Koyama Press

I messaged Koyama Press. Koyama are one of my favourite publishing companies, they have Michael DeForge under their wing as an illustrator and he is one of the illustrators i aspire to be like. When I looked on their site they were specifically stating that they do not want any submissions at the moment so there was no information on where to send that but i think that works out for me as I'm not ready yet to be submitting to publishers. That's my plan for once i finish, I've been collecting up lots of comic ideas and then I'm just going to invest loads of time into making them to the best i can and then I want to start submitting to publishers. But at the moment i feel like most of my comics aren't up to a standard they could be because they were all made during course time where i was battling with time and trying to tick boxes and jump through hoops of marking. When the course ends i can fully invest in my comics and narratives because I can indulge as much as i want and invest as much time as i see necessary.
So my message to Koyama Press was mainly looking for advice and feedback on my work. I want to know what improvements my work needs to make to get the attention of big publishers. I included my site saying they can look if they want to. I tried to keep it a relaxed layed back message so it's not just like i'm throwing my work in their faces. I did an Annie drawing because on the site they have an Annie drawn by each of their regular illustrators and I thought it would be a nice thank you for any attention the message gets.

 My original line drawing looked pretty gross and terrible, i tried changing the colours using the hue/saturation tool but they were all quite garish.

I changed the line work to yellow because the black line was so heavy and clunky and the yellow brightens it up and makes it less gaudy and awkward.

 I was trying to linit the colour pallet to just the red and yellow. I felt i needed to keep the red because thats the Koyama colours but the yellow gave a good contrast. I was thinking of some of the coloured work Michael DeForge does, since he works for Koyama I figured using him as an influence would only help me out here.

This is the final one that i sent alongside my email. If nothing comes out of this email at least someone there will have seen my drawing even if they decide not to reply.