Hey, I'm Taylor, the designer and illustrator behind Studio Looong. I have been designing full-time since graduating from college in 2015, but my love for art goes way back to when I was a kid and my dream job was to be a cartoonist and guinea pig breeder.
While I may not quite be a cartoonist and my love for rodents has wained immensely, I still think I'm living the dream. Today I work 9-5 as a Strategic Design Specialist at the University of Illinois and 5-9 as an Illustrator from the home office that I share with two very long dogs and one giant tortoise.
My goals are to continue growing as a designer, pursue a Master's in Graphic Design, and keep building on my illustration practice.
I've worked up a new sketch, wondering if the story comes through a little better in this one? It's still very rough but I want to have the couple so infatuate with each other in this outdoor cafe setting that they don't notice the dog checking out their muffins.
@Lee-White is registration already closed for May? I'm having some trouble finding which live classes still have seats left. On the interactive classes page half of the classes are the old listings from January and the other classe's "learn more" buttons just link back to the same general listings page.
For me, the placement of the chapter number and title are kind of breaking up the sequence, it might just be that I'm not looking at it in the context of the other pages but it might flow better if you moved them to the beginning or end of this bit.
Thanks everyone! Thats super helpful, I'll probably take 2 or 3 of these to the rough sketch phase and see if one sticks out after I refine them a little bit.
@JerrySketchyArt haha yeah, I love the way dogs with flatter faces can "smile" I want it to be a pit/bulldog/pug kind of face 
I want to show the moment before the dog steals dinner, I have a couple different scenarios - thinking about making it a classic dinner table inside, a BBQ kind of set up, or a picnic. I'm wondering if I can get your opinion on which of these is working? I kind of like 9 where you can see mom in the BG with her back turned. Wondering if I could work that element into a composition like #1, would there be enough focus on the dog? I also like the close up view of the dog's expression in 4 & 14.
If you are wanting to target a different age range you could always adjust the age of your characters (not saying you need to) but if you wanted to make #4 more geared towards smaller children, you could change the character to be a little boy before his first violin recital, or go in the other direction and make it clear that this older character is backstage in a more adult venue, like a bar - maybe he's about to try out his standup comedy act for the first time.
