How It's Made: The Miracle, Page 1

It's a miracle how it's made, if you know what I mean. Okay, that's a terrible joke, but please click through to read the script, view the storyboard, and pencils for this week's page of The Rabbit and the Moon.

Script

1a. Kamiko and Jade appear on the scene from out of the brush. Close up on Natsumi holding Hana.

JADE Here! The Elil is here!

KAMIKO Where! There I am... Hey-- (Eyes wide at the sight in front of her)

NATSUMI Hana!! Hana...

1b. Natsumi's speechless, holding Hana's body. She looks up at Kamiko, tears in her eyes, her mouth agape.

2a. The wolf grabs Natsumi by the scruff of her neck with his powerful jowls and tosses her away from Hana. We see Natsumi in mid-toss. The wolf's head is thrown back as Natsumi goes flying.

2b. Natsumi hits a tree.

KAMIKO You...

2c. We see Natsumi up close, she's out cold and the wolf is standing over her with his jaws open ready to bite her.

KAMIKO Great Big...

Storyboard

I usually don't stack my panels like this. I try and layer them like bricks if they're in rows, but I couldn't help try to line them up because some frames were going to be narrow rectangles while others would take up two frames. I think a bit of my OCD-ness wanted to make it look symmetrical and aligned like this.

I used Blender to help me pre-vis Natsumi hovering over Hana and holding her head up. I think the gesture is kind of awkward. It should probably be reversed, but it had to match the third frame. In the third frame, Natsumi's right hand is behind her head, and that means in the first frame the right hand has to be reaching for the back of Hana's head. This matters to keep the spatial continuity between those two. We see from behind Natsumi in the first frame, and then in the third we see her from Jade and Kamiko's angle. For the pre-vis I also dropped in a Kamiko model and put it in the background so I could draw her properly proportioned to Natsumi and Hana.

Pencils

Final Art

That's all for this week.