Hi Mike,
I am a comic artist who writes and draws his own comic, and I am trying to become faster at it.
I was wondering how you schedule your time on your comics like Madman? How do you balance all the research, writing, drawing, and all the work that goes into making a comic, and keep it coming out on schedule? What should I do to become faster?
Thanks,
Needham Comics

...for me at least i find that i am able to produce more if i just stop thinking about it so much and just do it.

OK.
Anybody else have any helpful ideas?
How can someone get a page done a day, as well as writing a comic, finding the reference and research, taking photo references, drawing it, and editing it, I would like to know how other professional artists tackle this and get their pages done. What does your schedule look like?

Honestly, Lurotiman's advice is the simplest and the best: you just have to do it. Like any skill, the more you do it, ideally the better you get at it. Practice and dedicated effort should refine your abilities. It's like asking how to run a faster race: you keep working out and running and hope to become a better athlete.

Everyone has different pacing, as well. If you're doing everything from start to finish, it's probably best to separate some of the tasks. Write a full script first, then go about drawing it. Hopefully whatever research you need to do can mostly get done while you're doing that, and then you can just draw when it comes time to draw. I think lots of folks save the lettering for after the art is completed, too. It really depends how you do it, there is no one process.

Thanks, thought it would be fun to here Mike's, and other artist's, responses.

Although I didn't ask the question I wanted to thank you for the advice and suggestions, Jamie. It's always a pleasure hearing the experience from a professional such as yourself. Likewise Lurotiman for your insight.

I like reading Jamie's comments as well. He tells the best stories.

I'm still eagerly awaiting him to wrap up "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".

I would like to echo this point as well. Sometimes thinking about it too much just gets you nowhere...DIVE IN! I know over the course of the past year I learned a LOT about methods/practices/processes that does or doesn't work for me. I think the learning curve can only really be achieved through trial and error. Don't be afreaid to jump in and try different things. If something doesn't work one time, oh well, if nothing else you learned not to do it again! =o)

Thanks for the responses, I thought this might be a fun and informative question. I once asked James Robinson what his method, time line, for getting a story done is. And he gave a very detailed time line. So I was curious what the drawing/writing process for others was.

James Robinson's writing process
22 page Comic
4-5 pages a day
A comic a week
3 comics a month (at least)

∙Outline (of whole story)
∙then page by page breakdown
∙then all the dialogue (like a play script)
∙then break script into panels
∙then panel description

The most panels you can use is about 9 panels a page,
Like Watchmen. And with those panels,
The most words you can have on a page with 9 panels is
44 words per panel.

Interesting! Thanks for the share!