Sad Holiday, Part One

Here's my preliminary doodle for an illustration that will run on Wednesday. It is to accompany a story by Most Excellent writer Laura Casey about dealing with grief and loss over the holidays.
...For the initial concept, I thought "A collection of presents, all of them opened except for one." That seemed like a sorrowful idea to me. In order to inject a little more information and empathy into the thing I decided to use toys as the gifts, and have the gifts themselves emote and gather around the one unopened package.
...It probably won't be easy to read on its own, but buttressed by the story I think it might be pretty effective. Doodled in Photoshop!
...Final tomorrow!
...

To Be Continued...

...