Trying to make pages look more exciting!

So following from my last post I didn't really know what to do to move forward, I am not rewriting months of work, so I have been re-drawing pages in my graphic novel.

These two spreads don't look very interesting and don't really convey the drama or the haste that they should.

Ideally I want them to show the character's fear of being caught, the pain she is feeling and the urgency of getting away from her pursuers.

I have taken inspiration from some of the graphic novels I am currently reading:

This Beowulf comic uses lots of small angled and sometimes overlapping cells to make the action feel fast and chaotic. I also like the use of some of the translated story in text boxes to help keep the narrative running, and give the reader a sense that they are reading a Norse legend and not just a modern fantasy story.

This Robin Hood comic also makes use of angular, overlapping cells to convey action, but it also uses the traditional comic book action words or onomatopoeia. These are techniques I know about, I’ve been reading comics for years, but for some reason I didn’t consider them for my work, or I wasn’t sure how to translate them to my work. I am having to change my mindset as I go and consider how text can be used within the image.

My research tells me that the way to illustrate fast action is through a lot of smaller images, rather than a few large images, so I came up with this:

I went for more splintered cells in different shapes and sizes that overlap and the character is bursting out of them, I think (or rather hope) that this adds the element of chaos to the page and the feeling that she is being chased and is desperate to get away. I also decided to outline the cells with hand drawn frames as I think this works better than completely clean lines with sharp edges. There is also writing going on this page that will help, and I will add the 'complete' page below.

We see Fliss fleeing from her own kind, and running into the woods, where she disturbs Tristan's hunting trip and collides with him. I hope the text helps with the narrative and helps direct the reader through the story.

I still working on the last page, I need to finish some of the drawings and add the text, but they give an idea of how the narrative will read.