Notorious scavenger Najat Sarraf searches for a remote scientific outpost, 400 years derelict, to loot its remains, and recover its lost research.

As featured in Upsetting Magazine #77 - Download the complete PDF here!

Some Stats

I keep a daily log of my work. I find this helps me keep good habits. But also, it’s interesting to analyze and review. Here are some stats on timing and other things:

• Features:

  • 89 pages
  • black and white
  • traditional media (pen and ink) with computer work for page layouts, touch-ups, and lettering.

• Timing:

  • 43 hours to write, across 25 days, from June 22, 2022 to June 13, 2023 (just under a year)
  • 418 hours to draw, across 80 days, from June 15, 2023 to September 22, 2023 (just over 3 months)
  • 20 hours to letter, across 5 days, from September 23, 2023 to September 27, 2023 (under a week)
  • Total hours of work: 481

• Software used:

  • Krita for touch-ups and processing
  • Affinity Publisher for layouts
  • Clip Studio Paint for word balloons
  • Emacs for writing (with Olivetti and Fountain plug-ins)

Some Lessons

Every big project comes with important lessons. It’s part of why we do these things, wouldn’t you say? This project was no exception. Here are some of my key take-aways:

• Inking is not tracing! — haha! I mean, I always knew this, but never have I appreciated it more than now, having ruined many well-penciled panels with bad inks. It is quite a unique skill, and something I hope to get better at in time.

• Don’t write the script like a screenplay. — I used software designed primarily for film writing. Which was great, except that it gave me no sense for page and panel layout or pacing. As a result it felt almost like I was adapting a screenplay while drawing, which I think would have been energy better spent in the writing. But more importantly, it meant I had no idea how long any section was or indeed how long the entire story would be. In the end the book was 2-3x larger than I was initially expecting.

• Power through the “I hate it” phase. — My biggest enemy in completing projects is the point at which I look at the work I’ve created so far, and feel like it’s just not very good, and probably not worth the time/energy required to finish. This is likely the most common point of failure for all my abandoned projects. And of course I struggled with this on the comic, from about page 20 all the way through to the very end. But I realized early that this would happen, and that the real challenge ahead was not the work, but rather the psychology of disappointment. And so, I warned myself that I would feel it, and that when I did, I should keep going. It wasn’t easy, and I leaned on friends to push me along, but I did it, and I’m glad.

• It’s not how well you can draw - it’s how well you can draw FAST. — At least when it comes to interior art. This means, almost by definition, you have to call art “done” before it really is. You have to accept a lower quality standard than you know you are capable of. To a certain degree, disappointment is built in. But the thing is, any artist can spend ages on page, perfecting each and every panel, but not every artist can complete a book, and even less can complete them on a schedule.

Some Musings

I’ve been a fan of comic books all my life. In fact, for much of my youth, I thought I’d draw comics for a living. But that desire waned when I got into videogames and computer programming. Which, to be sure, is probably for the best. My career in games has been more than good to me. Still, I never lost my love of comics, and as making videogames became my actual job, comics and illustration came back into focus.

Of course, making a comic book is a challenge to say the least. For starters, it took me well over a decade before I even felt like my drawing skills were good enough to make the attempt. Then there was the matter of required knowledge and skill in the crafts of story telling and script writing. And then there was the issue of time and energy - making a comic would require a huge investment of both. All told, I often felt that making a comic of my own was a bucket list item that I’d never get to check off.

Well, sometimes it’s good to be wrong, and this is one of those times. This year, I completed my first comic. It’s rough (especially at the start), and my internal critic is loud, but at the same time, there are many things I like about it, and as an overall piece, I’m quite proud of the result.

And what’s more, completing this comic broke through the conceptual barrier that told me making comics is too hard, and it’s for other people with more skill, knowledge, and time. Now I know that I can do it, and the empowerment is the real value in all of this. Empowerment can be life changing.

So, yay for me! I’m happy and proud of the comic I made (and the entire magazine around it). If you downloaded the book I hope you enjoy it! Thank you for reading this, and if you’re interested in more, stay tuned. This isn’t the last comic I make.