Boy that center panel is a mess. The problem I’ve created for myself is that I have a scene with 7 people in it (8 as of next page really) and they’re on opposite sides of the room from each other and most of the conversations cross the room. So now in order to draw a conversation, I have to either have a dozen back and forth headshots of each person speaking their side of the conversation, or I have to draw multiple side-on long shots of the room with everyone in it and fill the space between with word balloons.

I’m almost tempted to try and sell my one big panel with the clockwise progression of the conversation as actually being a clever solution to the problem. On top of all that, this is the heavily edited version of what I had originally written, but I realized that if I hadn’t edited it, it would have been at least another page before I got back to our overcoated interloper, and that would probably be worse storytelling than making you guys slog through one messy panel. All the jokes I had to edit out get to ferment in the margins for a bit, I’ll find somewhere to stick them back in.

It’s not a bad page – Sydney acts nutty, we see a little back and forth between her and Dabbler / Dabbler and Max. It’s just a lot crammed into the available space. Sequential storytelling is an artform unto itself, and I’m still learning. Well the good news is I think this scene is going to wrap up soon. It’s gone on longer than the bank I think.

Oh and I guess Arianna fixed the drape. Also, assume Sydney is pacing around while she’s trying to remember stuff. Otherwise the blocking makes no sense. Gah. Still learning.