Sunday Mailbag: More Time on Comps or Finals?

Q: If you have finished a job (spoof for MAD, illustration…) did you spend more time on the creative part (composition, sketching) or on the rendering part (inks and coloring)?

A: That has a different answer for each job.

Some jobs require a lot of preliminary work, especially with a new client. There might be several rounds of conceptual sketches, followed by a tight pencil and revisions until you finally get to the last stage. Other jobs the initial concept is either already worked out as dictated by the client or it just rolls off the end of the pencil and it’s quickly on to the finals.

The image itself makes a difference. In a spot or single page illustration it might be that the comps and pencils will take more time than the final art since the image is fairly simple, but maybe it’s a crazy complex image involving a lot of detailed painting, inking, or coloring that takes the most time.

If I was forced to answer this one way or the other, I’d probably say I spend more physical time on the final stages of inking/painting/rendering a job than I do on the comps/pencils, if for no other reason than the pencils are looser and don’t need to be as complete as the finals do. I’d say with a MAD TV or movie parody it’s about equal because of all the caricatures and comic book storytelling that has to be worked out at the pencil stage.

Thanks to Dominick Zeillinger for the question. If you have a question you want answered about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!