Magical Girls Are Always Awesome

[link_worshiper]

So I finally came up with designs for a magical girl team to fit in the new manga story I’ve been tinkering with. Their little outfits started out more traditional fantasy and then ended up like this because I find Native American spirituality wonderful and also that it is underdone when it comes to things that reference it. So I thought that could

Comments

[stripedpetunia]

I have one problem with this but it's a big one: if their costumes and powers are all Native mythology, why are the characters all white?

[link_worshiper]

Because my markers were dying. This is something that someone else has mentioned to me, so further illustrations of them will probably have varied skin tones. I hadn't really thought in this sense since my references to this kind of thing was really only in the colours for their outfits and their powers, but nothing specifically religious. You know, kind of like how Sailor Mars is the red one with fire powers, so the red one here is associated with red and the southern wind, and she has sun powers. That's about it. I might redesign the outfits so the feathers are gone and just leave it with the colours so it's less obvious. I had wanted to source something for the mythos so there was some sort of reference point I could lean on, but as I said... I was thinking more in terms of how like Sailor Moon and Eva borrow things from religions more than in an ethnic sense, if that makes sense.

[stripedpetunia]

I see where you're coming from, you just gotta watch the racism angle with this concept. Or they'll end up resembling hipsters in headdresses.

[link_worshiper]

No, that's valid. And this is pretty much the first finished picture I've made of them. I think if I remove the feathers, I can keep the colour-scheme and the associations and be okay. It's not like I'm going to have them meet the great spirit and get powers or something lol. The whole thing had originally been a bit more traditional fantasy and I kind of intend to keep that sort of story... I just didn't want to end up with a team of characters that seemed like it had been done a million times.

[bloodywingz]

The outfits kind of look like a mix of Swedish and Gypsy.