Gohan Redraw

 

As a fan of the anime Dragon Ball Z, I've always had somewhat of an interest in creating drawings in a similar/the same style as its creator Akira Toriyama. It wasn't until a few days ago where I had watched a short video series on Youtube by user 'Totally Not Mark' where a few fans took stills from the more modern Dragon Ball style and converted them into drawings that looked like stills from the 1990s.

This video had given me great inspiration to create an image in the 'retro-90s' style presented, so I started looking for modern stills of my favorite character from the show (Son Gohan). I settled on this one still that was from the latest trailer for the upcoming movie; Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero which contained a close-up of Gohan in an interesting rainy setting.

With the reference chosen, I began a new canvas in ibisPaint X but with a 3:4 aspect ratio to match that of TVs back in the 90s. I also decided to take another reference of Gohan from Google Images, but this time one being from the 1990s version of the show so that I could study, and get a better understanding of the previous art style/aesthetics.

 

While drawing from each references, I took many of the smoother edges present from the image of Gohan and made them rougher to mimic Toriyama's old style. I also used the a certain brush in ibisPaint X in order to make the line drawing of the character appear to be more so hand drawn than digitally rendered. Next, I used a less saturated color scheme as well as cell shading to really give the drawing a retro vibe to it. Lastly, I added a CRT TV filter to the composition and changed the blending mode to truly make my drawing look like a still from an old cartoon.

Overall, I'm very much satisfied with my work and will likely continue to do more redraws in the future!