One thing most folks who aren’t cartoonists probably don’t consider much is the sheer mass of the many, many pages of finished artwork cartoonists wind up with. I’ve got tons of pages lying around my studio, and I only manage to produce a book every few years. I can’t imagine what artists who, say, pencil a monthly book for DC do with all this stuff. Out of curiosity, I thought I’d get some “stats” on the now-fully penciled pages (yay!) for Amelia: This Broad Ocean, my current project (with Jason Lutes and Sarah Stewart Taylor, of course–doing layouts and writing, respectively). So here’s the completed heap:
The pages on the bottom there that are sticking out are two-page spreads that I’ve done on single sheets of 23″ x 29″ sheets of bristol. (The other single-page art is on the same sheets of bristol, but cut in half.) Out of curiosity, I decided to weigh the whole lot. Although the stack was far more than my little postal scale could handle, I loaded them on there in smaller stacks and it looks like they weigh in at just under ten pounds. Similarly, it looks like the stack’s measuring in at just under an inch and a half:
I’m not actually even sure how many pages there are at this point, since the numbering is somewhat off, owing to a number of scenes being inserted later between previously existing pages. Like the other Hyperion GNs, I think this one will be 80 pages total, but that includes various non-art elements like title pages and study material in the back. My guess is maybe 70 pages or artwork total.
I’m also not really sure why I’ve bothered to weigh and measure these pages… Maybe it’s just borne of lugging pages for sale around to conventions, or having to find places to store this stuff in my studio. Or maybe I’m just hoping that I’m making good progress toward doing my two thousand pages of bad art that, according to Dave Sim, I need to get out of the way before I start producing anything good.
3 comments
Ten pounds of art is pretty impressive. I wonder how much the two thousand pages of bad art will wind up weighing?
Out of curiosity, do you ever sell your pages or original art?
ah, the volume I failed to take into consideration.
I wonder if the Pareto principle applies to art—
furthermore, I wonder if it applies to music and how many bad songs it takes to get to the good ones–do I need to have 2000 bad perfomances to get a good one, or can I count rehearsals? (2000 bad takes in recording session could get expensive)!
Whatever, art or music, there is always work to do before time runs out, and I guess that’s the point of your post. :) I’m glad you measured and weighed your art (as one of those people who aren’t cartoonists), so I could get a sense of how much drawing goes into getting the published products you do.