Ultra Seven's 50th Anniversary!

50 years ago tomorrow, Ultra Seven (Tsuburaya; 1967), the third Ultra Series (and the most popular among fans) first aired on Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and its affiliates!  As I discussed through the years, I have always considered Ultra Seven himself to be the Japanese equivalent to Superman, and one of the best superheroes of all time.

As you've noticed, the 1940s animated Superman by the Fleischer Brothers (the ultimate adaptation, IMHO) is the inspiration for this fanart.  :)

Done on tablet in FireAlpaca.

Happy 60th Anniversary, Godzilla!

I haven't forgotten.  I'd never forget Godzilla's 60th Anniversary!  I've been planning this drawing all day, and was surprised I did this in short order!  :)

On tablet in FireAlpaca.

GODZILLA - Now Playing!!!

Technically, Godzilla is already out in theaters, as tonight was an early-bird screening, and among the people seeing it was my big brother Peter!  I'm sure he'll enjoy it, as will I tomorrow afternoon in 3D-IMAX.

Tonight, during the timeframe of an hour to an hour-and-a-half (on tablet in FireAlpaca), I did this quick little doodle of the new Godzilla, in honor of that occasion (and also to calm me down until then)!  My Godzilla-drawing spirit is stronger than ever.  :)

GODZILLA - In Theaters Tomorrow!!!

Tomorrow's the big day!  I'm pretty anxious about it myself.

But I'll bet you forgot who else lives in San Francisco (where a major part of the movie takes place), so I'll let Bessie Higgenbottom get a word in...  ;)

Done tonight/this morning on tablet in FireAlpaca.

One week before GODZILLA hits theaters!

A week from today (May 9), the new Godzilla hits theaters!  As a lifelong Godzilla fan, I am extremely excited.  It's also very surreal to not only see Godzilla finally getting respect in Hollywood, but a whole new generation of fans getting excited over the new movie (even people you wouldn't expect), as well as rediscovering the character's history.  I am very touched.

I wanted to draw the 2014 Godzilla design before the film hits theaters!  Let's just say, getting this version right was difficult.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great design; it's also very busy!  I can always find a way to simplify the design, but hey, this was the first time I drew it, so this is my way of getting acquainted with drawing it!  :)

Done today on tablet in FireAlpaca.

In Memory of Ken Utsui (1931-2014)

I heard sad news: Prolific actor Ken Utsui, best known for playing Japan's first celluloid superhero Super-Giant (AKA: Starman) from 1957 to 1959, has died in Aichi, Nagoya of pulmonary emphysema today, aged 82. While he hated the role (due to the costume and its embarrassingly pronounced crotch area), he nonetheless started an endless generation of invincible costumed heroes in Japan, protecting not just their native country, but the peace of the entire world.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Utsui.

Done this morning on tablet in FireAlpaca.

Japan's Avengers - English Version

Using the same resources as last time, I have just assembled (pun intended) an English-language version of my very popular Japan's Avengers poster (originally in Japanese)!  Done in the style of international posters.  I had to do a lot of last-minute changes to make sure there weren't any typos or such!  I hope you will enjoy this one, too (though the Japanese poster is my favorite).  :)

Happy 45th Anniversary, Ultra Seven!

Done tonight on tablet in Photoshop, this is the first new tablet art I've done in a month, after moving to a new Richmond neighborhood!  And it couldn't have been a better occasion, as tonight is the 45th Anniversary of one of my top favorite superheroes, Ultra Seven!  Japan's answer to Superman.  The TV series, Ultra Seven (Tsuburaya; 1967), created by Eiji Tsuburaya (as an unofficial follow-up to his previous hit, Ultraman), premiered on the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) on this day in 1967!  And for this occasion, Rekira (giving a piggyback ride to Lily Merriweather) shakes the hand of one of his inspirations.  (Another character I made, Dengeking, is influenced by Seven as well!)

Have a great one!

Japan's Avengers - Assemble!

I saw The Avengers in theaters twice in May, and it has become one of my favorite superhero movies ever!  So I was imagining my own version of the film, where Japan's famous superheroes are assembled the same way Nick Fury assembled Marvel Superheroes!  After pondering and pondering over it for about a month or two, I finally decided to realize it!  Using various pics from the Internet (mostly toy pics from the manufacturers' websites, or from online stores like Hobby Search), I put them together into this fake poster.

In Japan's Avengers (Nippon no Abenjaazu), Godzilla, Ultraman, Masked Rider, Mazinger Z, Ultraman Zero, and Sailor Moon (and Tuxedo Mask, though he's off-poster) are assembled to fight legions of monsters and aliens led by Ultraman Belial!  And yes, that is Times Square in the background.  :)

The tagline is: "Earth's Mightiest Heroes Unite!  Defeat Ultraman Belial!"

The "Japan's Avengers" logo is completely original, done in Flash in about an hour.  The source poster was assembled from various photos in Photoshop, and titles were added in Flash.

Imaginary cast/crew credits on the poster are as follows:

CAST:

Susumu Kurobe (Shin Hayata/Ultraman)
Hiroshi Fujioka (Takeshi Hongou/Masked Rider)
Hiroshi Abe (Jirou Gou, Godzilla's human form/disguise)
GACKT (Kouji Kabuto, pilot of Mazinger Z)
Mamoru Miyano (Human form/voice of Ultraman Zero)
Miyuu Sawai (Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon)
Jouji Shibue (Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask)
Sonny Chiba (the Nick Fury character)
Hiroyuki Watanabe (the Agent Coulson character)
Yumiko Shaku (the Maria Hill character)
Shirou Sano (the Dr. Selvig character)
Hiroyuki Miyasako (Voice of Ultraman Belial)

STAFF

Director: Takeshi Yagi
Special Effects Director: Shinji Higuchi
Screenplay: JP Cassidy (obviously), Kei'ichi Hasegawa
(Based upon the Avengers screenplay by Joss Whedon and Zak Penn)
Executive Producers: Shougo Tomiyama (Toho), Tsugumi Kitaura (Tsuburaya), Hideaki Tsukada & Kazuhiro Takahashi (Toei), Dynamic Planning
Based on characters created by Toho Company, Ltd., Tsuburaya Productions, Shoutarou Ishinomori, Gou Nagai, and Naoko Takeuchi
Music by Alan Silvestri
Produced by the Avenger Production Committee
-Toho Eiga
-Tsuburaya Productions
-Toei
-Dynamic Planning
Jointly Distributed by Toho, Shouchiku, and Toei

I know that a movie like this will never be made, but the imagination is up to fans like myself.  :)

ADDENDUM: To justify my position on the two Ultramen (three if you count Belial!), I had both of them in mind.  (I thought of Ultra Seven, but I wanted to give his son Zero a chance to shine!)  Zero's inclusion aside, I wanted to pick out the characters most iconic and recognizable to the Japanese public, rather than just the fans.  Also, Zero plays an important part in Ultraman's surviving for more than three minutes in Earth's atmosphere.  :)

I also wanted Zero, because he parallels to Thor, as Belial does Loki.  As far as other Avengers parallels, Ultraman and Masked Rider share Captain America's role (although Ultraman is the team leader of the above depicted characters), as they're the pioneer archetype heroes of Japan.  Sailor Moon is sort of like Black Widow, Tuxedo Mask is like Hawkeye, Mazinger Z/Kouji is Iron Man, and you can guess Godzilla's role...  :)

I even got comments about not including Super Sentai!  LOL  Actually, I'd love to include them, but they're already a team!  The fun of this team is that they're a team of individual heroes, the kind you wanted to see together.

Happy New Year - 2011!

To ring in 2011, here's the traditional last drawing I did of 2010, while on vacation in the Outer Banks, on New Year's Eve (about an hour before the new year):

Displayed in this pencil sketch are Rekira and Lily Merriweather, waving goodbye for the end of 2010.

And below is the first sketch I did on the evening of New Year's Day (another tradition). It was started on at about 11:30 PM (Mom and I had gotten back home from the Outer Banks during the day), and I was very busy for much of the day, so it was a half-hour sketch!

April 23rd of this year will be the 20th Anniversary of the creation of Rekira (as I discussed in a past post), and I am, at this moment, preparing the first issue for this year, in commemoration!

The bottom half of this pencil sketch has little headshots of characters who have anniversaries this year! In case you don't know, there's (top row, left to right) Ultraman, Kanegon (from Ultra Q), Masked Rider, Spectreman, and Silver Mask. Between first and second row is Ambassador Magma (Goldar). Second row is Mothra, Astro-Boy, Hedorah, and Mirrorman. And in the third row are Batman and Mr. Spock. I could've sketched more, but I was running out of time!

Merry Christmas 2010!

Here, it is Christmas Eve, and I did the following drawing as an early Christmas present to all my readers, family, and friends.

Thinking of the traditional Christmas song "We Three Kings," I decided to draw the three greatest archetype figures of Japanese fantasy, especially in the tokusatsu (Japanese special effects) art form! Depicted are Godzilla (center), Ultraman (left), and Kamen (Masked) Rider, gathered together to bring peace and goodwill to everyone.

Drawn this past afternoon, I colored it this morning on Photoshop with my Bamboo Fun Tablet.

Merry Christmas from Ryusei Works!

Fan Art on Parade!

Hello, again!

In today's post, I'm going to showcase some of the fan arts I've done over the years. All of these you can find on my deviantART page.


Above is my very first drawing of Craig McCracken's popular characters, the Powerpuff Girls! I drew this on August 4, 2000. Colored in Photoshop.

This is an illustration of Ultraman, the famous Japanese superhero, that I did in Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash. Intended to be pop-art type. Dated November 17, 2005.

This is my interpretation of the characters from my friend Mike Dent's awesome podcast, R5 Central. Done at Mike's encouragement, I did this as an experimental Stephen Silver-style piece. Mike Dent himself is on the right, with android girls Ai (blue, middle) and Ami (red, right). Colored with Photoshop, and dated January 27, 2007.


Here is one of two illustrations I've done for my favorite superhero, Ultra Seven, for his 40th Anniversary. This one was inked chiefly with ink & brush, and colored with gouache and colored pencils. Dated April 17, 2007.

Ultra Seven, produced by Tsuburaya Productions, premiered on Tokyo Broadcast System in Japan on October 1, 1967, and ended on September 8, 1968, with a total of 49 episode (only 48 are available, as Episode 12, "From Another Planet with Love," was banned since 1970). Actually created as an alternate version of Ultraman (Tsuburaya; 1966), both shows were officially linked when the respective characters appeared in Return of Ultraman (Tsuburaya; 1971), and was also supposed to be the final Ultra Series (but was the last produced by creator Eiji Tsuburaya). Seven has perhaps the best design of any of the Ultra-beings, IMHO, and has even more personality than his predecessor in many respects. Some may remember the character and his series from its 1975 English-dubbed broadcast in Hawaii (the first series to be dubbed there), and others from a second version dubbed in Canada in 1985 by Cinar; this would be broadcast in early February of 1994 on Turner Network Television (TNT), until around 1999.

The second illustration can be seen after a few others here...

Above is Fanny Robinson from Disney's Meet the Robinsons (Disney; 2007), which I haven't seen fully, but I am extremely impressed with the character designs! I used a Meet the Robinsons storybook for reference while I drew this at Borders, dated May 18, 2007. Colored in Photoshop.
Above is Tack the Cobbler, one of the two titular protagonists from Richard Williams' ill-fated masterpiece, The Thief and the Cobbler. Using Williams' model sheets for reference, I drew with Micron pens, and colored it in Photoshop. This was dated June 4, 2007.

Since the mid 60s, Williams spent 26 years working on this film, which was threatened by the impending release of Aladdin (Disney; 1992), which was closely inspired by this film. The resulting films, The Princess and the Cobbler, was somewhat closer to the Richard Williams cut, despite the devastatingly awful songs and mostly bad new animation added, while Miramax's Arabian Knight (known as The Thief and the Cobbler in its video release) is absolutely unwatchable. Understandably, Williams apparently disowns the film after its debacle. Regardless, I recommend watching either the original Williams workprint, or Garret Gilchrist's excellent fan-made "Recobbled Cut" DVD.

Tack was completely silent (he and the titular Thief were essentially silent movie characters in a movie full of sound), until the very end (when he says the film's final line), where he would've been voiced by Sean Connery!

Below is the "suntanned" variation of Tack, from later in the film (after traveling in the desert).

Here is the adorable Abby Archer, the heroine from the Canadian cartoon series, Grossology (Nelvana; 2006), loosely based on Sylvia Branzei's children's books of the same name. This series was done by the same animation/design team as Nelvana's earlier hit, 6teen, and done with the same animation software (ToonBoom Harmony/Digital Pro). Not surprisingly, this piece is currently also my most popular work on deviantART, probably because I used reference material (wallpapers) to remain as faithful to the show's look as possible. Painstakingly illustrated in Flash, and dated July 23, 2007.

My second Abby piece, a portrait drawn with colored pencils (traced over a pencil drawing), done on August 11, 2007.
This is the aforementioned second drawing of Ultra Seven, which was done in time for his 40th Anniversary on October 1, 2007. Done with colored pencils over a pencil drawing. Impressive, if a little uneven (the chest is flat, for example). I had used my old Bandai figure of Ultra Seven as a reference for this illustration.

This is my fan art of Jill Thompson's acclaimed character, Scary Godmother. Created in 1997 as a children's storybook/comic hybrid, she and her companions have had several storybook sequels, a comic-book series, and two awesome TV specials (animated in Canada by Mainframe, now Rainmaker). Thompson has said she wants to do more stories soon, and I look forward to it! I did this with colored pencils over a pencil sketch on Halloween of 2007.

This is a fanart I did of Grover from Sesame Street while I was on vacation in the Outer Banks in North Carolina, dated January 4, 2008. I'm a huge fan of classic Sesame Street, as you can already tell. I attempted to draw in the same style as Michael Smollin's illustrations for the excellent 1971 Sesame Street storybook, The Monster at the End of This Book.

This is an illustration I did of Lucy Lamb, from the Dream Pets collection, dated January 3, 2009, while I was on vacation in the Outer Banks. Having picked up this first Dream Pet for my collection the previous day, I did this life drawing first in a pencil sketch, and then tracing over it with colored pencils. This was a very beautiful result. I had become a big fan of Dakin's Dream Pets (which originated in Japan in the late 50s!) the previous year, for their appealing vintage designs, and would love to do more fan art of them.

This is my illustration of the titular heroine of Coraline (Focus/Laika; 2009), based upon Neil Gaiman's acclaimed book. This was conveniently finished on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2009, about a week after I saw the film in theaters. I had first done a pencil sketch of Coraline and the Cat (done the previous night), which I later traced over in Photoshop... with a mouse! I had wanted a painterly look for this drawing (experimenting with some of Photoshop's paint features), and it was only a few months before I got my current tablet, so you can tell this drawing took quite a bit of effort to do with a mouse, especially the background. Coraline's house, the Pink Palace Apartments, took several hours to draw, upon using a photo for reference (making this one of the more complex illustrations done with a mouse)!

Here is my first-ever fan art of another top favorite superhero of mine, Underdog! Yes, I've been an Underdog fan my whole life, and I had not drawn him until this try, dated November 19, 2009, drawn with a Micron brush pen (using a video cover for reference). This was done in celebration of Underdog's 45th Anniversary. (The Underdog Show premiered on October 3, 1964.) As some have noted, it looks a little bit off (Underdog looks slightly taller than he should), but I'm proud to have finally done an Underdog drawing, and would love to try doing more in the future! Colored in Photoshop.

Lastly, one of my latest published pieces, a fan art of Vanya Hargreeves, AKA: The White Violin, the tragic villainess/antiheroine of Gerard Way's comic-book, The Umbrella Academy (published by Dark Horse). She is my favorite character from the comic by far, especially for her simple yet beautiful design, and her heartbreaking backstory. The box/figurine set for the first volume, The Apocalypse Suite (which I eventually got) was exactly what got me interested in the series. I eagerly anticipate to see how Vanya develops in future volumes! This was inked with with Micron pens (brush, .05, and .005), and colored in Photoshop.

In my next post, the first in a series of fan arts from one of my biggest favorite cartoon shows, The Mighty B!