How Long Does it Take to Draw a Comic Book Page?

It takes what it takes, bro, but we can measure that.

Answering the age old question "How long does it take to draw a page of comic art?" 

You're looking at a spread of a 30 day time sheet showing the time cost of individual pages of comic art. This was from a couple of years ago, and I blanked out some of the assignment numbers because the books hadn’t come out yet (this article was originally written for my Patreon).

In days gone by, I (usually) only tracked my general work hours. Some time later, I began recording my work hours by assignment. But about four years ago, I began diligently recording work hours page by page using the Rescue Time app.

I tried to stick to an eight hour day for awhile, but it is impossible for a working cartoonist to work only 8 hours per day.

If you are producing a monthly comic, you will not complete it in 8 hours per day per month, even working 7 days a week, unless you are working in a very simple style. Which I almost never do.

Items marked in red indicate the complete time cost of a single page from start to finish. Time costs are for penciled AND inked pages entire, not for just a page of pencils. So, the time cost for Wonder Woman page 5 is 7 hours 48 minutes pencils and inks completed.

On some of those pages you might be thinking, "Wow! Only 5 hours 9 minutes to draw an entire comic book page!"

However, keep in mind that this is self reporting. While my computer tracks whatever I do while I'm using a program, I have to enter all my offline work manually. I tend to under report. These are the hours I recorded. And that was a farily simple page.

If it had been a page of the Amazons going to war, you can double or triple that time cost.

Time cost would also not include writing the script, researching the material, or doing the thumbnails for each page. Most of the time cost  of those tasks was recorded in a previous month or not recorded at all. Also, the time cost per page as shown here does not include digital work or production time. I have to clean up each page digitally, do pre-production process work, then upload it to a website. I estimate an extra hour per page minimum for all of the tasks outlined in this paragraph, after reviewing the computer's tracking of my Photoshop activity.

And still you think "Wow! Only 6 hours 9 minutes to draw an entire comic book page!"

But doing a 6 hour comic page requires an 8 hour day of work. Most days are 10-11 hour days of work, and I work seven days a week.

Here's a look at my schedule for one week.

I recorded nearly 46 hours of drawing/writing.

But I also show I spent nearly 2 hours per day on business tasks and about a half hour a day just on email. Approximately 1/2 of the business tasks/email are not directly related to my comic work: they can be banking, paying bills, etc. But there are times where I can spend as much as 10 hours a week just packing and shipping.

I am deliriously happy to show that I am down to almost nothing re: social networking. Social media has been eating me alive for years. For whatever reason, something cracked a few month's back, and I am so done with that shit.

Anyway, bottom line is, even with an easy page of comic art to do that only takes about 6 hours to draw, that means I worked an 8 hour day. A comic page that takes 8 hours means I worked a 10 hour day.

An 8 hour page of comic art requires a minimum of 9 hours including production time. Add 2 hours per day for business and administration tasks, and that's an 11 hour day. As you can see above, while a few pages were produced in only 6 hours of drawing time, most took 7 hours or more.

Complexity makes a big difference in time cost, obviously, but here's a look at why my long delayed space opera A Distant Soil takes so much longer to produce than an average comic. I didn't start trying to record time cost per page until September, and this shows I worked 47 hours on A Distant Soil pages.

In that 47 hours, I only worked on portions of 2 double page spreads: the equivalent of just under 4 pages.

8 hours of work on one of those pages must carry over from a previous month. Also tone sheets had not been applied and the final production work hasn't been done. That took another 10 hours.

65 hours divided by 4 pages is 16.25 hours per page. That's roughly the same time cost as Snow, Glass, Apples took per page of drawing. If I work an eight hour day, I have to work over 3 days just to draw one page.

Coloring comic book pages is more difficult to track. Despite the fact that my app Rescue Time follows my computer activity, it does not accurately track my time cost while using Photoshop.

Every time I pause, move to pick up a piece of reference, or even click somewhere else on the computer desktop, it stops recording my Photoshop time. I figure 30 minutes to 1 hour of labor cost should be added to each item.

So why would I bother with all this data?

Being realistic about time cost is essential for meeting deadlines and production goals, and until I started using the Rescue Time app, I've always been hazy about how long things really take. To make things even hazier, since I often change styles and process, sometimes I have no idea exactly how long working in this new style or process is going to go and how long it's going to take. I also used to try to record my work time on paper, but self reporting on paper is really dicey. While I'm sure I make mistakes using the app, I am also sure I'm coming pretty close to the truth.

I look at a project, how many pages it is, judge the complexity, and look at the number of days I have to do it. I know how many days I have, how many hours it's likely to take per day, and I try to hit that target. I know a more complicated comic page takes 17 hours, and an easy one takes 6. If I have 10 days to draw it, I can do the math.

I still screw the pooch, I still underestimate. A lot.

The best part of this analysis is that in my head, comic pages always take DAYS of labor. But when I see it in HOURS of labor, the task seems less daunting.

Because I work on pages in bits and pieces, setting them aside to work on other pages while I figure something out, the DAYS or WEEKS of labor cost feels daunting and almost insurmountable. Wow, I worked on that page for a whole month!

But in reality, I worked on that page for 15 hours. I worked on other things in that time frame.

Even the most difficult page can be chunked down and conquered.

While it is true that I work on many pieces over a long period of time, in reality I'm picking at them over a long period of time.

Since I started recording hours per page instead of hours per assignment, I feel more positive about my abilities to face tough assignments and time constraints.

While an 8 hour day is never going to happen for me, if I consider my day as five 2 hour time blocks with breaks throughout the day, that feels very do-able. I can get lunch, take a walk, get some exercise.

Hope this is look at process is helpful to you.