Becky Hawkins

Book 1, Page 151

Added 2021-01-08 02:19:10 +0000 UTC

I love how Barry set up this scene in the previous pages!

I chuckled to myself when I first read the script, but I knew it would be a challenge to fit Lillian, a waitress, a dancing couple or two, some background characters, and the police officers into each panel. It's hard to draw something that both looks like a chaotic crowd, and is easy for the reader to follow. I spent a lot of time figuring out where to place all the characters so that they overlapped in a realistic way, but none of the characters were blocking the important action.

At Barry's suggestion, I used different colors for Lillian, the waitresses, the police, the background characters, and the furniture and light fixtures. This made it much easier to look at while I was trying to figure out where everyone should go.

When I drew the color-coded version, I also drew each element on a separate Photoshop layer, so I could move individual figures around without disturbing the others. For example, it took some experimentation so that the waitress in panel 3 wasn't blocking Ruth and Mona.

For comparison, my rough sketch looked like this:

It's not a problem to start with a very loose sketch, but this page has lots of overlapping figures close together. In color-coding them for the second draft, I probably saved myself hours of squinting at what I'd drawn the day before, and trying to figure out whether it was a head, a tray, or just a stray line.

Speaking of good ideas, special thanks to Barry for sprinkling the script with reminders to draw the cotton balls that Lillian still has in her ears. That is exactly the kind of detail that's easy to forget. XD

And thanks to you for the continued support on Patreon!