EP Prep: Beyond La La Land #1 Complete

The first issue of Beyond La La Land has been completed. I found that the final pages were produced with ease largely due to my familiarity with the process at this point. The full story has been uploaded to Gumroad with several people having already bought it. My work now has an active audience!















However I must remain critical of my work if it is to improve. I felt that whilst the process become more refined over the course of the issue there is still remove for improvement. The largest problem with the issue is how static some of the characters look due to the process of tracing the collage. I'm hoping to tackle this in some way in the second issue, the biggest question being, how?

The complete issue is available to view here:

EP Prep: Beyond La La Land Part 2

The second part of Beyond La La Land has been completed and uploaded to Gumroad. This part of the story introduced Red and helped expand the world within the story.

The process of production has really begun to work well, with a few tweaks allowing for a quick output that retains a strong level of quality. For example, with the first 8 pages I drew, inked, coloured and textured each page individually, whereas this time I drew all 8 pages in one go, then inked all 8 pages etc. This allowed me to stay in a specific frame of mind for each task, rather than flipping to a different process every few hours. Additionally, I feel that the line work and texture use has become more refined in these latest eight pages.

Here are the pages discussed:

EP Prep: Beyond La La Land on Gumroad

The first eight pages of my story are now on Gumroad. Upon seeing a tweet by Jack Teagle about his products on Gumroad I decided to give it a shot myself. It is doubtful that anyone will it at this point buy my product, but it's out there and can potentially start building an audience now. Once all three parts are ready I'll upload a complete version onto the platform.

Concerning the title of the piece I decided on calling it 'Beyond La La Land'. The phrase La La Land refers to someone with their head in clouds, who doesn't quite think about things as they should. I felt this phrase represents the character of Alison well, as she has left the safety of her home (La La Land), and is now having to understand the world beyond it.

EP Prep: Initial Pages Development

The first 8 pages of my story are now complete. I have decided to complete the story in three sections of eight pages to help keep a tighter hold on the somewhat large project. The first pages were produced with just a brief idea in mind, however with the introduction of the 'Red' character in the next section felt that an actual script should be created before any more drawing was done.

I used the same tools as comic book illustrator Chris Samnee, whose work for Marvel is inspiring. He displays a great understanding of line weighting which is something I want to develop in my own practise. Examples of Samnee's work can be seen below.





There is clearly a lot of time investment needed if I am to match his quality of drawing, however I now have a starting point with the work created thus far.

I found that the time it took to create the pages shrunk as I went on, with my knowledge of the process allowing me to make work quickly and efficiently. I'm hoping that this trend will continue as I move onto the next section.

Here are the pages I have created thus far: