New Monkey King art

[MCDaveG]

Our publishing house prepares whole new release of Monkey King, in Czech only unfortunately.
But I'm in charge of illsutration and art and we thought that it will look like manga and Japanese prints
to appeal for the teenage demographics and rising popularity of classic series here, because Monkey king is regarded here
as some old Chinese legend releasing in that boring format of huge books with some simplistic ink art.
As I was quite influenced by Toriyama's Dragon Ball style, It is quite more appearant when I'm drawing manga
then I thought. So I had idea to post you here concept sketch for Sun Wukong (His basic clothing concept I tought of.
I made about 8 versions of him) for you to give me some opinions. Note that this is incomplete rough draft by pencil (as all of them are) without color.
The work on book will take some time, so if there will be someone interested, I will send you the complete colored images in hi-quality when it will be done.

[Sun-Wukong]

I'm really tempted to make a joke about it looking nothing like me, but it already sounds stale in my head. It looks nice though, kudos.

[SHINOBI-03]

Ooh! You're working on a JTTW adaptation?! That's awesome!

So, about Wukong's design, here are some of my notes:

First of, I think his face should not look humane. He's a monkey, and supposed to be a scary looking one as described in the novel with those who saw his face and commented on how he looked like the Thunder God. And to be honest, this is one of the things I dislike like about JTTW artists, and that's giving him a normal human face instead of a monkey's.

Next, here's a question: Is he going to have a long tail? In some translations, Wukong is described to be a Macaque. And Macaques are Asian monkeys and they usually have short to medium length tails. It's acknowledged that Wukong has a tail and he can't transform it, but if we're going to be specific, his tail is not long.

Next, his outfits. He did not start and remained in one set. He had different ones throughout the story.
First his monk outfit in his early training days (Red in the novel):


Then he got his iconic golden armor with his cap with the two phoenix feathers that he got from the Dragon Kings:


He got another outfit when he was the horse keeper:



In the pilgrimage part, he started with his most well known outfit. The one with the tiger skin.


At one point, he was going to have this hat on, but it turned out to be a trick to put the crown on his head.



As time went on, he wore different outfits, but yellow remained his primary color:





And now for his weapon, the Golden Hooped staff. From the name, you can tell it got the color gold in it. Now, in these illustrations, the staff is golden.



There are some who make it all red as an homage to Dragon Ball, but that's inaccurate since the "Golden" part of the name becomes pointless.

Lastly, and even though you pointed out that you're taking charge of the illustrations and I can take it that you have nothing to do with the story, but how are you going to portray him in the adaptation? Are you going to make him true to his personalty of being an arrogant asshole or are you going to make him a peace loving, heroic type of character?

[MCDaveG]

The face is human to appeal the younger readers and it's quite an ''manga'' adaptation, so on the picture account, we wanna recreate the visage with influence of modern anime series and trends.
He will got lot of monkey features like fur on body and monkey like hair on face, the tail. That is quite issue, because I wanted it longer to have one of his monkey features more visible. This particular design is with short tail hidden under the ''tiger skirt''.
Yeah, I know about the clothes, because I studied some old art of Journey To The West, also I'm taking in account the chinese clothing from prehistoric to medieval age, so there won't be any Japanese influence only some styling. As I said, I have about 8 designs for Wukong and there is that one with the ''crown'' you mentioned, monk clothes, light armor and heavy armor.
I wanna portray even the battles, so he will be enhanced like this in some or ''battle damaged''.

I hope this won't anger you as a fan of this legendary story, but we won't stay true to the original, as we want to renew it for new audience, because all of the releases beter or worse took serious way to portray it so the book simply lost in shelves.
It will be a complete rehash and I will combine the pictures of nature in traditional ink art style and characters and effects will be hand drawn by ink and black markers, generated as vector graphic in PC and colored in PC like the anime and manga is nowadays, but with more care as this won't be printed on cheap paper and it will be an exclusive collector's release )

[MCDaveG]

Ah, you asked about the story, sorry I overlooked. It will be classic Monkey King. Not the whole Journey, but shortened edition and re-release of (In Czech and China) famous version with illsutrations by Zdeněk Sklenář http://www.zdeneksklenar.cz/vystavy/opici-kral

We want to rehash it by ''visual'' into more mainstream and popculture to be bestseller.
There is no money making, this sick idea came out of my head as I love Journey To The West story when I was talking with one of our authors and one of the first Chinese translators here
to remake it in modern way and he was really excited and turned in some Sinologists to have it manga, but to not screw it and add proper Chinese elements.