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Sleep deprivation = cheaper than drugs
17 years ago
General
I just stayed up 44 hours straight in order to finish my decidedly underwhelming comic.
Man, once I hit that 36 hour mark, it was smooth sailing. I was alert and on task, once the cognizant part of my brain closed for business and I became a brainstem.
Unfortunately, I also became paranoid. I thought that there was an earthquake every five minutes, saw things moving which I'm pretty sure were not actually moving, and thought I saw bugs several times when I did not. I don't know what kind of trade off that is.
After being awake for 44+ hours straight, I got three hours of sleep and fell asleep twice on the way to work while at stoplights. I had to bite myself a lot to keep from falling asleep while driving. I'm a leeetle worried about getting home tonight, but that's why I have coffee, right?
Right.
Anyway, I'm really glad I did this comic, regardless of how it ultimately worked out. I had a lot of positive experiences and now I have a more realistic idea of how quickly I work. Mainly, that I work at the pace of a snail. I'd like to do something about that, so I'll be trying out some other styles as well as generally drawing a lot more.
Next paycheck, I'm going to get myself a nice lightbox and just ink this shit from now on, because erasing pencil on pencil is ass and takes longer than just inking over it and erasing the pencil. With a lightbox, I can skip the whole pencil erasing part altogether.
I also got to work out pacing and choreographing a fight sequence, tried to use perspective and foreshortening when drawing people, got some use out of my art manikins for reference, and repeatedly drew the same characters over and over again, resulting in a more consistent drawing. My boyfriend said that my OC is more consistently looking like herself these days. That's pretty good - I've always been bad with consistency.
I do get hung up in details, though, and sometimes that takes away from what I'm trying to accomplish with a drawing overall. Two people who don't know each other gave me the same feedback in one day about my drawings looking like manikins or pages out of a Sears catalog. You can't ever tell anything about them - they're just posed and boring.
It's hard for me to stylize because I'm so fond of accuracy and realism (ya, even drawing mutant turtles), but I gotta try to do it. So I'm going to make a bunch of stuff that's going to suck for a while, because I'm going to try to get used to a bunch of things that are out of my comfort zone when drawing. Bear with me.
Man, once I hit that 36 hour mark, it was smooth sailing. I was alert and on task, once the cognizant part of my brain closed for business and I became a brainstem.
Unfortunately, I also became paranoid. I thought that there was an earthquake every five minutes, saw things moving which I'm pretty sure were not actually moving, and thought I saw bugs several times when I did not. I don't know what kind of trade off that is.
After being awake for 44+ hours straight, I got three hours of sleep and fell asleep twice on the way to work while at stoplights. I had to bite myself a lot to keep from falling asleep while driving. I'm a leeetle worried about getting home tonight, but that's why I have coffee, right?
Right.
Anyway, I'm really glad I did this comic, regardless of how it ultimately worked out. I had a lot of positive experiences and now I have a more realistic idea of how quickly I work. Mainly, that I work at the pace of a snail. I'd like to do something about that, so I'll be trying out some other styles as well as generally drawing a lot more.
Next paycheck, I'm going to get myself a nice lightbox and just ink this shit from now on, because erasing pencil on pencil is ass and takes longer than just inking over it and erasing the pencil. With a lightbox, I can skip the whole pencil erasing part altogether.
I also got to work out pacing and choreographing a fight sequence, tried to use perspective and foreshortening when drawing people, got some use out of my art manikins for reference, and repeatedly drew the same characters over and over again, resulting in a more consistent drawing. My boyfriend said that my OC is more consistently looking like herself these days. That's pretty good - I've always been bad with consistency.
I do get hung up in details, though, and sometimes that takes away from what I'm trying to accomplish with a drawing overall. Two people who don't know each other gave me the same feedback in one day about my drawings looking like manikins or pages out of a Sears catalog. You can't ever tell anything about them - they're just posed and boring.
It's hard for me to stylize because I'm so fond of accuracy and realism (ya, even drawing mutant turtles), but I gotta try to do it. So I'm going to make a bunch of stuff that's going to suck for a while, because I'm going to try to get used to a bunch of things that are out of my comfort zone when drawing. Bear with me.
I reach that state a lot, I have insomnia :)
An see if you can get someone to drive you home.. maybe.. yea.
I am an insomniac, I can function really well on little sleep, but I feel like shit all the time.
Meh.
I don't think I've ever stayed up quite that long before, but by the time I went to bed this morning, I was pretty sure that I would be able to go another 12 hours without sleep. I almost did it, just to see if I could, but I started worrying about if i would die or pass out while driving and get into an accident or something, and I went to bed:)