Artist Review: Fany

Posted on March 30, 2016 by foxfire in Manga Reviews

I don’t normally do this, but today I wanted to bring the spotlight to an author I discovered on Tapastic: Fany.

whitespace

A student of geology whose side hobby is drawing digital art and hamsters, her artwork is absolutely gorgeous. It’s on a whole other level. I mean, I’ve mentioned before that I love the artwork of The Pale Horse (and I still do!), but this goes above and beyond. If you might notice, The Pale Horse often “cheats” by skillfully arranging the panel boxes in such a way that it doesn’t require too much background. The people are always gorgeous, and the backgrounds are also lovely whenever they do emerge, but a lot of the time you make do with a door panel, a diagonal slice of bed, half of a beautiful gothic building… etc. The panels are cut artfully in such a way that it doesn’t really impact the reading, but nevertheless.

Fany’s art, though. There is literally no whitespace.

no whitespace

If there are small panels, they are overlaid over a larger panel that is also completely filled with color, and the backgrounds are breathtaking. You know those DeviantArt fantasy concept art that makes you go “wow”? Fany’s artwork is like that, except it scrolls and keeps going.

Of course, there are drawbacks. Art like this presumably takes a lot of work and isn’t suitable for weekly or even monthly long chapter releases. Fany has quite a few ongoing series, but they tend to be rather short compared to long series webtoon users might be used to, like Tower of God or The Gamer. A weekly release might contain only a single page, and a monthly release a short few pages. Tapastic‘s reader is also not my favorite – really not a fan of scrolling past those comments and ads to get to the next chapter. Still, it’s worth checking out for the art alone. Plus, the stories have a heartwarming, magical quality to them. If I had to describe it, it would be the stories of Studio Ghibli crossed with the art of Makoto Shinkai. A must-read.

Below are overviews of her main works:

Trivia from Nature
The World of Wishes
Skies Unlimited
Ikou’s Tutorials

Trivia from Nature

This one’s my favorite. It’s episodic, short little chapters on different interesting facts of nature that you never knew, such as how a bear caterpillar has to survive fourteen winters in order to become a moth, or how prehistoric lizards used scales to slow their fall. At the time of writing there are 21 episodes, with about 15-16 standalone little stories. Reminds me somewhat of Mushishi. (link to read)

The World of Wishes

A story of a discarded world dimension where wishes can come true for a certain price. The premise sounds amazing, but there’s only one chapter out at the moment, so there isn’t really enough to say. (link to read)

Skies Unlimited

These aren’t really stories, but series of beautiful illustrated landscapes. The vertical scroll invariably starts with the sky, but often extends down to the ground and sometimes even below ground (or below water). Little creatures or animals are sometimes included, and the landscapes range from realistic to fantastical. (link to read)

Ikou’s Tutorials

A series of Photoshop tutorials and tips taught by Ikou the Bat, a character from Trivia from Nature. Some of the tutorials are tailored specifically to creating webtoons on Tapastic, so it’s good for other aspiring webtoon artists! (link to read)