GOKU: PENCIL TO PAINT

Fever

Dragonball fever is back! New movies, games, and even a show that takes place after Z (skipping GT era) ! I grew up reading the malay translated manga of the series which was called Mutiara Naga (Dragon Pearls). I also have many fond memories of putting in 40 cents into the Card vending machines to get a random shiny card. It would be awesome if you could get any one of the saiyan characters in a cool pose on the cards. I had close to 200 cards which I sold off last year.

video source

I eventually watched a bit of the animated series but had 2 major issues with it:

1. For the fight scenes there is a hell of a lot of talking and filler. I think an episode that I saw there were like 2 minutes of real action and 18 mins of talking.
2. Goku is voiced by a woman (in the Japanese version). Whyyyy?

I do enjoy playing the latest game though,Dragon Ball Fighter Z cause it looks exactly like the 2D characters even though it's in 3D. Unfortunately, I am a casual so always get my ass kicked when I play the online lobby ( probably against 10 year olds too).

Also, These days I think Vegeta is a character that deserves more spotlight. Goku might be the one with raw talent but Vegeta trains like a madman to make sure he is not far behind. I choose to paint Goku though cause he is more fun to draw. On to the Art!

Art Process

For this piece I went digital, using the software photoshop.

So firstly I had to decide which version of Goku to work on , there is normal goku , super saiyan 1,2,3,4 ,Saiyan god etc. I chose Super Saiyan Blue which is Super Saiyan 1 but with blue hair instead of blonde. I like the blue saiyan look cause it provides a nice contrast with Goku's orange Gi.

So I did a sketch starting with the face and did rough pose of the body .

Next is painting in the midtones, as Anthony Jones would say , push in and pull out areas. I start out with greyscale first because I need more to practice my values more. My wise mentor always says that values are the most important part of a painting, once you get your values right , the color then comes in to provide "feeling" to the artwork. Also when I say mentor, I mean people on youtube who do painting tutorials.

I darkened the overall look a little and refined it further.

Now let's start to add in some color! Normally I would set the layer mode to color and start painting in the color right away. After studying an artist known as Artgerm, he applies a gradient map to his greyscale images first before he applies color to avoid getting a "muddy look".

Now I have painted in the skin color and the Gi color.

The Blue Saiyan !

Now for the background, I was thinking about putting in the sky but then blue sky would drawn his blue hair out. So I decided for an outer space scene instead.

I thought about doing some energy effects coming out of his hand at first but I scrapped the idea later cause it looked too "busy" for my taste.

Next I added in his monkey tail , yeah I know, I know , adult goku doesn't have a monkey tail , but it makes a for a more interesting image. It's no secret that Dragon Ball is inspired by Journey To The West , Goku's early adventures had him with a tail and a staff which is so Sun Wukong. Also I finally fixed the weird face and added in a rim light. I love rim lights, everyone needs one when they walk into a room. Also added in the symbol to his uniform. It means Go, taken from the first character in Goku's name.

To finish everything off, I contrasted the image a little and refined his open palm. Now it's ....

FINAL

ANIMATED PROCESS

We are now at the end of the show, thanks for watching. so which Dragonball character is your fav?

Until next time,

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