A few months ago, I was invited to contribute to a comics anthology, but just didn’t have the time (until recently) to work on a story.

This comic will be 12 pages long and I’ll be trying out a few techniques I haven’t used before. The trickiest part will be in drawing the detailed, graphically rich panels and pages, but simplifying the focal points and drawing the right kind of attention to everything. Is anyone even reading this?

Anyway, once I’d decided on what I was going to do and had made a rough draft, I realized that I was up against something with a weight I’m not accustomed to. It’s daunting, to tell you the truth. My TO DO LIST showed that I was supposed to draw the first page today, but after looking at the rough draft, and remembering how detailed I wanted it to be, I hesitated.

For a second, I thought about ditching the project altogether, because it’s a lot of work for a 12 page story, but decided that it’s a story I really like and want to tell, and I’ve already done all the rough drafts and editing—I owe it to the story to finish. Even though it was rough and took a good chunk of time, I know that because I just sat down and drew it, page 2 will be that much easier to work on. Plus, I know how enjoyable the next page will be—this one was a lot of fun to draw.

It’s not finished yet. I’m going to try something a little different for coloring the story, but the drawing is done, and that’s the hefty part of the page. 11 pages to go.