SPL

I've been thinking for a while (years) that my FB profile needs a cover image but never got around to making one until now. This one is a tribute to the 2005 film 'Saat Po Lang' or 'SPL', which IMO contains one of the best fight scenes of the last 20 - 30 years - the knife vs baton fight between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing.

Boogie

More sports fan art. This one is of Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus 'Boogie' Cousins. 

Created in Manga Studio 5. It's quickly become my go-to illustration app. 

... I really should animate something.

Manny

The way Manny Pacquaio throws his flurries of punches for some reason reminds me of Kenshiro's Hokuto Hyakuretsuken from Hokuto no Ken.

Aaatatatatatatatatatatatatatata

I should probably animate something. It's been a while.

Ben McLemore

Sacramento Kings rookie Ben McLemore. 

Roughed in Sketchbook Pro and finished in Manga Studio 5. 

Deadly Palm Strike!

Another dip into obscure/forgotten characters, this one is Chintai, a mid-level bad guy character from the NES version of Double Dragon. He specializes in Kung Fu and throwing you into the air when you try to ground attack him. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to play around with the watercolor tools in Manga Studio 5, as I had mainly been using the oil paint tools up to this point.

And just in case it wasn't clear from previous posts, I kind of love manga-style line-based motion blur.

蝶のように舞

Lately, I've taken to drawing obscure video game characters from the 80's and early 90s because why not? I like to call it Fan Art for Forgotten Characters. This character is Aska, a female ninja from the 1993 fighting game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters aka TMNT: Mutant Warriors. Aska is an original character made specifically for the game because ... I guess Konami felt like the game needed a Japanese character?

As fighting games go, it's pretty good though it probably appeared a little too late in the 90s fighting game boom. One thing that always puts a smile on my face is that Shredder has a special move that sounds like he's yelling, "More Pushups!"

That Sporting Life

I was looking through a folder of warmup sketches and found some stuff that I might not have been feeling at the time, but I think look kind of groovy now. First off, some sports themed sketches.

Continuing from yesterday's post, here are a couple more Sacramento Kings ... fan sketches, I guess, from earlier this year. I don't know why I find Isaiah Thomas to be a good subject for practice with distorted perspectives. The second drawing is of sharpshooter Predrag 'Peja' Stojakovic from the glory years of the early 2000's. I was probably humming John Tesh's 'NBA on NBC' theme as I was drawing it.

 

And this sketch is my attempt at drawing boxer Nonito 'Filipino Flash' Donaire in the style of Masanori Morita's 'Rokudenashi Blues' manga. As a teenager, I admired the hell out of Morita, especially how kinetic his fight scenes were, using lines to convey motion blur. But as far as likenesses go, this doesn't look at all like Donaire. 

 So yeah ... basketball and boxing. I'm hella Filipino.

They're playin' baaaaasket-baaaaaall

October means the NBA season is starting up again soon. Here's a drawing of Isaiah Thomas of the Sacramento Kings, minus his tattoos.