From Super Manga Matrix by Hiroyoshi

From Super Manga Matrix by Hiroyoshi Tsukamoto

Askilian submitted:

Hello! I hope I’m doing this correctly but I wanted to submit this little redraw I did today.

The goat-bird-lady really angered me because I loooove human/other-things hybrids, they make great characters for role playing games and seeing this cool concept ruined like that… Huh.
So, I gave it a try!

I started by redlining this mess and I don’t know if it was a good idea because I was utterly confused by the anatomy of this poor woman. Her torso is waaaay too long with no room for organs (unless they’re in her chest). Her pelvis is… I don’t know, I couldn’t only guess what was going on (hence the dotted line. Also I’m not sorry for my bad pun.) and her thigh might be running away from her body ? Or maybe it’s a pouch to store her organs ? I also noticed that her fingers on her left hand might be incorrectly positioned on the hilt of her sword but it’s really a minor detail at this point.

I looked at the text too and even here, I was unhappy. First, « ethnic cosume » : What does that mean ? To me, it read like an excuse to make her wore this skimpy things…

Then, her « soft skin » that constrast with the « cruel power of her sword » , really ? Looking at her, I don’t see anything fearsome or cruel, especially with her face drawing a complete blank and her pose looking more like a pinup pose than a warrior / soldier pose. Similarly, she’s supposed to have bird legs but only her feet are birdlike. I can only see that as a way to avoid at all cost to make her too inhuman because otherwise she wouldn’t be as sexy. I showed the picture to a friend and at first, he didn’t even notice that she was supposed to be part bird…

Onto the redraw, then! I ditched almost entierly the drawing from the book and focused more on the text to make something more fitting. Of course I tried to giver her a more realistic body while keeping her big chest. I kept the idea of her kneeling but I altered the pose to make her look more like a soldier. I tried to give her a more fearsome look and more than a blank face. I added rectangular pupils (like goats). For the costume, well, as I couldn’t really make my mind about what « ethnic costume » means and as I didn’t want to risk something that would fall into cultural appropriation, I kept the idea that it was only to make her scantily dressed. I’m usually not a fan of this kind of costume for my warrior characters but I gave it a shot : I though about your recent D&D post and tried to do something in the same vein as the last picture (the lady with a tiger). I don’t know if I did well or not, that is literally the first time that I try doing that! I tried to add more part that could be made of something more protective like boiled leather while getting rid of the boob-window.

Also I made the scales on her legs go higher to really show the bird part of her.

I hope that I did this correctly! I really love this blog and as a amateur, I learned a lot just by reading stuff here. I made a lot of progress, especially when drawing women ( I’m sure you’re surprised :D ). So this redraw is also here as a tribute to your work and a way to show my progress. As I'm’ always looking for feedback and ways to improve, I would be glad if you could give some comments (especially if I messed something up in the process!)

I really like that you laid out your thought process and what you changed and why.  I also really like what you did with it because you went with the “matrix” part of it and kept the goat horns, birds legs, etc, and tried to make her into a soldier.  And I like that you note how you kept the large chest, since that in itself is not necessarily an issue (lots of women have large chests).  (:

I also like that expression you gave her because it makes her look confident and somewhat sinister, which is cool.  It gives some characterization to her just in the expression! (and the pose adds to that too)

Your awesome redraw & explanation has me thinking about maybe using something like this for the next contest, like seeing how other people put together a character based on a combination of traits. :3  I like seeing different takes on the same concept, and from feedback I get in my inbox, it helps a lot of other people too!  Thank you so much for the effort you put into this and submitting it!