NERDINESS OF 2011 ASSESSED

In July 2007 I counted how many pages and panels of comics I had drawn in my life. In December 2009 I counted how much I had drawn since then, and pledged to double my yearly average and draw 87 pages until the next December 9th. One year ago I pledged to double that average again and draw 174 pages …

How did it go?!

Well, I allowed myself to fail and finished with just 101 pages. No, actually 102 — I forgot to count one, because I had lyme disease at the time that made me insane.
Weeell, that’s still better than the year before!!!!1

Number of pages and panels I have drawn since December 9th 2010:

Driftwood chapter 8 (from page 29): 23/159
Driftwood chapter 9: 29/182
Vad ska man göra? 5/15
Hourly Comics Day comic: 9/39
Time places things in place: 1/1
Slutty glasses: 1/1
Miss Buckwheat: 2/5
The Muggers: 32/69

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102 pages / 471 panels

(All-time total as of today: 720 / 3651)

In July 2007–December 2009 I drew by average 43,6 pages and 217,2 panels a year, with an average “panels per page” ratio of 5. Last year I doubled the yearly average of pages but not quite that of panels (average ratio 4,4). This year the “panels per page” ratio is once again a little higher – 4,6! *SO EXCITING*

* * *

Vad ska man göra? was originally a scribbly PMS comic of rage, which I redrew last year and submitted to the anthology Serier mot rasism (anti-racist comics).

Miss Buckwheat is a comic I started but never finished. I was going to submit it for an anthology, but then I realised that I didn’t have enough time before the deadline to let it become really interesting. Now it just seemed like a story I’d told five million times already … Maybe some day I’ll finish it. At the top of this page is a little teaser preview anyways. :3

* * *

Actually, when I started out this year, I had it all worked out that I would both finish Driftwood chapter 9 and draw a whole other book until the next December 9th. I don’t really have any other lame excuse for my failure in that, than that I had a very stressful spring and a very strange summer. (Though it was kind of interesting to have lyme disease and have it affect my brain and make me literally insane — more than usually, anyway …)

So, what’s the plan for the following year?

I think I have explored drawing crappy comics really fast quite enough now. But the last two years, setting concrete goals for myself, have taught me quite a lot about discipline and priorities in working on my comics.

So now I’m going to keep those lessons in mind, and move on to focusing a bit more on style. I’ve proven that I can draw crappy comics really fast and without effort, so now I’m going to challenge myself to draw good comics without spending forever on the pages.

I’ll still keep track of the number of pages I draw (but not here on the blog, since it’s a bit distracting). And maybe we’ll see one year from now how I did … :3