Chibi Month: Chibi Fanart!

This week, Ian of Studiokyuu.com joins us with fanart from “Blade of the Immortal” (BOTI).

Fanart is a drawing made based on someone else’s character. For example, “Blade of the Immortal” is a famous long running series, drawn by Hiroaki Samura. Ian is using Samura’s character design, but makes a new pose and a new scene that Samura did not draw before.

I really like this character, Doa, from BOTI. She’s that petite and fierce but loyal kind of character. She’s honest and straightforward. Most of all, she’s cute! (See what Doa looks like when drawn by Samura)

I start out using pencils, and measuring. At this stage, I don’t worry too much about all the details of Samura’s design. Instead, I think of the story — She’s tough and honest — how would she stand? How can I make the proportions look nice?

I settled on a 2 and 1/2 head body. On the right, you can see my rough measure of the heads. On the left, notice how I’m splitting her face and body. Even with the main proportions distorted, I always try to keep the eyes in the middle of the visible face, and the waist in the middle of the body. The little arrows on the body are at the 1/3 mark. I use these to help find her bellybutton and her knees!

This is my drawing after penciling Doa’s details, then inking once over with a single Sakura Micron 03 thickness. I ink this way first to set a good baseline for the image. I am focused on making details, copying from what I see from Samura’s designs. I also want to wrap the details around the forms of the body, so that Doa looks 3d! See Exercise 09 for more about this

At this stage, I’ve thickened the lines at some parts by drawing over some parts with a Sakura Micron 03. I like varying the line width, to help emphasize the primary and secondary forms. For example, where Doa’s shoulder is in front of her cloak, I make the line thicker. I also use the thicker line to emphasize her cheekbone and her eyes. Lastly, I pay attention to line thickness especially at “T” intersections. See Exercise 10 for more on that!

My last step is to add in a lot of fancy colors. I set up a light shining from the upper right, and then made sure that the shadows on her face, eyes, hat, and all her body were on the lower left. Check it out!

Chibi Month is still rolling on, so see you next week. Keep on drawing!

1 Comment