Zub’s Capcom Fighting Tribute Pin-Up

I’m thrilled to have a new pin-up piece included in UDON’s upcoming Capcom Fighting Tribute book. Going off the beaten path a bit, I did three characters from Warzard (also called ‘Red Earth‘ here in North America) and went for a more cartoony approach. It was tons of fun putting this together.

Here’s a step-by-step on my process. You can click on each one for a larger version:

STEP 1: This one started as a series of really loose lines and shapes, trying to find an appealing composition and flow to the overall drawing. Once I was happy with how that first pass looked I could move on to a more structured drawing.

STEP 2: I try to keep some of the energy of the initial gesture while building structure into the figures.

STEP 3: Looking more carefully at the character reference, I make adjustments to the proportion and costume details.

STEP 4: I do a quick shadow pass to get a sense of the mood and make sure that the direction of light is clear and accentuates the character volumes properly.

STEP 5: I carefully digitally ‘ink’ each character to create the final line art, using different colors so I can more easily keep track of each one.

STEP 6: I drop in flat colors for a base palette.

STEP 7: Here’s the base palette with shadows added.

STEP 8: And the final step – highlights, reflected light, effects, and color correction to finish it off.

Capcom Fighting Tribute will premiere with a limited-run convention edition hardcover at San Diego Comic-Con, July 9-12!

The standard edition of Capcom Fighting Tribute will be released September 2015. Links to pre-order the book at a variety of online retailers can be found here: http://www.udonentertainment.com/blog/product/capcom-fighting-tribute