Do you maintain a schedule for creation of your comic? Do you use a buffer?

I have a schedule, but it's lax enough that I have spare time for homework and other projects. I used to have a buffer, but it was only one page ahead, so when I had to take a break from working on the comic for a bit the buffer got used up. I'm thinking of building up more of a buffer next time, but I currently don't have the time for that.

I've been doing my best to complete as many pages as possible along with script writting and layouts. Unfortunately my mental health crisis has gotten so much in the way of my productivity. I'm hoping that moving forward from here my inner turmoil is long behind me and my production accelerates. I have to give you guys a complete series for else whats the point for me doing this.

“No buffer for my BlogSpot site. Also, I don’t have a set schedule — I go where the muse takes me. You get it when you get it.”

try to, usually like to have a few pages ready because of life's unpredictability

jgahn

jgahn posted Mar 13, 2026
Buffers to me are a must especially for a creator with very little followers and exposure. I do the Reddit posts to market my comic, but I still need a weekly bump in the "Update from Creators" section. That's where most of my new readers come from. My work is an anthology, so my method may seem different. What I do is I merge the current episode with an "update" episode from the previous week then release a new update all in the same week. The reader then gets a longer unfinished story along with an update that acts like a cliffhanger.

I was going for some sort of schedule, but doesn't seem to be working. In my mind, 4 pages every 2 weeks seemed manageable. Nope. Gonna have to settle for "when it's done, it's done". But I will shoot for 4 pages every 2 months. heh

I usually work on a Verkins comic page on the week it suppose to come out. One Leandro comic chapter (around 20 pages) is finished in one year of advance.

A practical way to plan production-heavy pages is to measure the buffer in fully finished pages, not calendar weeks. Breaking the workflow into cleanup, flats, lighting, and final lettering also makes delays visible; a page only joins the buffer when every stage is done. Even a 2–3 page buffer can then be more reliable than a larger pile of half-finished pages.

I think a buffer gets easier to maintain when it is not treated as one big finished-page pile. What has helped me is splitting it into smaller buffers: a few pages of rough layout, a few pages where speech-balloon order and readability are checked, and only then final polish. Even if the finished-page buffer is small, having the next pages already readable makes missed weeks less scary.