A Story About Treating a Female Knight, Who Has Never Been Treated as a Woman, as a Woman (Sirius contest entry) - Oneshot

[MangaDex]

 

[Merilirem]

Neat.

 

[zekkendo]

In case anyone had a hard time reading the cursive in the afterword:

Hi! If this story sounds familiar it's normal:

it is based on the storyboard of the manga A story about treating a female knight who had never been treated as a woman, as a woman

(chapter 3 if you want to compare), which was assigned by the publisher Kodansha to evaluate artistic skills for the Sirius international web manga contest.

As expected, my version didn't win.

I posted it here with the idea to get some feedback.

please share your thoughts on the comments!

(no need to use the sandwich method, I can take harsh criticism now)

In case anyone was wondering, the sandwich method is when you try to hide the criticism between to layers of praise, "sandwiching" it in, and trying to make it more edible.

check my twitter if you're curious about what I draw
@qiklope

https://twitter.com/Qiklope

thank you for reading until the end!

I do think that in this kind of setting, the female lead would have short hair. Hair length is commonly associated with femininity (I'm not saying that it's defined by it), short hair is a symbol of abandoning that.

I saw you mention changing the setting a little by giving Leo a curse on her left arm. I think that in the first panel, where she's still younger and being trained by her father, it might've been better to have her still be uncursed, to further differentiate her from her past.

I didn't really like or understand the eye-covering thing Fooly had. If the eye covering is still a necessity, rather than being veiny looking, it'd be better smooth, to contrast with Leo's cursed look.

In the panel where Leo's arm breaks, all the bones looked pretty whole. It might also have been good to have her slouch a bit to protect her arm.

I found it a little strange that the sword goes from being in her right hand in one panel, being under her left in another, missing, and then being in her right again later.

And in the panels where she realizes her arm is fine, and where Fooly flashes back to healing her, they look like left arms rather than the right.

I did find the darker color scheme somewhat refreshing, and the contrast between the dark Leo and white Fooly was nice.

edit: some spacing and spelling

 

[BajaxShadax]

I like the art-style, but some panels where confusing due the details and the halftones (pages 11, 13,15)

I also suggest to study more anatomy, the 1st panel from page 6 would look better if the perspective and the anatomy wasn't so odd

The body proportions are inconsistent, aside from the less serious moments

the continuity of action in page 9 is a tad confusing (like how did she trowed the other over)

 

[Qiklope]

wow, thank you very much for the detailed feedback! It's really helpful, got some new insights.
So lessons learned:

> I didn't really payed attention to the coherence and flow between the panels and pages. Because I just redrew the storyboard and didn't really thought about the content and composition itself. If I had spent some time to think about it, I would have noticed the obvious problem with the wrong hands and sword (which pops out when reading due to the different design for each hand).

> think about how the character designs can be perceived by the readers; don't use weird ideas just because it is cool, it has to be meaningful
> creating a visual temporal separation through character design

> work on anatomy and consistent body proportions. Instead of drawing page by page, it's probably better to sketch all the figures in one go. In that way I hope they will be more consistent. And only add details later, so that changes can be made easier.
> I should think about the page as a whole and don't focus to much on the details so that it's easier to understand for the reader.

> only use cursive writing for short texts or if it has a stylistic purpose, don't get in a situation where the readers do my job x)
One of my future projects contains a lot of manuscript texts, so it's important that I take readability into account; maybe make a duplicate version that is less aesthetic but has typed text.


It's confortable to have a more clear idea about where I should work towards. For my next project I won't do that much of cross hatchings and use solid tones of grey instead, which are less time consuming and easier to correct. Thank you again for the critical responses!

 

[KatoShuu]

Bad(?)
Fooly's symbol on his clothe change from a "Y-shape" into a "Arrow-shape" (I don't know how to say this)
Page 2: Both of her hands looks weird
Page 5: From curve sword to straight sword
page 6: weird hand and arm
Page 8: Is she folding her hand?
Page 9: I thought she was threw Folly
Page 10: Why use dots instead of shadows? Did it just switch arm?
Page 11: Isn't her right arm that was injured? Fooly's thumb looks weird. Does spelling mistake also count? Would be better if put Fooly under her sword like it's shown on the next panel?
Page 13: " I cover my body with armor..." but it's just cloths. Her pointy finger looks weird, page 9's pointy finger looks better

Cool
Page 7: I love how you drew first panel (is that a Shaft head tilt?)
page 9: The last panel looks very very cool (not just because of the abs)
Page 9: Last panel looks cool
Page 11: The panel where Fooly laughs looks cool. Stab Folly
Page 16: Happy ending <3

I don't know where to put this
Page 11: The style(?) for the "my arm is healed" panel is different
Page 14: First panel looks like it was straight from the manga itself

Questions
What made you decide to change their design?
Why did you decide to put on a curse on Knight/Leo?
Why did you make Fooly into an Elf and blindfold him? (He feels like that Dark Souls Character, I don't know her name)

 

[Felix]

I really liked this doujin, perhaps even more than the original!

 

[Qiklope]

I am happy to hear that Felix! :3


@KatoShuu Thank you for your tips!
Indeed shaped changed, wasn't intendted. The spelling mistake you mention is it the missing words? Those two are quite stupid mistakes made by inattention; I should use more my brain and maybe look for a proof reader.
Same for the wrong arm/hand problem, it's stupid, I really have to work on that and the anatomy.

The bad points on page 5 and 10 were meant as stylistical effect: the sword looks bent due to the fast movement (it's a real optical effect and when drawn, can help to create a more fluid action) and the dot pattern is often used in manga for awkward and static panels. I saw both multiple times in mangas, but maybe I din't apply them in a good way in my pages.

Why the panel with the healed arm looks different, maybe it's because I ended up downscaling the panel and thus the lines are thinner. Or is the background effect out of place/too shoujo?
Yeah the similarity with the original manga on page 14 is normal, the head position was specified in the assigned storyboard.

I chose to change the character designs because I didn't want to just copy the original. About the curse, I wanted to see if I could influence the story setting with just the designs without changing the panels composition and texts. There are still some incohereces, like the reference to the armor, but to justify it I drew a flash foward where she wears one, so that it may imply that she wears on most of the time or has to in wear one in public.
Because my design for fooly didn't had any elements that referred to his mage class (like a staff), and because he uses magic I thought it may be a good idea to make him an elf because that are almost always portrayed in stories having magical powers. I added a blindfold to make his design more interesting and mystical as he can see through it (magical sight?). Then I tried to play a bit with symbolism: he loses it when he witnesses knight Leo's inhuman power and understands her true nature. On the other side, Leo's braid gets loose to imply she "breaks free from her chains" / opens up. I admit it's a bit far-fetched, but I wanted the charaters to mentally change with the events in the one-shot and reflect this in their design. Also for the final armor, I integrated the front of the cyclop's skull and the tooth front the blood golem (got the idea from the Monster Hunter game).

 

[Damniel]

WOO

 

[BabyPyroshark]

this is hella cute omg

 

[Figu]

This was pretty neat, always cool to see artists' practice material, they often carry a raw quality you won't find in most end versions, taking off the edge and spontaneity of the work.