A collaboration I did with Miguel Mercado, who is an amazing artist and an equally awesome friend. Posted here with his permission, of course!

I'm a huge, HUGE fan of Samurai Champloo (so expect cosplay of this sometime haha), and when I saw Miguel's drawing of Jin, Mugen and Fuu, I just knew I had to try coloring it. I definitely needed the practice, and with such a brilliant piece to work with, how could I not get motivated?

Title taken from the fifth episode of Samurai Champloo, because I found it appropriate for this piece. It's a strange collision of Miguel's drawing style, my coloring technique, and traditional Japanese art influences (ink paintings and ukiyo-e).

Disjointed comments time!

I had fun rendering Mugen's hair (Mugen is the guy on the right, for those not familiar with SC), although I feel like it'll just show up as SOLID BLACK in other monitors. I do my drawings on my MacBook, and it frustrates me when I see how much detail gets lost when I see my work on other computers, like my wonky PC.

I kind of used *snowpeachdrop as my reference for coloring Fuu (the girl in pink). They've got the same girlish features, big eyes, high cheekbones, funny facial expressions and inhuman appetite - not that you can see that in the drawing but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Lastly... Jin. Gah, he is my hero. A quiet, enigmatic, dignified prodigy. I was so shocked when I first found out I shared my name with him. One of my childhood dreams was to be a virtually unbeatable, lethally skilled, wandering swordsman. The other was to be a marine biologist. But I digress.

Programs I used were Corel Painter IX and Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Credits:
Line art by
Colors by me
Textures from [link]
_{I'm afraid I've forgotten where I got the images of the ink paintings. If you know the source, please inform me so I can give proper credit. Thank you!}

Samurai Champloo | Mugen, Jin, Fuu © Manglobe, Inc.