How It's Made: The Ferrywoman - 7

Here's this week's look at the current page of This Mortal Coil, "The Ferrywoman" page 7. Below are the pencils:

Storyboard

This page was dialogue heavy, mostly the Ferrywoman chewing out Kamiko for being so lame-o. As far as the backgrounds go, I kept it light except for the first frame where I gave it a more full forest effect.

Art Only

If you're curious to know how I did the trees, I wrote an article on how I make brushes in Manga Studio 5. You can read it here. As for the bark, it's usually done by hand. I do literally just take the stylus and just draw it line by squiggly broken line to get the effect. Sometimes I think it works well, especially when the lines blend into pure blackness. In the first panel you can see that I didn't draw the entire trunk of some trees. I let it just disappear into black, as if you were just seeing apart of the tree.

Doing all the green is pretty time consuming. It's basically going through the entire page once it's done and adding green highlights where I think it's needed. Yeah, sometimes it's just scribbled in there. As for the particles, I also just do that by hand. I could have made a brush, but this gives it more of a human touch. They are these little wisps of light zipping around them, and Houyi (or Kenji) is glowing bright green. Why is he naked? He's left his body, all that's left is the imprint of who he was as a green fire and light.

Script

There are some dialogue changes between the actual comic and the script. When I first wrote this scene, The Ferrywoman, oh, maybe 3 years ago, it incorporated a lot more dry humor from her, as she doesn't quite understand some of our "mortal" language. She speaks with a form of eloquence all her own. I enjoy writing for her character. She's a bit melancholy and self-righteous when she speaks. here's the script:

The Ferrywoman and Kamiko share a look. FERRYWOMAN God child...

Do not mistake me.

I wish no catastrophe amongst these mortals nor do I wish distress for you, but the onus is on you, is it not?

You choose to be here. You choose to appropriate this lot as your own. If a dire situation occurs again, will you call to me?

Have you no power of your own?

FERRYWOMAN Though you have subverted death, though you have the name, though you are unshackled by destiny, you still must earn the right to be a god.

The girl, that youthful you, is more of a god than you.

KAMIKO Okay, that hurt more than your time paradox ass-chewing.

FERRYWOMAN I have no time, desire, or need to chew your bottom.

TACHIBANA It's still my fault. I started this. KAMIKO I'll fix it. (solemn)

That's all for this week. Next week "The Ferrywoman" comes to a close. I've already begun drawing the next chapter. Stay tuned for more! If you have any questions you'd like to ask, feel free to in the comments.