How It's Made: The Miracle, Page 2

How It's Made takes a look behind the scenes at page 2 of The Miracle for The Rabbit and the Moon. See the script, storyboard, pencils and final art for this page.

Script

1a. The wolf is about to bite Natsumi. 1b. Kamiko plunges her rapier right through his body. We see Kamiko right up next to the wolf, hugging him and her blade going all the way through him.

KAMIKO It's for your own good, you know that?

WOLF ...And this is for your own good!

2a. The wolf bites down on Kamiko's arm -- she gets infected with his poisoned blood when this happens.

2b. And tosses her away. She lands with a THUD. Her arm snaps in an awkward position. (SFX: SNAP)

JADE (shocked) God child!

2c. Kamiko still has her eyes open and she's looking on.

3a. From Kamiko's first person POV, she reaches her hand out (foreground) and in the background there's the wolf standing over Natsumi. He now has the elixir of immortality in his mouth.

KAMIKO Jade...stop him. (wobbly text)

3b. The wolf holds the vial between his teeth and has his head tilted back. The fluid appears ready to pour down his throat but the stopper is still on it.

Storyboard

Looking back at this page, the one thing that stands out to me is that I didn't do an establishing shot to re-establish where the characters are from the previous page. I notice for the wolf, I do a lot of "snout-cam" shots which I'm sure gets pretty boring if you're binge reading, or maybe you're just flying through and it doesn't matter? It does help on cutting down drawing the entire animal and also allows me to get up-close and dramatic.

Pencils

In this page, hands and facial expressions were the most difficult to do. To do Kamiko's pained expression (Oww... right?) in the second to last panel I actually mimicked it and took a selfie. I tried my best to feel the pain that must be going through her body. The wolf clamps down on her arm and then throws her (much like he did with Natsumi). She maybe a deity but she's still subject to the pain and suffering of the mortal world.

I also noticed afterwards that I had storyboarded the same type of throw. Maybe I can justify that it adds to the sameness of how Natsumi and Kamiko are treated by him, but it's also out of laziness and unimaginative storyboarding on my end. :/ This also comes out of trying to cram as much as I can on one page to reduced the amount of work load.

Final Art

I added the Ba-bump sound effect, which shows his heart slowing since I didn't want to make the frames for it and express it and his death in as few frames as I could. Kamiko is really just screwing that sword into his body and holding it there hoping that he bleeds out.

Her expression is so painful looking, but I'm glad it transferred well to the black and white. I feel it's very expressive.

That's all for this week's How It's Made. See you next time!