Early $10+ Preview: Page 179 (Patreon)

And with that, except for the endcap image, Chapter 3 is DONE!!! What a crazy time it's been getting this chapter done and out! Remind me the next time I want to set a chapter in a festival full of booths and crowds that that is a silly idea.

Some commentary about this page layout:

So, usually, you never want to use a 2x2 layout like I have at the bottom, or anything like it. You always want to have your gutters offset so you don't make it confusing as to whether you go left or right, up or down. 

However, I wanted it very much to be 4 completely equal beats with plenty of breathing room, so I went for it.

As a result, I wanted to make sure that the reading order was extremely clear, and to do that, I had to make sure that the directions of the eyes and the word bubbles all followed a tight "Z" order.

The word bubble in Belfry's panel leads to her eyes, which are looking toward Oakewood's panel, and the direction his eyes are tilting point you to the word bubble there. When you finish, you go down to Tess's panel where all of her lines and sightline are pointing to Tamberlane. And then because I wanted a sense of finality, Tam's word bubble is in the lower right corner.

If I were to do this page over...

I would adjust the arrangement of the characters in those four boxes and take word balloon placement into better account ahead of time. All the places I had planned to put the balloons turned out to be not ideal, so now there's some weird space issues goin on. 

And that's it for now! I'm so amazed chapter 3 is over, and so excited to draw chapter 4! I'm pumped!!!