You guys might imagine where this plot is going. I'll just say, as always: let me cook.
I tried to do a bit of a fish eye lens effect in the first panel and you can see it more clearly in this WIP, with the window bars of Paddy's office bending to the perspective of the viewer. I ended up toning it down a lot in the final version because it didn't look as good as I wanted, to the point that I repeatedly went "ok, this looks good enough", then seeing the preview HERE on Patreon made me reconsider and do another take.
As I mentioned in the last WIP post I'm calling back here to Miles' college friend running the startup he works at, and here we finally see said friend! I wanted to make him a bird of some sort. I have been drawing lots of them lately, maybe because they're underused, maybe because I like naturalistic colors for anthro designs and birds have a lot of variety going on, especially if I can use something other than earth tones. The week I made this page I went through a walk in a park and saw a cardinal and said, huh, that would be cool to draw, so here we are.
Another silly detail, while writing the manuscript for the comic I went with the name 'Paddy Coronado' for this guy because the scientific name for the red-crested cardinal I saw is paroaria coronata, but when I actually sat down to draw him I went with a northern cardinal because I like the color scheme more. I was also torn between making his first name Patrick (more in line with getting the nickname 'Paddy') or Patricio (more in line with his Hispanic last name), which is why we can't see the full name on the plaque to his office. Miles calls him Paddy and that's what matters.