Darkstalkers: Jedah pin up...

Hey everybody, I recently took part in Udon's contest for their Darkstalkers Tribute book, which I didn't end up in the final book, but that's cool. Alot of other artists, who did really great pieces didn't either, so I don't feel so bad, and plus it was my first serious attempt at doing a coloured piece and I feel good about it.

It was a learning experience being under the gun, since I only had 3 days to work on it from start to finish. Prior to this, I was working on a project that finished up on February 25, so on February 26, I was finally free to get started on this pin up for the contest.

The reason, why I chose Jedah, is because he's a cool character that showed up late to the Darkstalkers franchise, which was essentially the last game they made with that franchise. He's also a character that is visually cool, and not many people would know to draw, so I was hoping that would work in my favour in trying to get the pin up into the tribute book.

I spent February 26, at my drawing table working on this pin up, luckily I was smart enough to have done a rough version, enlarged it and light boxed it onto the art board prior to the 26th.

Penciled & Inked - So apologies to any inkers out there, due to the tight deadline, I chose to butcher this piece by inking it myself, after penciling it, lol. Knowing that I was gonna be the one to ink it, really freed me up from all the cleaning up of the piece I would normally do, if someone else was gonna ink it, which in term, saved alot of time for me, lol.


Flat Colours - So once I finished inking up the pin up on February 27, I also scanned it on the same day and started laying the flat colours out on Photoshop. I was taught that the flat colours are meant to be the highlights of the colours, so that's what I did with them.


Final Version - So this only left me to do all the colouring on February 28, to where I added depth and shadows with 2 additional colours. And if you noticed in the initial inked version there isn't a background, and I added that in, with Photoshop. So the moon, the castle and the bats were created using tools that are fun and easy.

The might of Dan Hibiki

Here's a sketch I did of Dan from the Street Fighter series. Dan is a great character, because or in spite of his overconfidence, arrogance and ego. Normally in the Street Fighter universe, Dan is the butt of all jokes, due to his "qualities".

A friend of mine, commented on the fact that, I made Dan look very cool and powerful in the quick sketch I did; which is true, but the fact that he's holding up a wooden sign proclaiming his greatness, even though he's looking cool and all; fans of Street Fighter know that in a few seconds, he's gonna fall flat on his face or something to that effect.

It's funny that a character, who's history was starting up as a retaliatory character, by Street Fighter II designer, Akiman against SNK's creation of the Art of Fighting, which he thought to be a rip off of Street Fighter; could have so much popularity to this day. Many thought that he would be just a joke, a jab at SNK, but somehow the fans took to his personality and bizarre behavior and fell in love with him like I did. It just goes to show you, that we all love a great loser, lol.