I am SO GRATEFUL for you calling out the little decisions here like "I'm adding a bit of brick shape to the edge of this building so it's not just a flat line", or "I'm shading the inner edge of this door to show the difference in plane" - never would have occurred to me. I'm taking copious notes on all those little emphasis details that add so much to the feel of a background without drawing an entire wall full of bricks. As well as pointing out that you can just... MAKE UP a shadow shape to frame your figures! (Me: "You can DO THAT???") Same with not shading the pipes. Honestly a bit of a mindblown moment that you can sacrifice logic for composition and it looks so great.

You mentioned Brian Hitch as great reference for laboratories etc, but when I Google image search his name plus terms like "Ultimates" or "laboratory" or "backgrounds", all I get is his character art. I'd rather not buy the entire (expensive) Ultimates omnibus just for a few ref images of labs, since superhero comics aren't really my style; but I have no idea how to search for reference for specific things like sci-fi robotics labs (which is a setting in the original comic I'm working on). In particular since I'm not into mainstream comics (again, not really a superhero gal) I don't know all the big names for artists or who to follow for ref. Any tips?

Coming in super late but I'm seconding the gratitude for showing us all the different tries it took on that last panel, since that's a huge frustration for me too. Something I really noticed, though, is how FAST you iterated through those multiple tries - just a minute or two on each one, 10 mins total, whereas for me I can spend hours messing with a rough sketchy pose at the manikin stage. I think the key is you're noticing the flaws much quicker and at a much earlier stage (I know for that first try I was like "WTF, that looks great" before you erased it). I also notice that, when you're roughing in the figures, you're not always starting with manikins, but sometimes more basic compositional shapes to represent the entire body - like using just a huge cylinder in perspective for the hero on your last try. Great way to focus on composition first before getting into the form - and it seems to make your roughs go a lot faster! I'll definitely be trying different shapes instead of my usual circle-based manikins in the hopes it speeds my agonizingly slow process.