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Samurai Jack

Long ago in a distant land, Aku, the shapeshifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil; But a foolish samurai warrior, wielding a magic sword, stepped forth to oppose him. This woodblock print depicts that fateful encounter, moments before the final blow was struck.

August 2024 Edition. Approx 7.5″ x 5.5″ (19cm x 14cm)

The image design was taken from the first episode of Samurai Jack, and recreated by me via the Japanese woodblock print technique.

One of the challenges with this design is that there are no key lines — thin black lines that separate each of the shapes/colors. So when producing this image via woodblock, I had to be really careful about registration; so that adjacent or overlapping colors will line up perfectly. For example, the flames in the background are created from three separate colors. Each of these colors needed to line up exactly with each other, as well as lining up perfectly around the body of Jack.

There were several rounds of test printing to identify and correct misregistration and other carving issues. Some of these issues are shown in the gallery below.

Background colors not lining up.
Background colors not lining up.
Background color encroaching into the hand area.
Background color overlapping with the sword color.
Background colors not lining up.
Background colors not lining up.

You can also see in the gallery above that I forgot to carve out the eyes on the skin-color block (the eyes should be white). This was a relatively simple fix: just carve them away. However, this block also required another fix in the hand area: the color on Jack’s left pinkie doesn’t completely fill in the hand shape. To fix this, wood needed to be added to the block, which I accomplished by gluing in a little inlay/plug, as shown below.

Issue with the pinkie finger.
A little plug that has been carefully sanded down to the correct shape.
Glued in with waterproof wood glue.
The key lines pasted down, and re-carved.
After carving and washing.
Test print immediately after the fix. It will become less noticeable after more printing.

(You can also see another plug/inlay on this block to fix the positioning of the skin color that appears within the sword handle. This one didn’t need to be as seamless, so it’s a bit more sloppy looking.)

After a bunch of test printing, I think I finally solved most of the registration issues, and finally did a “real” print run:

The final print isn’t totally perfect. There are still some registration issues, and my printing technique is still a bit sloppy in some areas; but overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Photos of the blocks:

Base background color.
Flames, layer 1.
Flames, layer 2.
Aku’s body; Jack’s sword.
Jack’s robe details.
Jack’s skin tone; Aku’s eyelid/flame.
Jack’s face & hands; Background dots.

This short animation shows the color layers, and how they overlap to form the image, approximately:


Thanks for reading.