#swmd

I'm back with another redrawing of a panel from the manhwa "She wasn't my daughter" (from episode 39).

@bernkastel11 said a while ago that they'd love to see how I'd redesign the dresses Diana and Alicia wear in the manhwa art:

I tried to follow the description of Alicia's dress from the novel: A yellow bell-shaped dress paired with a purple shawl and amethyst jewelry.

I've said before that I'm not really a fan of dressing the villain badly to make them the readers' laughinstock while making the protagonist look better by comparison. Plus, almost all the dresses Alicia owned were a gift from Diana, so there's no way Diana gave her a "ridiculous" dress.

That's why I made her dress pretty while keeping it simple, compared to the dress Diana is wearing.

Diana, however, had no description of her attire, so I had more creative freedom. I went with a pink dress, as it's Diana's favorite color according to the novel, and of course I had to pair it with diamond jewelry, since they always bring up the Pereshte diamond mines.

You can see my hairstyle and clothing redesigns here:

Similar to my last post, I tried drawing and rendering the background myself, which isn't perfect by any means, and I still needed a couple of 3d models from the Clip Studio Asset store to pull it off. But I'm happy I took the time to actually work on a background instead of rendering one of the 3D models I already own and calling it a day.

I can only hope I'll get better with practice, and that you don't mind some amateurish background work for now.😅

Vani out. See you next year with more fan art and redesigns! Thank you all for your support and love! ❤️

Ayyyyyyy chapter 4 is here 🌼 

I am so trash for my sweet stoner husband please forgive me. I hope to get right into chapter 5 as soon as I can. Can’t promise it’ll be within a month though. (Damn I am so lazy). 

I'm back from the grave, everyone!

This time, I redrew this panel from episode 8 of the manhwa "She wasn't my daughter."

What's my opinion on the manhwa?

It's really messed up how they made a FIFTEEN-year-old the immense evil in the story when Alicia could have easily filled that role. I feel they made Catherine overly evil to justify all the stuff that happened to her throughout the story as "karma".

I've already read the whole novel and am currently waiting for the manhwa's second season to be published, as I want to see how they adapt certain scenes in a comic format.

Getting that out of the way, I wanted to redraw this scene as it's a critical moment (when Catherine finds out the truth. I won't say much more to avoid any spoilers for anyone who wishes to read it) and I wanted to make it look more dramatic.

I'm not complaining or saying "I can do better than you, manhwa artist!" These poor artists have to draw panels for weekly episodes, and it'd be very unfair and ignorant to demand more "quality" when they are overworked and dealing with burnout.

I do these redrawings for fun, as I have stated several times before, and as a practice for me in terms of composition, rendering, and, in this case, background.

I actually did the background myself for once instead of relying on rendered 3D models from Acon3D. I've seen a lot of people hating on the overuse of 3D models in comics, and, since I don't have the week limit most manhwa artists have, I should try doing a background myself.

Although I did use 3d models as references for some of the furniture, I don't know yet how to do elegant furniture in different perspectives.

You can see the background without effects here:

I agree with the idea that Calypso and Alicia are the main villains, rather than making Catherine, the fifteen-year-old, the BIG evil that the author depicts her as.

I actually brainstormed a couple of ideas with @pruneunfair (ILY so much, girl ❤️) on how to make Alicia and Calypso's roles as villains more prominent and to emphasize Catherine's role as a victim of neglectful, selfish parents.

A few of them (which I remember being me who brought it forward first, correct me if I'm wrong):

I'm a big Michael Jackson fan — very random — and you might think, "What does that have to do with any of this?" but please, bear with me. I wanted to emphasize Alicia's greed and her uncaring attitude toward her own child (since the story tries to elicit sympathy by making her "love" Catherine), so I drew inspiration from the infamous Evan Chandler. Mainly, how he talks on this 1993 phone call, saying that helping Jordie (his own son) is IRRELEVANT to him and making it very clear that his only objective is to get money. He was my main inspiration for the vibe I want Alicia to have as a villain.

On the same note, I also imagined Alicia engaging in the same shady business as Evan Chandler, a dentist, did for extra fees to certain addicted patients. Alicia supposedly bribed the entire staff of the Grand Duchy; she needed a lot of money for that — and she needed it quickly, too.

Another idea I had was to, while also lying about Diana's child being stillborn, she also lied to Calypso about the gender. She did that to distance him from Diana further, since she was allegedly unable to give him a male heir. But this also backfired, since Calypso resented having to "settle for" Catherine, a girl, when he could've had a son with Diana. Plus, this would make it more believable that Calypso didn't put two and two together and realize Aisel is his biological child, since he genuinely believed his child with Diana had been a boy.

Also, to gain more influence over Catherine, I thought about having Alicia as a Munchausen by proxy—essentially making Catherine sick on purpose—so she could spend more time with her, since she's still just the estate’s doctor and has to act accordingly around the young lady. When you need to convince a child of something, you need time with them. Plus, I believe this would also make her plan for Catherine to go "blind suddenly" and have Diana sacrifice her sight work better in that context. She stopped making Catherine sick intentionally after Diana became blind because she no longer needed to worry about Diana noticing how much time she was spending with "her" daughter, which wasn’t related to Catherine’s health. This would also be a key plot point for Diana to realize how Alicia was manipulating and using Catherine, especially since her daughter, who often got sick unexpectedly, was healthy after she sacrificed her sight.

Alicia's feelings toward Catherine in this version? She's essentially her backup golden goose for her to use once she gets rid of Diana, ensuring she would still have benefits from the Marquisate of Pereshte as Catherine is the Marquis's only granddaughter.

Calypso's feelings towards Catherine? Like I said before, he resents having to settle for a daughter —an illegitimate one —instead of the legitimate son he could have had with Diana. He feels ashamed that Catherine is the result and proof of his adultery, but she's the only child he has left (which isn't that different from the canon).

Alicia would be the one to make a pact with Eclipse to fake Catherine's mana and powers.

I don't want to portray Catherine as an innocent angel misunderstood by others, like many do when trying to make the villain sympathetic (I'm looking at you, MALEFICENT LIVE-ACTION). I want her to be an asshole and cruel to Aisel, but at a kid's level — a bully, not the sadistic beast the story made her out to be. She would still insult Aisel daily, but most of the harsh words she yells at her, like: lowlife, worthless, trash, are actually directed at herself. Catherine isn't a saint, but she's still a child whose entire world was turned upside down. Everything she believed was true turned out to be a lie, and she was made an accomplice in her father's affair and her biological mother's plans at just 10 years old. This would definitely mess with a child's mind and cause behavioral issues.

Catherine, on the first timeline, deeply mourned the deaths of Diana and Aisel. She had no involvement in the plan to kill Diana and didn't find out until it was already carried out.

I imagine more time passed between Diana's death and Rueri discovering she was actually murdered (Rueri finds out immediately in the novel), during which Catherine became very depressed (Blue Diamond level) and was overwhelmed by guilt. I actually did a couple of sketches of Catherine like that:

Regarding the first timeline, I imagine Calypso essentially giving Alicia the middle finger by marrying another high-ranking woman instead of her, as he "promised" he would after she killed Diana. He has already achieved what he wanted without getting his hands dirty, and with the Pereshte diamond mines, he no longer needs Alicia except as a mistress.

Following the first timeline, Rueri did take his violent revenge on Calypso and Alicia after he found out she had been murdered. Catherine reveals the truth about her own parentage and begs him to bring back both Diana and Aisel. Rueri forbids Catherine from being part of the deal with Eclipse because he doesn't want to put her at risk while summoning a DEMON, so she doesn't have the memories from the first timeline, unlike Rueri, Diana, and Aisel.

Rueri isn't an asshole to Catherine after the regression and actually feels sorry for her, as he sees how Diana initially acts distant toward her. He’s the only one who knows how much Catherine mourned her mother and how deeply her death affected her. However, like in the canon, he can't reveal this to Diana because of the deal with Eclipse.

To wrap this up, since I’ve written a lot and I might be boring you with all my ideas (and the couple of gifs I added to this, sorry), I thought of Catherine having a redemption arc like Anastasia did in Cinderella 3. I love Anastasia and Cinderella ❤️ Plus, I’d really like a small moment between Catherine and the Marquis Pereshte, similar to when the king tells Anastasia that "Everyone deserves true love" (and him telling Catherine about his good friend, Alicia's father, Catherine's biological grandfather, whom she never got to meet).

I'm sorry if this was very long and tedious to read. I'd love to hear your opinion on these ideas of mine for an alternative version of SWMD.

I had other ideas, but I can't remember. I might have to check on my DM's with Pruneunfair to see what I forgot.

Hope you enjoyed it, and I will be waiting to read any comments you have on my take on SWMD

They're not even being subtle about how much they hate Alicia with the garish purple gown. Again the designs aren't ugly but it's still not good at all

But what's worse is how Alicia and Diana are meant to be mothers here but they dress like two girlfriends who are not mothers or married, frankly I would have liked it if they were more mature looking and more appropriately dressed as women who are both mothers

I would love to redraw it, to be honest.

I don't mind the color being garish, since the novel describes it as such. HOWEVER, the novel describes Alicia's dress as a bell-shaped, garish, almost neon-yellow (not sure how you get that in whatever time period they live in, but they might attribute it to some "magical dyes" or some BS) dress, with a garish purple shawl and amethyst jewelry.

I think it would depend a lot on which point in Catherine’s life the reader reincarnates into. Like, it would be a very different approach if the reader reincarnated on the day Catherine was born, or when Catherine discovers Alicia is her biological mother at age ten, or directly at the same time as Diana’s and Iselle’s regression.

That you have to read She wasn't my Daughter, that monstrosity is disgusting but you pull through to give us great redraws and I read Prune's post about Diana being a shit mother in the novel with the screenshots provided by you

Btw I love the redraw Catherine, she actually looks way better than the original design and actually feels historical with her gown and hairstyle, not that the original is bad but just like every other Manhwas' continuous flaws: Their fashion is still not very historical themed and often fell into the modernized designs

All the posts with screenshots of the novel from Prune's post came from me. I love discussing with her how grossly Catherine was handled and how much of a Mary Sue Aisel is, so it wasn't terrible. But, thanks for your condolences :3

I'm so glad to hear you liked my last redrawing ❤️

I had quite a bit of fun looking for a good historical reference for Catherine's clothing, and ended up choosing the one I did since I love the Hesse-Rhine sisters so much.