Drawing Academy X

Scripts.

Adam maintained a three-issue lead time on the scripts. He started out by handing me the scripts for issues 1, 2, and 3 all at once. As soon as I finished drawing issue 1, he sent me the script for issue 4. When I finished drawing issue 2, he sent me #5. While I worked on the comics, I was reading three issues ahead of everyone else, but I did't know what happened next; only Adam did. Adam only disclosed details of where the story and characters were going in special cases, such as describing why I needed to get a certain detail correct now, because of how it would eventually be important. 

4

1: A very comfortable lounge (see reference photos).  Josie and Jenna
are trying to coax Wanda into sitting down on the big couch with them to
watch TV.  No one else is in the lounge yet.
	WANDA: I am skeptical that "Wildfire the Pony" will be my type of
program.
	JOSIE: It's "Wildfire the MAGIC Pony." The pony is magic.
	JENNA: C'mon, it'll be fun.

2: They are succeeding.
	JOSIE: It'll be MAGIC fun.
	JENNA: Besides, Claire's already bailed.  If you don't watch with us
the ratings'll go down and it'll be canceled and Josie will cry.
	WANDA: Very well.  Where did Claire go?

3: Hanging out on the couch.  Josie grabs the remote off a nearby table.
	JENNA: Oh, about once a month she goes back to Connecticut to spend
the night at her folks' place.  Greenbury's just a couple of hours away
by train.
	VOICE (off panel): Gangway! Hot pizzas and Y-chromosomes comin'
through!

4: Tony and Simon enter with boxes of pizza, set them up on the coffee
table in front of the sofa, sit down on the floor next to it. 
(obviously this is hard to capture in one panel - just pick a
representative mid-motion)
	JENNA: You should see her house.  There's a three-story indoor
waterfall and a two-hole golf course.  I got lost on the way back from
the bathroom and she had to guide me back via intercom.
	SIMON: Let me guess - Claire?
	JENNA: Yeah.  Her parents are so rich they're all, "Dear, have you
seen the Gross National Product?" "I dunno, check the sofa cushions."

5: All but Wanda help themselves to pizza.
	TONY: Did her driver come pick her up again?  That guy's a riot.  He
drove me and Claire to the state final last year.  You should have seen
his face when I asked him to pop a wheelie.
	JENNA: Nah, she's getting better about that kind of thing.  She's
taking the train like a normal person.
Click to view the finished page.

When I got a script, I read it right away, and I made a lot of decisions about how to draw it during that first reading. I pictured compositions, angles, expressions on faces, as vividly as I could. There were a lot of cases where I got very excited about some of the pages, because I knew they were going to be particularly fun or challenging to draw, even though it was going to be half a year or more before I finally got around to it. That sounds frustrating, but it also meant that when I did get to that page, I'd mentally rehearsed what I wa going to draw for a long time, which helped the quality.