Diamanga (“beautiful walk”) is a precolonial martial art from Madagascar’s highlands. It was traditionally used to show off a young man’s agility and physical fitness, and was the subject of many popular demonstrations and competitions. Though there were several variations, a common rule was that only feet and legs could be used in offensive strikes.

Fehizoro, owing to his lower-than-average dexterity, has a heavily defensive fighting style. While he used to be the kid who usually went home bruised and bleeding, training with Tsimilefy has allowed him to become much better at dodging and parrying. He’s nowhere as good enough to enter fighting competitions, but good enough to regularly spar with Tsimilefy.

Tsimilefy, to put it best, is a show-off. Flying kicks, cartwheeling kicks, anything that looks acrobatic is his thing, which has earned him the nickname of Ikingadaka (“he of the spry kicks”) in competitions. Among the other competitive fighters, Tsimilefy’s reputation is that of a tricky opponent: while his acrobatics make him look easy to destabilize and take down, he is also known for his ability to switch seamlessly between showing off and taking down his opponents with only a handful of strikes.

---

This drawing featured yet another experiment to use Blender and publicly available 3D models for backgrounds/scenes.

My GPU suffered for this.

But I’m really happy with it.

---

You can get the (large) full-res version here on Patreon.

---

Tsimilefy sy Fehizoro
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>