After narrowing down the concept, I made a digital sketch of the direction I wanted to go in.

Imagining the character as light, I imagined the light growing without the weight of the sheet

I thought about how I could show how much lighter the character felt after removing the sheet without text. That’s how music and whistling came along.

Varying the tint of the speech bubbles to add depth

Playing around with different colored text and writing styles to symbolize that the speech bubbles came from various sources. Ultimately decided the colors were distracting.

Playing into the idea of the character feeling lighter after taking off the sheet, I imagined the sheet with more movement as its flung off, rather than stationary as in Image Five. Added some other final touches, and there you have it!