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skyflyinginaction · 6 months

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Clamp Art Style Analysis: Series styles: Kobato

While I was writing this there was a reason I couldn’t elaborate on Kobato it was because I lacked context. I missed a lot of things on Kobato due to the lack of context. Clamp art is extensive so I predicted I may not be able to cover it in one post. This post is written based on an interview I read so I am going to explain the art in Kobato to the best of my abilities.

Kobato ran in two magazines, monthly Sunday GX magazine and new type, Sunday Gx was the first magazine from Kadokawa that published Kobato and the Newtype was the second. Both magazines had male readers whereas Newtype had a male readership and Sunday Gx was a senine magazine. In Sunday Gx, there were lots of works with many screen tones and gradients all of them had ink but had a clean print without screen tones and gradient on them had a lot of ink but had clean print without the screen tone becoming blurred clamp couldn’t cramp to 20 panels in one page for Sunday Gx. While Clamp was drawing Kobato in Newtype there were a lot of problems, clamp found drawing Kobato in Newtype tough because of the tight deadlines which caused them to end up falling behind schedule to finish it. Though Netype had a large format Clamp, it couldn't cram 10 or 20 clamps and could only draw 14 pages which didn’t allow for story progression. Clamp even said they didn’t want to read a cramped shoujo manga.

Kobato was created while Clamp was working on Tsubasa during the time, Clamp knew Tsubasa would have a darker storyline as it progressed so Clamp wanted to depict a brighter story Clamp wanted to create a story with a cute girl as the main character and decided that the story Kobato was intended for a happy ending.

When it came to creating the character Kobato, the editor from Sunday Gx magazine said wanted a character to become a muse of the magazine. in creating a divine character clamp had no clear image of what a goddess is since the idea of a goddess can change over time so it is hard for them to picture it. However, clamp misinterpreted the desire when in fact the editor didn’t ask Clamp to create the goddess of the magazine but to make a character that readers can fall in love with something that both girls and boys would enjoy.

Kobato may have come off as regular shojo manga but the manga seemed to be created with a much older audience in mind judged by how it ran in a senine magazine it had some properties as shojo manga sprinkled in. Kobato has a bit of realism in it and references the supernatural but there is nothing too serious going on. It was drawn to be aimed for a relaxed feel so there were no constant dramatic events and intense pursuits. Despite how real the manga can be the tone of the manga is very relaxed that was what Clamp is creating it for.

When it came to describing the contents of the series they discussed it with their editor like with the lines of argument

drew sketches made various changes and corrections clamp had the story ready in two to three minutes but the character designs took 20 minutes. when it came to creating character designs in Kobato, Kobato took the longest

deciding what type of hairstyle for Kobato is difficult it had a hard time they didn’t know whether to make it long or short when it came to kobato’s hairstyle clamp did not know whether to make it long or short it wasn’t a minor manner since Kobato is supposed to be the main image of the magazine.

They wanted to draw girls with long hair as a reaction to Sakura from Tsubasa who has short hair, but long hair gave Clamp less room for variations of style but was difficult to ink all the time in manga, and in truth, Clamp can invent unreal hairstyles that would cost less to draw her hair. Clamp strived to create a hairstyle that could be reproduced in reality but clamp disliked the fact the set of the hairstyle looked unnatural. so for the hairstyle, they created a fusion of short and long hair.

When it comes to drawing and making stories Clamp pays good attention to the details of the story they are creating clamp needs background information of the story they are working on this is seen in the way the the characters in Clamp wore different clothes each time they appeared. In Tsubasa, the main characters wear different outfits because they are traveling across different worlds so the clothes are created to reflect that. That's more groundbreaking in a sense since people change their clothes every day it feels like you're watching real people for this aspect.

For Kobato her clothing is fundamental to her concept. Kobato clothes change all the time. This aspect goes over people's heads since the characters in Clamp in different clothes are nothing new that may be something we don’t notice at first due to Clamp always their character changing their clothes. However one may ask how someone who is carrying minimal stuff carries all those clothes. This aspect causes readers to question how she got all those outfits despite the fact that she barely carries anything with her. her changing her clothes each time makes readers wonder where she is carrying her outfits despite not carrying anything due to her lifestyle

It was revealed that Kobato’s clothes changing is a result of a mysterious ability that references that Kobato is not an ordinary human, and having to reveal that ability may spoil her true identity. the reason why Clamp drew Kobato's clothes change every day is that Kobato wearing the same outfit would be a spoiler to her true identity since people don’t wear the same clothes every day and having Kobato wear the same outfit would be much of spoiler clamp keeps Kobato's true identity ambiguous Kobatos a character whose never changes but wears a different outfit

Clamp had fun designing cute hats for Kobato. Clamp struggled with whether or not Kobato leaves the hat on or takes it off when she went to sleep but ultimately decided to leave it on asleep

Clamp wanted to create a new type of heroine that they hadn’t invented until now, someone suggested that Kobato is derived from Anne of Green Gables though Kobato was not much of a reference to it was more like Mary Poppins.

Kobato's character design is based on Mary Poppins. Both are mysterious entities, wear hats, and carry a bag and umbrella. Kobato wearing many different outfits reference to Mary Poppins’ never-ending bag the umbrella is a clever nod to Mary Poppins which is seen in the colored illustrations

that appeared in Clamp in Wonderland

and mentioned briefly in the main story Kobato is an easy call back to Mary Poppins in both character and design and her role in helping people in the stories. Kobato's design referenced Mary Poppins and Clamp had wanted some elements of Comet, a manga character from the 1960s, but Clamp gave up since it didn’t fit the profile of a clumsy character they were looking for.

For Ioryogi’s design: His design came from a doodle Nekoi did that was seen on the official clamp website, Nekoi first drew him in clamp no Kiseki about a blue stuffed dog Ohkawa liked the idea it became the partner for Kobato they decided to use Ioryogi’s design in the manga because they needed a partner for the protagonist someone that Kobato could talk to. While they were designing Ioryogi's true form, they settled to make Ioriyogi more beast-like this is from Ohkawa who thought that beast-like characters that get into conflicts with heaven as punishment were turned into stuffed animals this is made to explain why he is stuck in a stuffed animal form that his stuffed animal form can be from how he was beast-like in his form Designing his true form took some time Ioriyogi has a wolf-like appearance. Nekoi and Mokona settled on creating animalistic elements in the designs for the rest of the characters in Kobato to draw the others the true forms as more beastlike

Next up is Fujimoto, Fujimoto is named after Kiyokazu Fujimoto the chief of the project department of Pyrotechnist, the company that works as a clamp managing agent. This isn’t the first time that Clamp took the name of someone they know and used it to name their character in their works; they did that before as seen within the character seichiro aoki of x taken from their editor. They take the names of people that they know and use the names on their characters to put a bit of themselves in the works. Fujimoto's distinctive features in his design are his glasses and long ponytail. However, Fujimoto's ponytail is cut off at the end when he's a lawyer, a reference to a sense of having aged over the years and gives the sense that he changed to maintain the same hairstyle while also showing change made the tail longer in his lawyer outfit.

Although Clamp loved drawing glasses, they found glasses in terms of drawing in manga hard. The lens is difficult to handle when drawing because it affects the expressions in the eyes of the characters Sayaka was drawn with glasses because Clamp wanted a female character with glasses.

Nekoi created the character designs from Wish; it was Nekoi who originally designed the characters for Wish and had a hand in designing and creating Suisho’s clothes Suishou’s clothes look similar to what the angels in Wish wore.

Mokona created the world for Kobato. Mokona found it challenging to create a new world in Kobato and decide how to design it.

Kobato Reference to other works that crossed over like Wish but are more casual compared to Tsubasa and Holics tightly connected works

As I pointed out before in Kobato’s character design section, drawing long hair is challenging due to the amount of lines to ink, Clamp wanted to create characters with long hair only to change midway when they realized the difficulty. clamp found drawing long hair to be challenging due to inking it and the number of lines that go with long hair

Clamp aimed to create an atmosphere that was close to shoujo manga. Kobato uses thin lines in the manga similar to the lines of card captor Sakura and less ink which gave it a similar shojo manga appearance.

Clamp tried to not make the panels too dark and didn’t have many characters with dark hair having many characters with dark hair darkened the visuals. They were careful about it. This Clamp uses less toning in the pages which has a lighter feel similar to how Clamp aimed for something bright and light and the paneling flows well is to make it as relaxed so they make it bright and light

The colors that are used for the illustrations had a soft watercolor touch they didn’t paint too heavily with Kobato illustrations so they did it by not layering too much paint and the brush strokes could remain visible which causes it to go beyond the edges.

So this is my post on Kobato art style analysis. This is something I missed and tried to explain but I could botch explain the artstyle in this post but I’m glad I expanded on Kobato's section.

#clamp #kobato #kobato hanato #Ioryogi #my meta

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