Page 5b roughs

Rough Draft 1 (using the original placement of word balloons)

Rough Draft 2 (Ooops, students came out way too big; Dr. Q looks shrimpy!)

Rough Draft 3: tidying up placement of students

Rough Draft 4: still trying to place word balloons so they don't bleed off the page

Rough Draft 5: ready for color

Finished 5B fully colored (though not yet shaded....)

This half page took 5 hours. Ouch. I don't anticipate many future splash pages like this since they're so labor intensive. I've added several of them early on to hook readers into the story. I know that page after page of talking heads await unwary readers so I'm subtly creating an unspoken expectation that future pages will contain sufficient visual variety so as not to bore readers. It's blatant manipulation.

Finicky readers will note that the students are not sitting in the same places they were on page 3. If I were making a movie somebody would catch this inconsistency. I'm hoping that readers will read quickly and not catch the mistake; I hope they get the sense that the students have an enthusiastic naivete about Dr. Q's lecture. That'll change soon enough but on this first day of lectures they're on board.