Transforming Dragon Ball Super into Dragon Ball Z | EPISODE #1 | The Anatomy of Anime

over the last week myself and my friends decided to come together and transform some of dragon ball super's artwork into [Music] dragon ball z an art style that's captured the hearts and minds of an entire generation but like any form of art style changes over time trends develop and the evolution of technologies offer new approaches never before seen each year oda's modern works look wildly different from his earlier days and akira toriyama style has majorly shifted a minimum of three times over the past three decades with a bunch of subtle changes hidden in the midst of it all and so as a result of that change dragon balls anime was adapted accordingly in fact it had arguably seen even more drastic changes due to the numerous character designers colour designers and compositing choices the series has implemented over the passing decades as they try to bring to life akira toriyama's ever changing designs dragon ball z and dragon ball super showcase a pretty major difference in approach despite sharing so many staff so focusing on these two shows seems to make the most sense to me however before we dive into the drawing i'm gonna need some help with this video our team assemble joining me first on this journey of dbzeifying the super series is anime aj on top of being a terrific artist in his own right there are a few that can match his knowledge of the industry and he's a whiz with photoshop which will be invaluable during this video as you'll soon come to see next up is editor san he's our support player he's another amazing artist and in addition to editing this entire video for us we'll be providing his own corrections to our work as well as some artwork of his own and finally our heavy hitter trev i don't think i know a single person on the planet that knows how to draw dragon ball better than this guy his knowledge of the various styles and shading principles proved to be crucial in the production of this video and so now that we're familiar with the team it's time to start drawing first up [Music] effectively throughout this video we'll be redrawing frames from super in the style of dragon ball z's best while i hopefully do a good job of explaining how the production and stylistic approaches have transformed over the past few decades and boy do i have my hands full with this one this still is taken from the battle of god's portion of the story and as seen in it trunks and goten stand front and center as little blobby babies i chose this one to tackle first specifically because like many of you something that's really bothered me about super's modern design approach has been well they look about five and six years old when in reality they should be about 11 and 12 respectfully but instead they look younger than they were four years in the past during the boo arc and so using gohan's training with goku in the chamber and the future trunks special as reference i started the difficult process of aging up the two young tykes into the almost teenagers they should be and to be perfectly honest of all the drawings i did for this video this was by far the most difficult of the two i found trunks the easiest as he already had an aged up design around this age but the closest thing i could find to an 11 year old goten was his brother gohan from dragon ball z or goten himself at the end of z and in the end i settled on a combination of the two i kept the close the same which meant goten looked like and trunks looked like a mechanic which i suppose is kind of fitting and okay now comes my favorite part right now we have a drawing in the style of dragon ball z but the image looks too clean to be from the 90s and aj time to work your magic with photoshop apply dbz time travel filter now and voila there you have it an aged looking recreation of a super still in the style and presentation format of dragon ball z next up [Music] it's trev this was one i was particularly excited for and in typical trev fashion has exceeded my expectations akira toriyama's designs have changed considerably over the years and not just between dbz and super piccolo's first appearance in the 23rd tenkaichi budokai stands in stark contrast with piccolo himself from the buu saga and with gohan the same is true numerous characters newly introduced to the series are on the skinnier side which was most definitely not the case with z in the process gohan ended up losing some muscle mass and although narratively you can justify it in the film there's still a number of design elements that need changing throughout the process trev's mission was to bring back more refined muscle shapes angular linework and the layered shading that defined much of the buu saga so far it's looking amazing and now all we have to do is apply the magical chains of filters and this looks like it could have come out during the 90s now but no time to stop and admire we're already moving on to the next drawing and the artist tackling that one is oh it's me again of the illustrations i contributed and worked on during this video i think this is the one that turned out the absolute best the purpose of this video of course isn't to point out bad artwork and so for the majority of these drawings the illustrations themselves are very faithful to the model sheets and pretty confident overall the purpose of this video instead is simply to highlight how different approaches through color and design philosophies impact the creation of a series along with more technical elements we'll touch on later frost was a character i knew was begging for this specific treatment because he's part of frieza's race the reference is already there and by the way the drawings in super don't look this way because the artist can't draw it's specifically because they are following design sheets that yield this sort of output attempting to emulate toriyama's shift in style tadayoshi yamamuro began to adjust his designs from the old days in pretty major ways some parts are more angular some are sharper but it all totals up to a drastically different look compared to z i changed everything on this drawing from the eyes to the shading making it all appear more muscular helped plenty by three-tone shading and to achieve the final color we landed on for him we actually just found an old animation cell and tweaked it in photoshop until we got the blue color we wanted but yeah this is the end result time to add the finishing touches with aj's dbz filter and there you have it frost drawn in a classic style looking as though he was conceived of during the 90s but no time to dwell in frost it's time for hit next and drawing him we have trev once more personally i love hit's design and something you might have noticed at this point in the video is the textured effect we've added to all the final recreated shots that's not just a quirky creative choice it's art imitating life dragon ball z was shot on 16 millimeter film which adds a very intense texture to the artwork adding to the tangible feeling you get from cell era anime it's one of many aspects that gives it that classic feel but it's also a really cheap film stock typically associated with grungier looking films due to its grainy intensity so there's a lot more grit to it compared to larger format 35 millimeter dragon ball super on the other hand as many of you could have guessed is colored digitally and put together using adobe after effects creating this 100 clean cut look without additional processing many people like this but personally i think it often looks quite flat in comparison when super's director changed from the universe survival arc onwards the replacement tatsuya nagamine saw fit to change this by adding an artificial grain layer to help add texture to the image along with stronger contrast throughout although still clearly rocking a modern aesthetic this helped evoke memories of an older era trev's hit here looks great the line weight is varied the aspect ratio is 4 3 and the colors are consistent with kamehamehas used earlier in the series now all we have to do is add that film grain to the image and presto it really helps to elevate the piece by adding the final touches up next trev again with goku kaioken blue trev is all over this video with his amazing artwork and this was one i was very excited to see we're all familiar with super saiyan blue kaioken by now but sourcing the colours for this one was quite challenging normally we'd scarred the series and it's movies for comparable color palettes to use but there wasn't ever a combination of colors like this used in the series particularly within auras in dragon ball z auras were almost all hand painted with strong contrast values that kept the pictures underneath strongly visible although they are hand drawn for super saiyan in dragon ball super they're digitally composited with very intense glowy bloom new auras like ultra instinct and super saiyan blue are technically hand drawn in that their placement and movement is decided by the animators but the actual appearance is all digitally generated usually creating this overwhelming effect that makes the black lines underneath difficult to see this is precisely something we're looking to avoid here with this particular piece and so we had to try to brainstorm how we thought this might have been approached back in the day in the end only minor changes needed to be made to the anatomy and the face was altered slightly but what really made this come together in the end was the team's choice of color which really makes or breaks a reimagining like this in the end we opted for a more muted and minimalistic approach compared to the original and i think it looks all the better for it we're all very pleased with how this one turned out alright time for tread to take a break now next up we have aj yeah but first a quick word from our sponsor hey kid are you still eating normal on healthy cereal the kind i gave up on before it made me 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try it today and be sure to use the promo code not mark at checkout to get five dollars off any order or go to magicspoon.com not mark and if you dare not like it for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked so what are you waiting for magic sprue it's [Music] reimagining goku black rose and actually using a tablet for once this one was arguably the most challenging to get right the new auras found on godly forms in dragon ball super are very bright and very glowy with a bunch of light bleed all over and this debut of goku black rose form is one of the most extreme examples in the entire series this intensely bright approach just isn't really a thing in dragon ball z outside of rare moments like goku's first super saiyan transformation so trying to make this look right was really difficult aj decided to apply the style of kesuke matsunaga for this rendition of goku black who was one of the most modern looking animators in the entire series and a fan favorite during the boo arc defined under chins prominent noses unique smiles it has it all and when viewed in the style of a regular animation cell the plastic sheet that gets painted and photographed for the show it looks very convincing throwing in the background and starting to layer on auras and bits of lighting does bring the image together more but that old school look starts to vanish a little if we compare it back to the kaioken blue image where we opted to forego any additional lighting the difference in authenticity is very clear maybe modern dragon ball cutting back on the overwhelming glow is the key to achieving that familiar look let me know what you think for now though age is up for yet another reimagining this time with future trunks is super saiyan rage this recreation is tied first with another drawing you've yet to see as my favorite within this video and it achieved that status in part due to the great artwork on display but also through a very underrated approach of dragon ball's design process color design for shows like dragon ball the color design can make or break the product and in the case of dragon ball super's color design it certainly didn't do it any favors bold vibrant and saturated colors coat the series wall to wall and in my opinion it devalues a lot of the artwork on display for example here's a still from the dragon ball special yo sun goku and his friends return this special was widely praised by fans as some great work from tadeoshimamura before he started working on super and people stopped praising him but we think this is largely due to the color choices of super and not entirely to do with the artwork itself let's take that existing still a vegeta from the special and now let's give him the super color scheme just like that it immediately looks like super and the drawing for the most part is undercut by those colors following super's production the film dragon ball super broly abandoned its old color designer and brought in rumiko nagai who adopted a color scheme very similar to z pinker skin and orange ghee and generally more pastelly colors all around a lot of people might not recognize that because most people consume either faded or tinted versions of the story through the dragon boxes and level sets or over contrasted and saturated versions of the funimation dvd and blu-ray releases neither of which faithfully display the series as it was initially intended heck if we do the inverse of the vegeta example i showed you earlier and shift the colors from broly to super you get the same effect stills that looked like they were from dragon ball super it really can't be understated just how much of an impact color has on our perception of tone as an audience and this piece aj has been working on is a terrific example of that gone are the blown out lines and saturated colors and now we have a line ways and color palette consistent with the classic series way to go aj next up me this fuse zamasu was the first drawing i tackled for the video and i was immensely pleased with how it turned out in the end although it was rocky from time to time thankfully i had a nice reference for some evil looking kai eyes in z if you cast your minds back to the supreme kai's very first scene in the series he's depicted as this sly looking individual with his intentions as of yet in the series still unknown to us he made for the perfect reference point for me to utilize and i think i managed to achieve that the hair was probably the biggest hurdle in the end but i managed it thankfully due to its similarities to goku's super saiyan hair the aspect ratio of this era of dragon ball meant that i could show more of his halo and hair on the colour front i actually regret giving him three toned shading for non-close-up shots like this normally a third shading tone tends to take away from the final image i think with much of z using only two tones when characters are depicted farther away but in the end i was happy with how it all turned out specifically after the filters were applied and there you have it if zamasu had been conceived of during the 90s maybe he would have looked a little like this next up editor sand with caulifla this is another classic scenario of dragon ball super yielding very skinny new characters thanks to toriyama's ever-changing art style in the past saiyans were depicted as being savage muscle-bound brutes women included and with this venture we aim to beef up caulifla to bring her more in line with the saiyan women found in places like the bardock special in dragon ball super they had a tendency to draw newer characters with bigger heads and different muscle shapes and so bringing everything together into one consistent design philosophy was a lot of fun personally i find it very difficult to draw female dragon ball characters as they tend to require very different approaches to their male counterparts furthermore characters that have less detail in the face are for me the most difficult to draw as they're so much more unforgiving do even one thing wrong and the entire piece is off but in the end with the right colors the right linework and the correct drawing philosophy caulifla is brought to life in a classic fashion all we need is the filter and there you have it classic caulifla now we move on to the final drawing and taking us home we have trev tackling ultra instinct goku a tall order for any artist contrary to popular belief both super and z are hand drawn on paper first but there's a difference in the final result for a few reasons super's hand-drawn genga the key frames that make up the animation are scanned in and digitally processed which can result in sterile looking work if the lines aren't treated properly for example early pre-tournament of power dragon ball super headlines with almost no thickness variation at all this can result in drawings looking a little flat or lifeless by comparison thankfully the tournament of power fixed this to a degree with a filter that introduced varied line weight and then dragon ball super broly took that a step further by making it look intentionally inky this all stands in direct contrast to z where the final cleanup drawing the doga is still on paper and literally photocopied directly onto the cell preserving all the tangible nuances of the drawing defects and all like gaps in the linework being present for example and very similar to the kaioken and goku black shots earlier a major challenge with this piece was how to best depict a modern aura in the old style truth be told we went through a number of alterations and variations but in the end we agreed a more standard aura best suited the new look and there you have it a classic looking ultra instant goku amazing work trev and everyone in this video if i conveyed anything in this video i hope it's that dragon ball largely didn't change its style between the early 2000s and dragon ball super's first few arcs those same digital color approaches to a digital finish pipeline crept into this new series and it took a long time for a director like nagamine to come in and overhaul the show its production issues in terms of scheduling are well documented but aspects like color design and compositing are just as important to achieving good results and i hope we've demonstrated that today nagamine continued to overhaul the series and as a result dragon ball super broly level things up further with a new character and color designer that feels both nostalgic and modern even as the series veers off into the realm of cg for the new movies the color choices for superheroes teaser trailer looks great with the same inky linework that appears to be here to stay and with a new 2d teaser showing dragon ball super broly designer shintani keeping up with the same aesthetic it seems as though modern dragon ball has finally hit a point where it feels not only refreshed but makes use of the strengths the more classic approaches offered the story back in the day that we all know and love unless your dragon ball heroes special thanks to trev aj and editor sand for helping with the artwork in this video i literally couldn't have done it without them and so i highly encourage you all to check out their twitters and socials in the description down below if you want to see more artwork and content from them they're immensely talented and this won't be the last time you see them either next week we're going to tackle even more of super's artwork and transform it into dragon ball z style if you don't want to miss it consider subscribing but until then i've been totally not mark i'll see you all next weekend thank you so much for watching [Music] hmm you

Channel: Totally Not Mark

Views: 1,337,493

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Id: XC9rJz04B2k

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021