“miki is the only good guy in utena” is such a weird take on so many levels but also. mamiya is actually the only good guy in utena. such an ally to women, in fact, that he literally died. more men should really be learning from him.
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When the ambitious Miki and the conformist Gas cross paths, it's pretty much an "unstoppable force VS unmovable object" situation.
Last but not least, a couple of fan favorites! My redesign process was very different for each one: I did a quick sketch of Gas on day one, as soon as I was done with Raf and Sulfus, and I pretty much stuck to it. Meanwhile, I couldn't form a clear thought for Miki until my AFapril comic prompted me to do it!
Now, about that creative process:
While Miki's canon designs are significantly different, Gas is pretty straightforward. Even then, I decided to work on unifying their respective color palettes first, and then focus on their redesigns proper.
I went with their Prisma Fly colors as their new main colors. To contrast the orange better, I switched Gas' purple for a washed-out blue, and included black and white for variety's sake. In Miki's case I went with three shades of forest green and included key lime green since it's closer to yellow and pops out nicely; I also included desaturated browns and off-whites to visually frame the key lime better.
Since Miki is characterized as somewhat non-conforming in the comics, I doubled down and updated her parka jacket to something more extreme-sports looking (thank you @haloheadhater for helping me figure that one out!), added thick denim jeans to the mix and the toughest pair of timber boots I could come up with.
Gas is the kind of character that tries to look tough (despite being the least intimidating devil ever), so I added a biker's denim vest to crank the Cool Factor™ to the max. There's little difference between his canon designs, so blending them together was easy enough. I tried to preserve his iconic Emo Frog shirt with a minimalist design, all derived from triangles to keep in line with the devil design philosophy I've been keeping so far.
I wanted to reflect Miki's dragonfly mascot in her overall design, so I gave her wings a peculiar shape. While adult angels may have multiple pairs, Miki's wings are a single pair: I took inspiration from pennant-winged nightjars for her wing design.
Officially, Gas has the smallest wing-to-body ratio of the entire cast. He can still fly just fine, no worries, but he took more naturally to phasing walls and floors around the school to get by. My biggest challenge was his horns and wings, specifically finding the right shade of orange so they would not blend with his ginger hair. I didn't want to use red for his hair, nor blue for his horns/wings like his original designs, so I had to put my eyes to the test there.
Mascot placement once again comes with meaning: Gas' tomato frog may have bright and intimidating colors, but it's actually cute, round and inoffensive; it rests right over his heart to represent his true nature. Miki's green darner dragonfly hangs at the end of her braid: braids are often associated with bravery, wisdom, patience or experience in character design, and dragonflies are renowned for their maneuverability; this way, Miki's core traits are in the end held together by her ability to adjust on the fly.
There it is! the entire main cast of Angel's Friends, redesigned :D
I've also been working on the humans and teachers, but it'll be a while before I finish those. For now my attention is almost entirely on my rewrite fic, I'll Fly With You. Shameless self-promotion aside, I'm really proud of my script and characters, and I really appreciate it when I get comments/kudos/hits. So far everyone's been really kind and excited and I definitely share on the enthusiasm!
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It's concerning how in love I am with @gattnk 's redesigns of Angel's Friends characters. /j
For some reason I'm deep inside the Angel's Friends trenches even through the show ended like 10+ years ago. Blame my monkey ADHD brain I guess. Anyways, 6 year old me was in a CHOKEHOLD because of this show (and many other 2000's Italian magical girl medias) but I didn't have the artistic ability to channel that love.
Now I do.
So suffer.
Also gave Cabiria and Kabalè cigarettes because it's Hell Sulphur City so I think substance abuse is, unfortunately, a bit more normalized. Just a HC tho.
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Ciaoo a tutti!! 🌜
These are early messy doodles of one of my Angel's Friends comic' au! Since I'm planning to post soon new contents about it, I thought to share also these one-years-old pages of my sketchbook! .3.
It was pretty funny to re-imagine all the relationships between the main cast of the story and possible backstories for each character! You can find the translated summary of some notes under the pages! Enjoy ✨
Instagram posts: 1# concept, 2# concept and 3# concept
↑ Early concepts about 😈 characters, especially about Raf and Ang-Lì. These two have a strong relationship in this story of mine and Raf is always ready to save Ang-Lì from problems when she's not busy training or escape from some of her fans! (She's a young devilish fashion model)
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↑ Sulfus is a model student, a very determined and reliable angel, although his unusual mascot gives him a somewhat dangerous aura! His design was one of the first I revisited later and required much more study than others character designs to meet my idea of his character! ಥ‿ಥ
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↑ Kabalé and Cabiria are close friends of Sulfus. Kabalé is a joyful and sunny young angel, while Cabiria is a refined little angel always ready to support her friends! 😇
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↑ At first, I was thinking of giving Raf an older brother - since the story does not involve the same plot as the original comics with the monstrous golems called Riviventi - who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. But ... ideas changed, although this detail would have led to the first interaction between Raf and Sulfus in the old version of the au plot! 🫠
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↑ At first I imagined Miki as a strong little devil fighter, daughter of a famous hell fighter from the city of Zolfanello! She is Raf's training partner and his right-hand man! Gabi is a genius with sleep problems and poor social skills! Uriè is... a lunatic young devil with few peculiar "gifts"! 🤪
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CLOSE UPS
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Day 2 favourite human
My dumbass posted the wrong piece yesterday and didn’t realise till today on day3 so double post today 🥲
But anyway Matteo has to be my favourite human idk what this says about my taste in general (or maybe bc Gas and Miki look after him and they are my favourites) but I like that we have the same hobbies and also he’s the embodiment of colour blue.
Artbase credit on Pinterest
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Angel's Friends redraw!! ^^
Outfit simplificado de Miki ❄️
Rediseño de Mara, la humana asignada de Úrie y Gas!!
La visualice con un estilo scene, el cual vestiría en su casa o donde sus compañeros no se encuentren a la vista. En la escuela viste ropa más básica.
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