COMPLETE - Zangief Vs. Ryu

Hello, my lil' hadoukens!

I long wanted to do a Zangief piece, hoping to get something out a year (or more???) ago when Street Fighter 6 released. Alas, it just never materialized, sitting as a post-it note on my Cintiq labeled "Zangief" for quite some time.

This past Saturday was the Art Night Market at Trustworthy Brewing Co. here in Burbank, the second one this year. This time wasn't quite as lucrative as the first, but the spirit was overall good, with lots of nice people and nice words. Working events like that can be exhausting but is frequently pretty fun, and that's definitely worth a lot!

Anyway, I don't like to go into a tabling experience without at least a couple new things available for the event. You can see the other two pieces here and here, but I wanted to get this done in time. I finished it very late Friday night (well, Saturday morning, probably around 1AM), and while I sold only one copy of this print at the market, I'm still very glad to have finished it, for my soul and of course, for my Etsy store, haha. (I sold very few prints at the market, for what it's worth - stickers were the star!)

I was referencing Zangief's Cyclone Wheel Kick from SF6, which will make you blush every time he does it!

It started as a quick doodle on my ipad while watching TV one night. I wasn't sure who I'd have him beating up in the final version of my piece - I originally thought I'd just design a cute grunt for him to take down with his taint-tastic kick.

Anyone who has played SF6 knows, however, that the default Ryu is the hot bearded version of him, so this felt like the perfect opportunity to include him! I do think it takes the focus away from Zangief a little - I might still do a Zangief-specific piece in the future to make up for it, maybe a sticker??? - but overall I think the piece benefits as a whole. They're Street Fighters, let them FIGHT!

I took my little doodle over to Clip Studio Paint on my Mac, and did the proper sketch.

And from there, I inked it in Illustrator, where I also laid down the base shapes for the background! I'd take it back into CSP to color it, and then did some final little bits of post-production on it in Photoshop, namely some chromatic aberration and film grain (the latter of which makes the file size HUGE, yuck).

After all that, I landed on the final image you see above! I hope that you like it, and if you're interested in owning a print of it, you can do so on my Etsy now (in addition to those previous pieces from last week).

This piece was thumbed in Procreate, sketched in Clip Studio Paint, inked in Illustrator, and colored in Clip Studio Paint, with post-production in Photoshop.

Thank you so much!

Drew