Couple things to say about this page.

First off, originally when I planned all this out Applejack had been pretty much the only one talking to Twilight these last few pages. I have this bad habit of having her be the ‘spokesmare’ of the group, since she’s the most serious one. That included the final panel on this page showing the five of them grouped together, and Applejack being the one to offer help.

Obviously I ultimately spread the dialogue around a bit. But what I really like is that you don’t know who’s talking in that final panel, who’s actually offering to help. Because, of course, the answer is that it’s really all of them.

The second thing is a bit of advice for anyone who is or is aspiring to be an artist: your art sucks, start over.

Obviously I’m no great artist myself. But look at the original, fully complete version of that middle panel. I mean, it’s not terrible, I guess. But compared to the final version it’s definitely lacking, badly.

I’m on a pretty tight schedule here; I need to be making at least one of these pages a week. But I still looked at that panel after it was done and said “Nope.” And what I came up with when I redid it is miles better.

On the other hand, don’t let that destroy your momentum either. At some point you need to be done. Case in point, the last panel on this page. I’m actually not too thrilled with how it came out, and I really would like to redo it. But, even so, it is still serviceable—whatever I’d come up with would be nowhere near the difference between the two versions of the middle panel. So I decided to just move on.

So there’s your artistic advice: What you’re doing sucks, try again. But also don’t be afraid to move on at some point.