Days Gone 5 - Documenting My Workspace

Just a short post this time, I'm afraid. As I've said, this is the first time I'm using the multi-page story feature that is available in the "EX" edition of Manga Studio / Clip Studio Paint. In the past, I made each page separately and just combined them manually later in InDesign or QuarkXPress.

This time, however, I wanted to keep all the settings consistent from one page to the next, and as such, I've done two things that are new for my comics work:

• I created a binder to store all the materials in one place (typically, I used file folders)
• I made screenshots of my settings and put them into the binder.

I documented my settings with a few screenshots
of the applicable menus, and some notes.
I whipped this up in Photoshop in about 10 min.

As you can see, there's not a lot of detail here, but just enough so I can document what I did at each step of the production cycle. If I can get ahead at all, I plan to document all the props and parameter settings used for the major characters in the story. But, since I'm already falling behind, I think that's unlikely for this project.

Here's a shot of the binder.

My project binder for the Days Gone story.

As you can see, I've tipped in the sheet with the project settings (this is configured for printing at Comix Wellspring; the same company that quickly printed my comic, Fanzine Flashback: Ultra #1).

This is, of course, the sort of thing I do with my professional technical writing projects. Organization is essential to finding what you need when you need it. I'm hoping the small amount of time I've spent on project management will pay off in the end.

NEXT TIME: Ummm... not sure. Maybe some updated character designs? Or something else.