John Allison

July 25th, 2012 at 4:24PM

futurechoco asked: Your work is one of the most inspiring comics I've been reading recently. I really like your constant update and improvement, each page is better than the previous one. So my questions are, how's more or less a work day(and week) for you? How do you plan a storyline?

Here is the process by which I work on a story and the individual pages within:

I start planning the story while I am working on the previous one. I jot down any ideas I have for later. The important thing is to have a long run at it. The longer I have to think about a story, the more connections my mind will suggest.

A week or so before I start work on the story properly, I write down and try to organise as many ideas as I have. I like to have a strong start, a notion of some of the subplots I can address, any new characters (as I will have to design them) and a reasonable idea of how the story will end, so I don’t wind up getting into trouble.

I try to plot out page by page what happens in the first third of a 100 page story. The second and third parts can be vaguer. It takes me six months to finish a story so there is plenty of time to work on those.

I write with pencil and paper away from the internet. I find nothing more distracting than the computer. I usually write 4-6 comics at a time. This probably takes a couple of hours, but I’ve done 4 in 45 minutes before. I like to clean the kitchen while I am writing, so if I get stuck I can immediately focus elsewhere rather than getting frustrated.

I type out all my dialogue for a week, print the balloons out 2-up on A4 paper, and rough out a week’s worth of comics at a time. My thumbnails are loose but detailed. Sometimes I will have some visual notes from my dialogue writing session to base these on, sometimes not.

I try to do a page a day, 4 or 5 days a week. They take 3-4 hours each, depending how detailed they are. I pencil and ink using a Cintiq in Manga Studio, colour in Photoshop, and letter in Adobe Illustrator.

I try to start work at 9.30 and finish at 5. Working at the computer all day hurts my eyes, it is concentrated and very intense to sit and work for 3 hours in front of two huge monitors, but I have to fit in freelance work, bits of shipping, and day to day admin, so it works best for me that way. I hope this answers your question.