Torn.. But Not in the Literal Sense

I'm now torn about my second page. I have been trying to push forward and get all the roughs done, but on Tuesday Lily Moore was looking at my work and told me to work on my second page some more. Her concerns were that I had too many panels, the top 3 being able to be combined and the middle section needing clarification on the characters blocking in relation to one another.

I worked up a quick prototype of what I could do on the middle panels. I'll throw the images out there and keep going on my other pages.

Above is the original, to the right is the quickly reworked.