Page 1: It may be a bit hard to make out in this shot, but Mene's vest and sweater combo was inspired by a real life vest and sweater combo I saw in the December issue of In Style magazine. If I get a chance I'll scan it in and link the image here. Anyway there will be some better shots of her outfit in later pages.

Page 3: In the last panel on this page, I was trying to make Etoile look relieved, but when I sketched him out his expression wasn't quite what I wanted. His expression though was too cute for me to erase, because to me he's got a sort of happy puppy expression. If he were a puppy he'd be wagging his tail happily right now. In the end the expression works OK, it's not the best, but it's cute.

Page 6:Birds and Garden probably sounds like an odd name for a magazine, but my own grandmother likes a magazine called Birds and Blooms, so I figured Mene's grandmother might like the same sorts of things. ;) Actually I probably model Mene's grandmother a little bit off of my own.

Page 7:Two new characters make their first appearance! You'll be finding out more about them in the coming pages. :3

Page 8:Maya Lin is actually the name of a famous artist who created the Vietnam War Memorial among other things. The character of Maya Lin in my comic is in no way related to, and not supposed to portray the real Maya Lin in any fashion.

Page 9:I've been mostly modeling Mene's hometown after some of the little shires you see in the English countryside. Of course every good shire needs a local pub, and here we have The Fox in Jewelry. I came across a fun little formula for making up pub names while I was online, essentially you add together one random noun with another noun and link them together with in or and, or an adjective or what have you..... like The Fox and Cockle, The Volkswagen's Black Tires, anything really. ;)

Page 14:I bet you were expecting Etoile or Actaeon to be there, but no that would be too predictable, but it has been a while since we've seen Etoile..... ;)

Page 17:Ah, page 17, I think it may need a lot of notes. ^^; The sentiments about hope is really a shared sentiment between both girls, at heart, they both think this way even though they are different people. I also hope it came across that the text directly above Maya's head were her thoughts on Mene, and hopefully you can figure out who is talking in which bubble up at the top. I like the way this page turned out, especially the simple tones, I just hope it's meaning was carried off as I envisioned and also that nobody found it too terribly cheesy.

Page 18:The shoes Mene is wearing are actually a pair of shoes I own. They look kind of like retro mary janes, and they also have the highest heel of any shoe in my closet.

Page 19:Doing the "catch pose" was a challenge for me as it's difficult to find reference imagery for people catching people. ^^; I'm happy with how it turned out though, and overall I think this is one of my favorite pages out of this chapter.

Page 20:Final page! It feels good to be done with this chapter! I like the impact of this page, but I realized while I was working on it, that it is probably a little too similar to the last page visually. I hope it doesn't bore anyone. Etoile's face came out looking all happy, energetic and puppy like in the last panel. This is the second time he's turned out puppy-ish, maybe he was born in the year of the dog. XD~ EItherway, even though I have the characters personalities mapped out, their personalities still develope more over time and through drawing them. Well stay tuned for chapter 3!