Brainiac 5 and Supergirl

Here's a piece a little while ago as a birthday present for a friend of mine. I'm not entirely happy with this piece. Most of my problems with it stem from poor planning on my part. I kept changing it as I went. First I started with the idea that I was going to stay true to the classic Legion of Superheroes art of the 1960s, but then began stylizing it my own way partway through, so now Brainiac's body seems to be a weird mishmash of the two styles that doesn't really work. Also, this was originally going to be a simple portrait of Brainiac 5, but I didn't feel it was enough, so I added the idea of his infatuation with Supergirl intruding upon his concentration with his experiment. If I'd thought to include this element in the beginning, the layout would have been different, instead of the cluttered look this piece has now. The third detriment was that i tried using parchment paper to get that layered transparent look of the cloud, but discovered that this type of paper doesn't take glue too well, so it was constantly peeling off the papers attached to it, and bits of chemistry gear kept falling off altogether.

In my experience, if a complication arises when I'm making a collage, the final result usually ends up being less than i hoped for, and I've yet to learn to simply give up on a piece that's not working and to start over. My most succesful pieces, no matter how complicated they seem, tended to be the easiest ones, done the quickest, and without problems cropping up along the way.