I’ve started doing very quick, very loose thumbnail sketches at the beginning of my process to block in the positions of the characters, backgrounds, and text. I’ve decided to start sharing them with patrons as well so you can see the progression from thumbnails, to refined sketches, to completed page!

I drew the thumbnail stage without zooming in very far and without spending more than about a minute per figure. The purpose isn’t to get very detailed, but rather to serve as a “placeholder” until I start refining the sketches later. After all, at this stage it’s still not uncommon for things to change. For example, you can see in the thumbnail sketch that one of the background characters in the fourth panel was a quadruped, but the design changed when I opened those background spots to patrons. In addition, it’s quite common to need to reposition characters to accommodate the text, and in the process of repositioning, portions of some characters might be moved off panel. So it makes sense to save the more detailed sketch until after their position is more solidified.