"I feel like this piece had more personality in the sketch." That's a pretty common feeling, so you're not alone there. In the sketch the lines are lighter on the rope and her scarf, and a little thicker on her face. This helps focus the eyes on her face, and pulls it forward, whereas in the inked version everything is just as thick and dark. That flattens it out a bit. The rope also has a lot of detail put into it, so it's competing with her for attention.

Okay, first thing is the text is hard to read AND it's hand-written unlike the title. There's a typo in panel one as well. The second issue I find is you were willing to shade the inside of their mouths and cups, but nothing else. I tweaked your image--changed all the dialogue from hand writing to...computer text(?) for clarity and consistency and then added just simple values to help separate the characters from the backgrounds and each other. Really easy fixes to help make the comic pop and are things anyone can do. I like your art style. It makes me think of older animes. I also always like these types of comics. People say some really goofy stuff in public.

I hope you don't mind me tweaking your art. All I did was adjust the values so that the characters better fit the lighting in the scene AND I cheated a bit so that the llama's head was more of a focus. The first pic is your drawing in black and white. Everything is a bit flat. Nothing is dark enough or bright enough to focus the viewer. The next is my adjustments to the values. Final pic is just what it looks like WITH color. Nice drawing!

I hope these file sizes are fine. I literally just signed up! This contest sounded fun. I might be too late to enter, but I enjoyed this anyway. Second image is just my quick costume design for reference and the loose sketch.