Okay, I sat down just now with the calendar to check my math, and it turns out there’s more coloring to be done in order to get the buffer Con-worthy.

The full, no-contingency workload, then, is 236 rows, and that takes today’s 12 rows of scripting into account.

Which means that for the next 13 days I need to whip out 18 rows per day, and I need to find space to squeeze in an extra two rows on top of that.

The GOOD news is that it’s possible the Bonus Story will finish up after just 100 more rows, rather than 120. I’m not going to force it, though. It ends where it ends.

I was a little depressed today after I spent two solid hours at the computer scanning and tweaking before coloring, and found that I’d used half my Tuesday and gotten zero rows done.

(Tuesday afternoons and evenings I have a church gig, so Tuesday ends at 2:00pm for me.)

Oh, and I realized that there are two extra rows during the week of August 13th…*sigh*

Fortunately, there was scripting to be done, and I got my game on. I blasted out 12 rows of scripts (8 days) in about 90 minutes, which means that on Wednesday I should have no problem hitting my 15 row minimum. I may even blow past it.

I can’t afford to have too many days where I fall below 15. Tomorrow I need to hit 18 (9 rows pencilled and inked will do nicely), and I may shoot for 24 by throwing in some coloring before I head down to the Keep for the pencil-and-ink process. That kind of productivity will nicely lower the minimum required workload for the remaining days in this little marathon of mine.

By the way, the first-stage contingency plan is “return from Worldcon with only 2 weeks in the buffer.” The SECOND stage plan is “return from Worldcon with only one week in the buffer.” The THIRD stage contingency plan is “Howard stays home from Worldcon.” 1st-stage buys me 36 rows of slack. 2nd stage buys me 72 rows of slack. In theory I could pencil, ink, and color today’s scripts, and then ONLY work on book stuff, and still be able to go to Worldcon. But that means frantic working after the convention is over, and I hate doing that.

The scorecard then… 13 days left, and 202 rows to go.

This evening I did a quick-and-dirty computation of the amount of work I need to get done between now and the evening of the 23rd when I leave for Worldcon. I’m fast approaching my print deadlines for Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between, you see…

For reference, when I say “row” I mean “one row of comics taken through one of the four steps of creation.” This means that pencilling a row equals “one row of work.” By this standard, each week of Schlock on the web takes 36 rows of work.

So… In the next 14 work-days available to me (excluding Sundays, but including everything else) I need to do the following:

Script, pencil, ink, and color three weeks of Schlock for the web. That’s 36 rows times three, or 108 rows.
Script, pencil, ink, and color up to six more pages of Bonus Strips for the book – I’ve scripted, pencilled and inked two pages already. Plus I need to color those two inked pages. At four rows a page, that’s 6*(4*4) + 8, or 104.

14 days. 212 rows. 15.14 rows per day. Or 16 rows for two days, and 15 rows for 12.

Today I pencilled and inked 8 Bonus Strips, which means 16 rows. So today I worked hard enough.

Yes, I have a contingency plan for “failure to get enough done.” I don’t like it.

I just reviewed some of the images from the beginning of Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between. Again, we’re doing “Sunday” style coloring on all images in the book, rather than just on Sundays. I had to finish the coloring on about 25 images, and now that it’s done all I need to do is finish up the bonus story.

(And the cover. And the margin materials, including re-scanning old sketches, throwing in some new ones, and writing new footnotes.)
(All before September 15th, if at all possible.)

Anyway, in reviewing the work I’ve done so far I got sucked into reading the beginning of the book. It’s going to be a darn good book. I wrote it, yet somehow I managed to make myself laugh. It’s probably going to be about 20 pages longer than the first one, with more action and (pending me finishing it) a bigger, more violent bonus story. I’m excited.

–Howard