving that advice to people is that you have to be fast or anything like that. I just, I want people who listen to this episode to walk away knowing that a large part of creating comics is how you engage with creating comics. It's just how you engage with the process of all of these steps.

33:44.66

Krispy

And if it works for you, if it doesn't, how do you work around it? How do you cut it out? And, you know, it won't make it as daunting because I see that a lot. I see that a lot of like, ugh, I’m in the thumbnail stage or ugh, I have to write. And I’m just, why are you beating yourself up so much with this? It sounds miserable.

34:08.34

Delphina

Yeah, I totally hear what you're saying about like, well, okay, I, you know, I don't have, like, maybe there's a way to not ink, but like, I have to ink because it looks better that way.

34:21.41

Delphina

And like, there is something to be said about clarity, you want to be able to make sure your art is clear.

34:26.98

Delphina

And easy to read. And if skipping a step is going to compromise that, like, that would be something I would be reluctant to do. But there are so many options to be able to work around that. There are so many ways

34:43.81

Delphina

to change your process and be able to say okay I can find a way to be clear without this step. This actually might be a little more exciting for me so I’m gonna just try some things, I’m gonna do some experiments, take some time, and try to make my page in a different way and see what happens. And you never know what you're gonna discover that way, and you might

35:09.03

Delphina

find your most favorite process in the world is something completely different from what you thought you needed to do. So I think that's like, that's so key to be able to like, figure out your process and then make it enjoyable. Because to your point, it's not about speed.

35:27.64

Delphina

It's about like, whether or not it feels like a slog, because you will drag your feet if it feels like a slog. But if it doesn't, you won't.

35:34.59

Krispy

Yeah.

35:37.55

Delphina

It's not about the amount of time. It's about how you're feeling.

35:41.08

Krispy

Yeah. And like you said before, it's a free thing. It is, you know, we're doing this with our free time. And I think that it's just, you just got to enjoy it. And I think understanding that process and then I guess advice for me specifically that worked is dividing it up into what works for the brain

36:04.73

Krispy

during those times, so it's just like, okay, I know that I’m going to go into writing mode and I’m going to bring up things that help me write I’m going to get my playlists out, I’m going to go and do this that and the other thing, and now I’m in the zone, and I’m not going into other steps until this zone is complete, and now that this is done I’m going on to the next step. So it's at this nice assembly line, that's how it works for us anyway.

36:29.21

Varethane

I think that's a pretty good strategy. And that's probably the main thing that I feel like all the major points have kind of been covered already. But like, I'll just kind of lend a note of support to some of these .

36:41.64

Krispy

Take her away.

36:50.34

Varethane

Because like, yeah, my, well, like that whole thing about breaking it down into a different process, like with Chirault, I would do a lot of like just one page at a time. All right, I’m going to draw this page and I'll finish it and then I'll draw the next page and then I'll finish it. And that becomes a bit of a staccato way of working. So I’m trying to, a lot of people will have different methods of creating that gel

37:07.75

Varethane

better or worse for them. And figuring out what kind of creator you are, because some people are great at doing that kind of one page at a time thing but I definitely find that I like to get into the zone of the part of the process that I’m in, and with Wychwood I formalized it a lot more. I was paying a lot more attention to like where each chapter would begin and end.

37:30.38

Varethane

And I would try to thumbnail out the whole thing before I moved on to kind of the next step of the inks. And then I would try to like, or sorry, the sketch. And then I'd try to sketch the whole thing before I moved on to the inks and so on.

37:42.42

Varethane

Depending on the length of the chapter, sometimes this process starts to break down a bit because the early chapters were all like, you know, 20, sorry, 30, 30-ish, thirty to forty pages long which is pretty reasonable But when I started hitting chapters that went like 60 pages, it's like if I thumbnail this whole thing, I’m just going to be doing only thumbnails for forever.

38:03.34

Varethane

And I do like a bit of variation in the process. And if too much time goes by in between those phases, it can actually start to kind of hurt like my personal attachment, not attachment, but like my immersion, I guess, in it. Because if I’m outlining, like that part is so much fun. It's like, all it's where all the brainstorming happens and all the like, yeah, I’m telling a story.

38:29.42

Varethane

And scripting is similar. But if I finish up a script, and then I start doing the thumbnails, and then I start doing the sketching, and I start doing the inks, and then I do all the like, you know, flat colors and the shading and the effects and the lettering.

38:42.85

Varethane

And I only go back to like scripting or outlining or those parts of the process after several months have gone by, I will have forgotten a lot of the stuff that was in there and like what that kind of overall story flow is.

38:56.39

Varethane

And it'll take a lot more time to kind of jump back in and re-immerse myself in all that. I have to reread like all the notes that I had in the past and like get myself caught up. So keeping the batches a little smaller, more recently, I've been finding, has been helping to keep me apprised of sort of where things are going, like what's happening right now, where I am in the story. Because if I, with a 60 page chapter, like it's going to take a good few months for that whole thing to be finished. And I don't want to totally forget everything else that I had planned and like all the emotions that I was feeling while I was writing.

39:35.11

Varethane

I like to try to keep those as kind of close to the surface as I can. So figuring out like if you like doing batches, the size of batch definitely makes a difference in how that process can look.

39:49.71

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like there's a lot to be said for just being able to try things one way, try things another way, and then compare and contrast, like what parts of this did I like? What parts of this did I hate?

40:05.85

Delphina

And formulate your process from there.

40:11.07

Varethane

One thing that I guess I also want to say about that whole like advice for trying to keep a buffer going is be careful about putting it on break for really long periods of time often.

40:27.44

Varethane

Sometimes it can't be helped because like every delay or slowdown might have a totally different reason. It could be that something is happening in your life and you just can't make comics right now. And like that's okay. Sometimes you just have to wait that out and then kind of come back to things when you're actually free.

40:45.86

Varethane

If it's a matter of burnout or like energy levels fluctuating, then looking at potentially the reasons why that might be happening if maybe the pace is too fast and you need to slow it down.

41:00.10

Varethane

All of these things, there's... there's different strategies you can do. You can look at your process. But if you put the whole thing on like a hiatus a bunch of times in a row, it gets harder and harder every time to kind of get back on the horse afterwards.

41:17.06

Varethane

And trying to, like, even if the comic itself is not updating, like it's a break in that sense. If you don't keep some sort of habit of creation going in the background, it's going to get increasingly difficult to return to it because webcomics are really, they're, they're a marathon.

41:38.73

Varethane

And getting momentum is like, it's pretty important to keep the whole thing going for a long term kind of project.

41:49.03

Delphina

Yeah, that's true. I know a lot of people take breaks between chapters. I know I’m one of them. And I took a longer break than normal this year because I started a new job and things were very busy for me.

42:01.13

Delphina

And that momentum, trying to get that back after like... four or five months of not updating and not thinking about the comic, like that's a lot. So there's so much of this that's just boiling down to like, know your process, know where your energy is, know what you can do on a consistent basis at this time in your life. All right.

42:29.81

Delphina

And with that, I think we're pretty good. So yeah, just keep going with your buffer. Keep experimenting with different things and try to do the best thing that's best for your mental health, I guess, is what it boils down to.

42:43.56

Delphina

Anyway, I've been Delphina and you can find my webcomic Sombulus at sombulus.com.

42:52.19

Krispy

And I’m Krispy. You can find my works at ghostjunkstickness.com lunarblight.com.

42:59.77

Varethane

And I’m Varethane, and you can find my webcomics at chirault.sevensmith.net and Wychwoodcomic.com.

43:07.84

Krispy

Time to get buff!

43:10.08

Delphina

Baaaaa-fer!

43:11.10

Varethane

Err.

43:12.89

Krispy

Buff, buff, buff.

43:13.63

Varethane

More buff.

43:14.18

Krispy

I’m going to go work out.