I'm nervous about putting these out there, but I do want to share them with people despite that. So, if you haven't seen the essay yet, you would know that I like the Manga, My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi. I think his art is some of the best in Shonen Jump now (a popular magazine in Japan that publishes some of the most popular manga out there like Naruto and One Piece). At the tail end of last year, I've seen colored panels and sketches of My Hero Academia and Horikoshi's sketches being posted online and I thought it'd be fun to do that too (especially since my drawing skills aren't exactly great). Sort of like using an adult coloring book to ease my mind when things get stressful.
This turned into a hobby that I do on a weekly basis. It's nothing impressive (I'm no professional, though it would be cool to do professionally), but I enjoy doing it, which is the main point of all of this. I'm hoping to do colored works of more manga outside of MHA like Pokémon Adventures when I have the time and have the energy. I'll be updating this as I keep going. So, please DO NOT REPOST OR COPY MY WORK and if you do share it, CREDIT ME because STEALING SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK IS THE WORST! I own none of these panels and sketches except for the colors. The actual art and lineart belongs to the mangaka, Kohei Horikoshi and any other mangaka/artist I choose to color off from. I try to make that as clear as possible. Also, there are some spoilers below, so be cautious. Please enjoy:
Colored Sketches:
Image: Kohei Horikoshi Colored Sketch for the release of MHA Volume 7 ft. Tenya Iida, Izuku Midoryia, and Shoto Todoroki)
(This was the first one I colored. Mainly because it has two of my favorite characters in it. This was... a start. I didn't really know what to do at this point except be as accurate to the official colors as possible. The clothes were my own colors. Don't get used to the colored outlines. They don't appear very much after this one. Also I know the background is still blank. I wan't ready to go that far yet.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch for Bakugo (right) VS. Uraraka (left)
(This is probably my least favorite of my works. This was the first time working with these characters and getting the colors right, especially Bakugo's ash blonde hair was rough. It also just looks so... plain. I like it enough, but it's not going to be my first example in my portfolio.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch for MHA Volume 16 ft. Eijiro Kirishima and Mina Ashido
(Thankfully this next one is one of my favorite early works mainly due to how colorful it was to work with (I don't know why this image is so blurry. Sorry...). I used Mina's hero costume colors for her outfit and red and brown just worked for Kirishima. You notice here that I didn't outline Horikoshi's lineart here, but colored over or left it as it was it instead. I do this with all my future works. Yes, I'll admit it's lazy, but I also want to keep a part of the mangaka's original work alive so that it's not entirely mine (which it really isn't; only the colors are). Also Mina's colors are hard for me to do as you'll see in other colorings of her mainly because both her hair and skin are different shades of pink thanks to her Quirk and differentiating them is more difficult than I thought. I honestly feel really bad since she's a really good character. I just haven't found a consistent way of coloring her yet. One day I will.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch for Episode #67 ft. Katsuki Bakugo, Denki Kaminari, Hanta Sero, and Eijiro Kirishima
(I remember coloring this because I wanted to practice with some of the side characters. I think it worked well in the end. The colors are lighter than they are later since I was still getting used to them at this point. Especially with the skin color. I don't know why, but I wasn't able to nail it until much later. I finally got Bakugo's hair color right though, so I call that an accomplishment).
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch celebrating Shoto Todoroki's new figurine
(This is where my colored sketches finally see some actual quality in them. Shoto Todoroki is, admittedly, my favorite character, so I had no reason not to color him. I remember this taking a LONG time. It was mainly dude to how large the image was, so I underestimated this by a lot. The figurine was fun to color too though since it was black and white (and basically photoshopped in by Horikoshi himself). I am proud of this one though. It was one of the first works where I saw real improvement in my skills and that I can make something as bright and colorful as the anime.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch celebrating Izuku Midoryia's new figurine
(I worked on this right after I finished the last one with Shoto. I forgot how much green is on Izuku haha! But really, this was fun to do, but it was a challenge. I know drawing his hair is tricky because its so all-over-the-place (how Horikoshi does it on a weekly basis, I'll never know), but coloring it between the lines is a lot of work too. I had to color his figurine too since that was also a black and white photoshop. Fun project in general.)
SPOILERS:
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch for Season 4 Episode 13: Infinite 100%
(This is the first piece of work that really felt complete to me. All the colors are solid; nothing is kept completely blank; it feels right. It feels like something out of the anime, though not nearly as good. You've probably noticed before, but there isn't much shading in my work. Again, laziness, but also because Horikoshi has done most of the shading already, so coloring it in is enough. I'll keep practicing to make sure I master those art techniques one day.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch for the release of MHA Volume 26
(THIS WAS ROUGH! Took me a week to finish! Look at all the colors and details in this. There are so many of them! This wasn't as easy as "color one thing and then just erase what's outside the lines". No, I did that, but I had to make sure that most of the lineart stayed in tact (including the lines on the objects, characters, and clothes) which included a lot of cleaning and erasing, and that none of the colors were erased or overlapped each other. I can't just use the bucket tool either; I have to actually swipe my pen in all sorts of directions to fill in those spaces. There's probably a way to solidify the lineart on Krita so I an use the bucket tool, but I haven't figured it out yet. I can already think of one way, but that might be more tedious that what I'm currently doing. I'm honestly ok with the method I use now. Thanks to all this, I now completely understand why digital art take so long to create. Every artist out there has my sympathies and respect. I can't believe I was insane enough to complete this, but I was. I still like it a lot though, so that's a plus.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch of Ochako Uraraka and Tsuyu Asui
(I'm not sure what Horikoshi was celebrating with this. I think he just wanted to draw the girls cool outfits, so he did. I have no complaints; I love these designs. They're both based off their hero costumes, so it's natural to give them the same color pallet. I wish I could've done more (like show more of Horikoshi's lineart instead of just coloring over it), but oh well. I'm happy with the result.)
Image: Kohei Horikoshi's Sketch of Mirio Togata and Izuku Midoryia for the premier of Season 4
(I colored this in celebration of Izuku and Mirio's birthday back on July 15th. I know, ridiculous to celebrate a fictional character's birthday, but I don't judge you when you celebrate Harry Potter's! I remember liking this, but struggling with it since my software and tablet aren't top-grade machines (I'm too broke to even consider Adobe's stuff or Wamboo tablets. Maybe Clip Studio Art the next time they have a sale). My stuff kept freezing and acting up, so this was delayed by a day. I thankfully was able to celebrate on time here in the States.)
Manga Panels (Quite a few of these are spoilers and I won't be labeling all of them, so just fair warning):
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 137
(This is the first Manga Panel I tried to tackle after doing so many sketches. Now, I alternate between the two depending on what catches my eye. I wanted to practice with a lot of different characters and this was a good panel to work with. It was hard getting the right colors for everyone, but I think it looks good in the end. Coloring the visors for Ochako and Mirio were probably my favorite parts since I was experimenting with opacity and layers more. I loved how those two details turned out.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 39
(Ah yes. The chapter that got turned into my all-time favorite episode of the anime thus far. This is what grabbed me onto the series. The action, the tension, the pacing, the emotion, and the reveal of how traumatizing Shoto's past truly is (oh, man is it HEAVY. Dude's got a long ways to recovery) and how he overcomes it in one of the most realistic ways I've ever seen moving forward. And the animation was absolutely incredible, especially that last clash! This episode proved how amazing this series can be when put into the right hands. So, thanks Studio Bones. Anyway, I loved coloring this. Particularly the color blending of the ice and the fire. Oh, did you know that apparently I REALLY like coloring fire? Because it was so cool to work on! This is one of my favorite works. I really put a lot of love into this because I honestly owe it that much.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 182
(One of the happiest moments in the series. It's a simple image of a child smiling in Mirio's arms, but when you read the manga or watch the anime to get the context, you'll understand why this is so rewarding. Again, I wish I could've done more for this, but I wanted to take it easy on myself. The purple smoke effect was cool to work with though.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 242
(I wanted to draw a panel with the series' 3 main characters and chose this. It's a simple page with simple portraits of our heroes. Good enough for me. Simple, easy to do on a rainy day, still can be improved. Not much else to say about this one.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 257
(Yeah, this is their relationship in a nutshell. Bakugo being wild and kind of feral and Izuku trying to be as kind and tolerant to Bakugo as possible. Childhood friends turned to the bully and bullied to proper rivals. It used to be a lot worse than this. They could even stand next to each other before Bakugo would come after Izuku with something insulting. They've grown a lot since then. Regardless, I love these characters and I had to color the perfect portrayal of them.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 248
(Oh, boy this was another tough one on me. SO MANY COLORS went into this one. It would've taken so much longer if I actually did my own shading. This either took a week or a week and a half. I forgot. I wanted a challenge at the time and I decided to take this one. I'm proud of it, but BOY did I underestimate this. I think I'm just relieved to be done with this one. I was going to color a page similar to this right after, but the background drained me so much that I didn't want to do it again for a long while. It's going to be a while until I touch something with this much stuff in it again. At least until I've improved more.)
Image My Hero Academia Chapter 274
(Hey, look! It's the main protagonist and the main antagonist of this series! Two sides of the same coin essentially! As you can tell by the gap in chapters (I normally do these chronologically now), I took a long break after the last one. I was so drained by that that I couldn't color much after that. Thankfully this page was drawn and it was so impactful that I had to do it. Making sure the lineart was kept was difficult since there was a lot. Regardless, it's always cool to see these two sides on the same page, especially when you know why they're connected.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 276
(This is another favorite of mine. Not only did I finally nail the skin tone in this (took me long enough), but it also contained almost all the students, both main and supporting, from Class 1-A. There was a lot of colors in this one, but it was a lot less tedious than it was before. I think this is where I saw improvement in my skills again. I wasn't struggling as much as I was before and everything just moved smoothly. I also learned that I like doing character panels like this because this means I can experiment with different colors and characters I didn't work with before.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 169
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 166
(I'm putting these two together because they were easy to do and there's not much of a story behind either one. But, basically , Shoto hasn't showed up in the current arc very much yet and I missed seeing him, so I decided to color two panels of him to make up for his absence. What? I said he's my favorite character. Don't look at me like that! *clears throat* Anyway, yeah, I just did these on a whim. Amazingly the first one took an hour, maybe less. It might've been 30 minutes. Progress! And don't worry, the second panel is a gag image for funny purposes. I think Horikoshi decided to experiment with that one. Canonically, Shoto's the stoic, socially inept, pretty boy of the main characters, but this isn't a romance/shoujo manga. It's still a story about superheroes training and fighting villains with some slice of life on the side because high school.)
Image: My Hero academia Chapter 277
(It had been a LONG time since I colored anything Bakugo related, so after I saw this panel, I had to do this feral boy justice. Again, really fun to do. I think I finally got his hair color right and, again, drawing the oncoming fire was fun. A lot of blurring and blending went into that one. I had to make sure a good majority of the lineart wasn't colored over either, which took a long while. Overall, I'm really glad I worked on this one.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 278
(I mainly wanted to color this to see if I can color/portray Momo's (the ponytail girl) correctly. Her Quirk, Creation, lets her create anything non-organic. The anime shows her creations coming out of her skin with these blue and pink dots. Kind of like molecules. I tired it out, they're kind of hard to see, but I like the outcome. And then I drew the rest of the page because I wanted to. I guess I'm more ambitious than I thought.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 279
(Hey! Another character page! With characters who I never worked with before! Each with unique designs! You know I'm a sucker for experimenting. Again, a lot of characters to work with here. I noticed how quickly I was able to work with this one. It took me a few days, but compared to when I started out, that's a massive improvement. I think this would've taken me a week at least if I started this from the get-go. I feel like a lot of my skills have led up to something like this. Improvements can still be made, sure, but I can just feel my progress in this one. I know my style now. I hope this continues.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 280
(I'm putting these two together because they're simple and from the same chapter. These were such cool action shots that I had to color them. I wish I could color the entire pages from these respective panels, but they're WAY too complicated for me to do at my skill level now. Honestly, the art for these pages were incredible and I just cannot do them justice at this point. These will have to suffice. I'm not sure what I should've colored Mina's acid in her panel (her Quirk is Acid, guys). The anime says grey, her figurine says green, and a recent color page from Horikoshi says purple. I just colored it purple. I love working with the sharp and jagged details on Kirishima's page. And, of course, the blue fire was so neat to work with. It's actually easier to do than I thought too. But, man, this arc is so good!)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 281 (Pt. 1)
(Man, I'm just sad. I'm glad I finished this under a day, but knowing the context of this panel makes me want to cry. This is the most somber thing I've colored so far. I'm trying to to spoil anything as I'm writing this, but it's rough. I finished this and am righting this the same day the chapter released and the feelings are still raw. )
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 281 (Pt. 2)
(I wanted to add that cute, bubbly-like effect that a lot of anime and manga have whoever they're fantasizing about something, but every time I tried, it just looked wrong... I'll try another time not with the color green. Also, Eri is precious and I love her. If she gains any more trauma from this arc, I'm going to write a letter to Horikoshi asking him to protect Eri at all costs.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 282 (Pt. 1)
(IT'S BEEN 3,000 YEARS!!! So, yeah, I'm so happy Shoto's back! But, now that he's on the battlefield, that means he's at risk of getting killed or having his Quirk stolen too. Suddenly, I'm afraid... As for the colors themselves, Shoto's new costume hasn't been given a canon color scheme yet, but I assume it's something like this. I might fix it when we're given confirmation.)
Image: My Hero Academia Chapter 282 (Pt. 2)
(Aizawa is the most badass hero in this arc so far. He stares at an insane man to keep him at bay, takes a shot to the leg, and then cuts off said leg to make sure his adopted daughter stays happy. But, wow. The lineart on this was nuts. I only darkened the main lines. Notice how many of them are on Aizawa's face alone. How Horikoshi and his team manage to do all this stuff on a weekly basis is beyond me. As much as I love this manga, I kinda want to give him a good break.)
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