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Goku (Dragon Ball Z)

This woodblock print depicts the character Goku from the anime “Dragon Ball Z”. It was carved in late 2022, and printed in Jan 2023.

The print is based off of this screenshot from the opening to Dragon Ball Z Kai.

I digitally traced and separated the image into its component colors. This short animation shows my color separation, and how the layers combine to form the image.

For each color, I carved a woodblock, as shown in the gallery below. However, some of the color blocks didn’t quite work as originally planned. I ended up needing to make separate color impressions with some of the blocks, when I initially planned for one. My original plan called for 14 total impressions, but I ended up doing 16.

All in all, there are 12 block faces:

Key block.
Dark hair & dark background shadow.
Initially I thought that these could be printed the same color, but it ended up that the background area needed to be lighter and printed separately.
The medium hair and medium background shadow.
The light hair color and the dark blue shadow on the clothing. Initially, I thought that I might be able to use the same shade of grey to produce the shadow on the clothes, but ended up using a dark blue on that area, which became awkward to print.
The dark background color.
The medium background color.
The light background base tone.
The base orange tone for the clothing, and a deeper orange/brown tone to produce the shadow effect. Bonus Sharpie, marking areas that need to be cleared next time.
The skin base tone, which appears as the “highlighted” skin areas in the final print.
The next level of skin, to produce a deeper color which omits the highlights.
The next level of skin shadow.
The deepest skin shadow color; and the base blue tone for the clothing. Bonus Sharpie marking areas that I need to be cleared before next time.

This is the finished print, on Awagami Shiramine Select paper:

The finished print.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. There are some registration issues which might be fixable, and some of the printing could’ve been better; but I’m fairly satisfied with my progress.

This was my first print after upgrading to a murasaki baren, which was definitely a worthwhile investment. It felt a lot easier to get smooth colors without rubbing the paper to death.

Key block detail.