Beyond the Road Graphic Novel – First Pass Reflection

October 4, 2025 marks the date I finished drawing all the pages for Beyond the Road! 🎉

Beyond the Road is my 80+ page graphic novel memoir about rediscovering adventure with chronic illness, told through the lens of a 4-day camper van trip. While I’ve worked on comics in the past (the 1st volume of the original Angel Chronicles is still available to read on Tapas), this marks a personal milestone for me since it is my first fully self-contained and full-color book.

I started work on Beyond the Road in 2024 with scripting, thumbnails, and ~12 drawn pages when I was initially planning to pitch to agents. But… after learning more about publishing paths, I decided to go the self-publishing route and in April 2025, I kicked off a slow-but-steady sprint to complete the comic by the end of the year. Now in October, the 1st full drawing pass is done!

I’m still on track to wrap the whole project in 2025, but wanted to share a few lessons from this stage of the process.

Process & Progress Tracking

I really enjoyed my script → thumbnail → pages process. The scripting and thumbnailing phases gave me room to iterate and draw confidently later, which let me draw pages more quickly with minimal headache. The art style I chose (a posterized style using toothy Clip Studio brushes) also helped with my rendering speed. That said… I wish I had set up better progress tracking.

If I were to guess, I’d say the full comic took me ~5-6 months to complete? There were plenty of interruptions along the way (conventions, travel, etc) so this number is based on a rough estimate of the core work weeks, not any solid measurable data. As a solo comic creator this kind of guesswork is fine (i’m the only one really affected by it), but if I were to work for a publisher I’d want to be more accurate with my estimates. So… better tracking next time is something I want to improve.

Using Clip Studio (and rethinking my tools)

Beyond the Road was scripted in Scrivener, thumbnailed in Procreate, and drawn in Clip Studio Paint (none of these tools are required to create a comic. They’re just what I had and what I chose to use). I have a love/hate relationship with each of these since no software is ever a perfect solution, but I really wish there was one.

Specifically with Clip Studio Paint, I used the advanced version (Clip Studio Paint EX) in order to take advantage of its full power as a comic creation application. While I appreciated its book layout and page drawing tools (panel rulers, word bubbles, project view, etc), I learned a lot about its limitations, especially on a Mac. Things got very laggy, and I ran into frequent performance hiccups despite working with a hefty 32GB M1 MacBook Pro.

I may go into heavier technical detail on the pros and cons in a later post, but admittedly the experience made me rethink what tools I really need to draw a comic efficiently. I haven’t found a good alternative yet, but if you know of one… let me know!

The Final Stretch

Surprisingly, the hardest part of the whole process was the last 10%. With so much already done, I should have been racing to complete the pages! However what I noticed was that despite the visible finish line, my brain kept trying to leap ahead.

By the 90% mark, I was really itching to revisit earlier pages, adjust story flow, fix issues, or turn my attention to other details, like printing costs and marketing plans. Anything besides finishing those last pages. Tuning out that distracted part of my brain and staying focused in the drawing mode until it was actually done took some steady discipline.

What might have helped was a pre-determined reward or completion ritual, because…

The Silence After

Completing the pages of an 80+ page comic is a huge milestone. I understand this logically and can look back at all the time spent. But to tell you the truth, in the moment of completion… the feeling didn’t match.

It was quiet. There weren’t any fireworks or sense of screaming accomplishment. Just a disorienting state where the push to keep working was met with an empty backlog of pages.

It took some quiet time, gaming, and indulgence in expensive coffee to realist that… having a “re-entry ritual” is important when hitting these kind of transitions. In a traditional job, there might be a commute, a group celebration, a water cooler moment to decompress. But when you’re creating something long form and personal in solitude, finishing it can feel strangely disorienting.

I might go into this more in another blog post as well. For now, I’m still sitting with the change in pace.