New Manga From The Pen of [AOD]!: The Princess of Windmills!

See it here!

The Princess of Windmills

Art by: Hitotsumami; Story by: [AOD]

An epic fantasy adventure story, The Princess of Windmills depicts the journey of young Rena D'Alberville, the princess of the tiny Alber Valley on the western coast of the continent of Excalbia. Living in peace and harmony with her villagers in the sleepy hamlet of Alberville, at one with the seasons and the elements, Rena longs for distant coasts, mysterious hills, and the lofty promise of the free skyways.

One day the idyll is broken, however, with the receipt of an urgent message, summoning Rena to a mythic congress of nobles and princes from across the continent, in the mist-veiled intrigue of the Imperial city of Rubicunda. Rena must embark on a perilous journey to the far East, over the mountains, and across the dangerous continent of Excalbia in a fragile sail-powered airship.

Who knows what adventure awaits her?

Featuring the art of one of Comicdish's rising young supernovas, Hitotsumami, The Princess of Windmills creates a brand-new unconventional fantasy setting completely different from the usual dungeons and dragons fare found in most webcomics, and fuses both manga-style characters with a distinctly European sensibility inherited from bandes-dessinées.

It's a project we're both very excited to bring to you!

Sample Pages

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edited 1st May '10 9:50:45 AM by [AOD]

That's title's a thing, that's what that is.

Well, it's certainly purty.

Dr. Breaudaire's mustache is... kind of worrying. A pedostache.

Anyway, not really enough for me to tell how the story is. It does seem a bit... stilted? Guess I'll read more later.

edited 1st May '10 10:26:19 AM by Tzetze

YEAHHH awesome. I've been reading HDS for the longest time so I was quite interested in this.

Hmm... thoughts, thoughts.

The title reminds me of "Feel Good Inc". "Windmill, windmill for the land, love forever, hand in hand~"

The "cover" page and the landscape on the first page are absolutely gorgeous, but on the rest, it seems like the style could still use some polishing, as it looks a little stiff.

The speech, too, is a bit stiff, but if it's an intentional part of the setting, I can accept it. The dialogue is rather cleverly written for the most part. I liked the introduction with the shopping list, or the conversation between the princess and the crier. It's stylized, but if you can get it to feel natural, and have it coalesce with the setting, it will be good. The one thing that really bothered me about the writing was the somewhat melodramatic introduction to her name. Monologueing is fine, but unless you are a really large ham, you normally won't go mentally shouting your name like that. That made it too obvious that you're building up to introducing the lady to the reader.

I'm unclear on the update schedule. "Bimonthly" can mean either twice a month or every other month. I'm also not clear on what to make of 12-page installments. The calendar seems to indicate updates every other day. If you're going to update slowly and in batches, you should probably adapt the website's navigation to those conditions.

That said, I'm curious as to what the unconventional setting is that you're going to bring to the table, and I have high hopes for the characterization of the heroine.

PS: Uhm... the first page says "What should I buy today at market?", which is, you know, missing a word.

I like it, and I'll be looking forward to each new page eagerly.

Not much to say that hasn't been said.

Bimonthly means every other month, meaning a chapter every two months, meaning two 12-15 page installments a month for 24-30 page chapters. The calendar is misleading. I upload batches at the end of the month, putting them on the days in the archive that they would have appeared on if it updated 3 times a week.

The reason for this is that we figure that it works best when read as a single "clump". But my artist is in school, so he can't draw 24 pages a month, so we split up the 24-30 page chapters into halves and update at 12 page intervals at the end of each month. However, the way the archive system is set up, you can only have one "page" in a day, not several pages.

These are limitations of the website design, and inherent to the hosting service. I can do nothing about them.

And yeah, I was going for a kind of old-fashioned sounding sort of dialogue. Because it's fantasy, you see...

edited 2nd May '10 7:06:24 AM by [AOD]

PS: Uhm... the first page says "What should I buy today at market?", which is, you know, missing a word.

That's valid, actually, just archaic.

Ooooh, okay then. Like "at home", then, I guess...

Well, there's nothing wrong with some stylized dialogue. I'd give you hints for how to make sure you're not overdoing it, but frankly I'd be lying if I said I have any. ^^;

Intriguing... at least, judging from the sample pages and synopsis. I'll give it a proper read-though tomorrow.

Chapter 1, Part II complete! The chapter is finally finished, and a whole ton of new stuff is coming up in Chapter 2, where things start to get "real". Look for it June 15th!

Rena seems to be channeling all of anime's hot-blooded heroes in this page.

Anyway, awesome work. I'm patiently awaiting the next chapter right now.

"Do you see me? hear my voice now."

"No matter who or who you become..."

Did you rush these pages a bit, perchance?

Um... no? Hito worked really hard on those pages, actually.

edited 1st Jun '10 8:30:08 AM by [AOD]

I don't mean to disrespect your work, I'm just saying... I noticed two typographical errors.

Oh, is that what you meant? You should've said so!

New half-chapter

Dialogue problem again. "If we you were to disobey an imperial summons..."◊

I must say, things have certainly gotten a lot more interesting. I'd like to know more about this world and how it got to be that way.

Aah, the Scenery Porn...

I fixed the typos.

I'll be reading this AOD.

I love the story and setting, and while the art is still a bit unpolished in places (the big problem is that the characters tend to change appearances slightly between panels, but that is something that gets fixed with practice), like many webcomics it seems to be improving as the story goes on (and the artist, presumably, gets more practice). Nice work overall!

The archive function doesn't work; clicking a link takes you to a page with a spurious "&page=comic" in the URL.

Now I'll actually read the update.

Yes it does, what are you clicking on?

http://tpow.comicdish.com/index.php?page=archive

It brings you here.

I meant clicking a link on the archive page.

Anyway, about the comic itself: My main problem with it is that it seems somewhat melodramatic, going off the "stilted" earlier. It's distracting, but the setting and plot is interesting enough to me that I'll keep reading. And the artwork is pretty.