Artist Notes 10/23/2018: Happy Monday guys! Hope everyone had an awesome week! 😀

I made it though an ENTIRE audio book while working on… mostly just this page… Actually, it went through a few commutes and dog walks, but really, I got through the whole book in a couple days and honestly most of it was while working on this page. (The book, if anyone is wondering, was An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green and it was a really impressive critique on the state of media, and got me listening to Queen for every moment that I listened to something that wasn’t the book.) That makes me feel like this page took a lot longer than it should have? The book was only 9 hours, but still. Is that a long time? I have no idea. I really make an effort not to cut corners working on pages of MNM so I feel like pages have only taken me longer as I get deeper into the comic. And to be clear, it’s not that I don’t cut corners because I’m not lazy, I totally am, but I learned that when it comes to compiling a physical book, not cutting corners is actually a huge efficiency boost down the line. I used to “patch” pages if I wanted to make a revision, literally I’d slap down a chunk of white and just work on top of it, which led to a disorganized mess of layers that aren’t a problem if uploading the page online is the last step but booooy did I hate myself when I was doing CMYK color corrections before going to print, everything was a mess…

Actually, I wasn’t expecting to go here, but this leads me to a tip I have for lazy digital artists: Everyone says, I always hear people say to name your layers, and they’re totally right, but if I’m holding my tablet my laptop is usually a few feet away from me and I can’t be bothered to lean over and type every time I need a new layer (my finished pages often up upwards of 50 layers, but again, it’s in the name of making things easier for myself down the line, I’m not totally insane…) SO here’s how I handle that: I have a blank page file that I save new copies of for every new page, not an uncommon practice, BUT I have mine pre loaded with many many folders and a few per-named layers. So all the colors associated with each character and the background are in their own named folders, and I can toss in as many layers as I want unnamed but at least they’re in organized sections that are already there waiting for me so I basically never have to touch my keyboard. 🙂 SO: If you’re awful like me and don’t name your layers, NAME YOUR FOLDERS. 😀

That might be hyper specific to my process but maybe it’ll help someone. I didn’t do it until we were going to print and it has saved me a tremendous amount of time and hassle since then. 🙂 So there you go. Positively enabling laziness with organization. 🙂