DRAGON BALL: NEO
date - July 2006
medium – ink and Prisma markers and colors, some PS7 post-work
size - 11.25" x 17.25"
surface - Académie Heavyweight Sketch Paper

characters from left to right – Chi-Chi, Piccolo, Vegeta, Gohan, Goku, Krillin, Trunks, Broly and Bulma

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE : Now it’s no secret that, for the most part, I am against fan-art. I view it as a viable art form and genre, but for the most part all I ever see is a lack of genuine creativity in the execution. On any given day, and just about any art site like deviantART, you will see fan-art pop up with such frequency that other artwork struggles to find a voice for itself as it is smothered by the flood of copy-cats.

Take for instance the Dragon Ball universe. Fan art for this particular franchise is rampant on deviantART, and almost all of them look as though Akira Toriyama himself had joined DA with about 500 different accounts. That is not art in my opinion. It’s merely copying what has already been done in a style that is someone else’s. If you are a true fan of something, then put yourself into the picture, let your own style flow through onto the paper or the screen, whichever the case may be.

As a personal way of highlighting the possibilities, I chose to do a piece of Dragon Ball fan-art myself. Now I am no fan by any stretch of the imagination, having only seen, maybe, 10 episodes in my whole life. But I figured it would be a good enough subject to tackle my own way, and tackle it I did. I knew from the beginning that I did not want to do it in my own style as I wanted to pay tribute in as Asian a way as I could, and I knew I didn’t want to do it in the traditional anime/manga style.

I thought it would be difficult until I stumbled across ‘Manhwa Mania’ by Christopher Hart (2004 / Watson-Guptill Publications), which shows you how you can draw in the Korean style of anime. I was very interested in this different take on manga, and even more thrilled to see how close to my own style this would be. It didn’t take me long to adapt to the styles of Manhwa and create my own versions of each character.

Now while I don’t have to answer to anybody for my choices, I will take this time to explain why I did certain characters the way I did, and why I omitted or added certain things, or went with things the way I did with certain aspects of this piece:

Piccolo – Why, for the life of me, an alien would walk around with a turban I will never know, so I threw that out the window, just like I did with his antennas. I was not about to draw an alien from the 1950’s unless I was going to do something directly inspired by the 1950’s sci-fi movement.

Vegeta – What I could gather from the character, he was pompous and egotistical to the extreme, almost to the point of megalomania. Why not make him look like someone who would be better suited to working for Cobra or some ultra-cool villain team, while at the same time keeping some elements of his regular costume.

the hair – As IF I have to explain why I did NOT go with Toriyama’s choice of hairstyles. I wanted them to look somewhat realistic, so not using 5 gallons of mousse and 50 cans of hairspray was the way I went.

Bulma – People will complain about her hair and breasts, but let me explain. Her breasts, like most women, will sag and go their own ways when bra-less. And her hair color is green because the picture I found of her had green hair. Now it could have been a discolored picture or one that had been scanned and the colors were just wrong on the person’s computer. Either way her hair was green in the picture and I went with it.

See, it is possible for someone to do fan-art and pay tribute to the subject matter without adhering to the source 100 percent and beyond. It may show love for the source, but not respect in my opinion. Respect is tribute, not copying.

characters © 2004 BIRD STUDIO/SHUEISHA, TOEI ANIMATION. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

- please be aware that this is a reposted image and not a brand new deviation