Capcom and Udon Studios are proud to unveil an incredible artistic collaboration this month at San Diego Comic Con with the massive 300+ pages Street Fighter Tribute Book, a collection of original Street Fighter drawings by some of the top artistic talents in the world of comic books, video games, and commercial art. Some pieces are first-time interpretations of Street Fighter by megastars like Adam Hughes, while others are just additions to their incredible lineage of SF art already created by talents like J. Scott Campbell, Mark Brooks, Long Vo, and Alvin Lee.

Capcom's own Creative Director, Francis Mao, and Graphics Designer, Kevin Converse also contributed to the visual melting pot with renditions of their favorite SF/SFIV characters. Kevin created a dynamic rendition of Crimson Viper and Francis did his own take of Dhalsim.

Here's a Capcom-Unity exclusive on how Francis created his piece:

THUMBNAILS:

I start with a mental image and always like to loosely scribble that image drawing as quickly and as freely as possible regardless of size, proportions, or anatomy on a piece of paper. The focus is to get the visual essence of the image on paper as quickly as possible before the vision evaporates. The looser the thumbnails, the more energy and attitude a drawing seems to have. I don't bother with any details, perhaps some shading/lighting if it's crucial to the piece - it's all about the moment captured by the image.

PENCILS:

I place a piece of paper over the initial thumbnail on a light table and start to redraw the image using the thumbnail as a roadmap of the art. But since the paper is thick and obscures most of the details, it allows me to take a detour whenever I want as I use my pencil to add details that I didn't think about when I first doodled the image, or adding parts of key lighting/shading issues.

INKS:

Once the pencils are complete, I move to the inking stage where I redraw the image once again - this time committing it in permanent ink (maybe not so permanent because I can always use White Out correction fluid on the paper, or erase mistakes in Photoshop after I scan in the image). When inking, I think about a variety of things including: the outline of the character, proper placement of shadows, and clean details. Since I know the illustration will ultimately be presented in color, I add a little less ink details than I normally would for a black and white piece and make some notes on a sticky about what details I would add when I color the piece.

COLORS:

I scan the inked art at 300dpi, RGB and then tweak the art considerably in Photoshop by cleaning up stray lines and even moving pieces around like rotating the skulls on the necklace, and adjusting the perspective and size of certain limbs. Once satisfied with the final line art, I create a duplicate of the black line art and place it atop the original and set the properties of the top duplicate layer to "Darken." Then I start adding color and details on the bottom layer but the top black line layer remains intact thereby keeping its rich, black keyline.

I lay down an initial layer of basic tones for each part of Dhalsim's body. Then I lay down a layer or solid shadows similar to the tones beneath it. To add dimensionality to his musculature and body, I add some highlights atop the base and shadow tones.

FINAL ART:

Once the figure is fully colored, I start thinking about a background that would complement the art and not detract from it. Instead of something specific like a scene from the game, or something that ties into Dhalsim's background, I opted for a colorful background with some texture to offset the tones of his skin and body. The geometric lines crisscross and intersect the pattern of his arms and legs making them seem to stretch to an even more extreme.

Final touches such as his red face paint, glowing eyes, and the reflections on his armbands complete the piece. I saved the final file as a .jpg and fired it off to Udon for inclusion in the book and look forwards to seeing it in print at Comic Con!

Check out this link to find out more about the Street Fighter Tribute Book and how to order your copy today!