khylov

"Shichinin no samurai"












It's been a few years since I last saw Seven Samurai. I had plenty of reference material to look over (Thank you, Google). I did a couple of sketches before any of the ones posted here, based straight off of DVD covers and film images. Felt kind of cheesy with that though, so....

Here's a prelim page. Kikuchiyo's character was the first one I started in on, and the toughest for me to do through the course of this whole thing. Design is one thing, but design that has to resemble someone... Aiyah....








Probably one of the most memorable parts for me was Kikuchiyo stumbling drunk. I tried getting a hint of that here; and in theory, drawing a character inebriated and about to puke on himself sounds like a nice warm up to keep the character design from becoming too stiff..... Turned out to be alot harder than I gave it credit for. I was going by memory and improv on this one. Still needs work:

















It was fun to finally try to render a character that has been, I think, the archetype for all latter devil-may-care ronin-types in samurai films and (do I say it? Do I?!..) anime films.




















Mifune got it spot on, a really brash, careless fool who's just as much a warrior as he is a bully... but very skilled, very likable and (this may be the reason for why he has the appeal that he does) very vulnerable.

Several times in the film, he's either laughed at, put in his place, or finds himself in the middle of some sort of crisis/internal conflict that he doesn't solve right away, or at all... (Friggin McKee....)

But he also is shown gaining victories, whether it be in fighting or in his outward charisma towards others (i.e., the villagers). And, he's actually one of the most introspective and observant characters in the film (from what I remember anyhow)...

Hmm, was that "film analysis"? Pssh, I get 10 points knocked off for that. Boooo....

Animation paper, Colerase pencils. Yosh.