How to Draw Dragon Ball Z Characters

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Jay French at jayfrenchstudios.com and I'm going to show you how to draw Dragon Ball Z characters. All right to start with Dragon Ball Z, we're going to do one of the more well-known characters. The difference that they have in most animes is they are much more grim. And, in a lot of ways, they're a lot more realistic. You'll get details, especially, in the musculature and weird things like they even detail the insides of the ear. We're not going to go much further with that just to save time. And we have, the most unrealistic part about this Dragon Ball, the Dragon Ball Z style is the wild hair. So don't be scared, go crazy with it because it's really big and, if you don't do it big enough, it won't look like the right style. Style, our Super Sayan fellow here. I thought it would be fun to learn. Okay. Faces in Dragon Ball Z are much more angular. And, as I said, much grimmer. They have large eyes still, but they're very narrow and wide. They almost always have a grim look, low brows. In fact, there is no separation from the brow and the eye. Small, this is also very different for anime styles, very small irises. But they still have their distinctive anime lack of lips; just a shadow of the lower lip. Now you want to get some shading in here because one thing they do detail on that style of animation is the shading. Now we're just real quickly going to show you the basics on the bodies because it is important to get those details. Dramatic angles are another very distinctive thing in Dragon Ball Z. You'll notice that, unlike most other styles of art, dynamic art or comic art, they're actually like closing the lines of the pectorals for example. There's a lot more closed lines as if the muscles each have their own independent space. It's kind of interesting. And, like I said, we're just going to do a quick overview here. We'll do one arm over here and there again you have chiseled, sharp, different than most anime in that capacity. Very closed lines for the musculature. For the most part, that's not a foolproof rule. Almost you're defining so many so many muscles as to almost be beyond reality but it's not. It's just more defined than you'll usually see in reality. And that should give you your basic look. And that's how you get started drawing Dragon Ball Z."