I originally had these two pages taped together to make one super page, but when I tried to scan it I found I had to cut it in half just to fit D: For that reason there is a white gap down the center that will look fine printed but looks kinda blah here.

I really had fun doing these pages because it was a nice change of pace from drawing a bunch of women sitting at a table talking. I had to, like, be creative... AND I finally got to use that far right panel setup. In vol. 2 of Bakuman there is a panel like this with the editors looking badass-- it's kind of overkill, actually, I have no idea why Takeshi Obata set it up like that, but I tagged that page when I was reading it and said "someday I want to use a setup like this!", and voila. My version is different, but it's close enough that I feel like I should mention what it's based off of. At my first mangaka assistant job, I worked for a guy who had me go in and mark pages in 20th Century Boys that had cars in them because at the time my boss couldn't draw cars very well. He had me do that a lot for other things too, and I got in the habit of doing it whenever I was at home reading manga and saw something I thought would be a good trick or whatever to convey an emotion, etc. Good staging, good effects, anything I really liked or was impressed by would get a little sticky note inside it. A lot of my books still have pieces of paper in them XD I think comic artists especially tend to learn from other artists more than from drawing from life... I still can't believe we didn't have life drawing lessons at the school for manga I went to.

To see the whole two-page spread, click here: DeviantART