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:

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.
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.