Who was the artist who did a lot of the official 90s artwork

[JulieYBM]

I've always wondered this too. He's by far the best when it comes to DBZ promotional artwork. His style has much finer detail, than even Toriyama's work IMO. The new guy we have now... not even close to this.

I think this is the guy Young Jiji (AF fanmanga artist) tries to emulate.

The promotional art took a nosedive once Tadayoshi and Katsuyoshi stopped doing them. The new guy's stuff just looks so amateur.

Perhaps this has eluded you, but you are using Yamamuro and Nakatsuru's given names. Now, unless you have lunch with them once a week, you might want to reconsider.

[jjgp1112]

I've always wondered this too. He's by far the best when it comes to DBZ promotional artwork. His style has much finer detail, than even Toriyama's work IMO. The new guy we have now... not even close to this.

I think this is the guy Young Jiji (AF fanmanga artist) tries to emulate.

The promotional art took a nosedive once Tadayoshi and Katsuyoshi stopped doing them. The new guy's stuff just looks so amateur.

Perhaps this has eluded you, but you are using Yamamuro and Nakatsuru's given names. Now, unless you have lunch with them once a week, you might want to reconsider.

Oh, shit. All this time I thought those were their last names!

[JulieYBM]

Oh, shit. All this time I thought those were their last names!

Nope. 'Yamamuro' would make for one funny first name! I use whichever order the name is written and spoken, which just so happens to be eastern order (Family Name followed by Given Name) most of the time.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

Pretty sure that first image is Yamamuro's.

No, it's not.

Ah, my bad then. That image looks a bit similar to that of Yamamuro's so I thought it might be him.

[DarkPrince_92]

The promotional art took a nosedive once Tadayoshi and Katsuyoshi stopped doing them. The new guy's stuff just looks so amateur.

Real talk. New guy can go home with that. Don't wanna get on a high horse here, but I bet with the right resources, I can do a better job than the current guy.

[Gonstead]

Whatever the case may be, this will always be the type of art style I will associate DBZ with when I think of it.

[TheGmGoken]

What's the source of the images?

[Aritz182]

I always tough this was Toriyamas art... good to know cause these are some of my favorite arts!
So we do not really know yet who was the actual artist?

[nicolas_3d]

What bothers me the most about all the new drawings is that they completely changed the ears on the characters compared to what they were back then...

it's really obvious when you look at trunk's ears in this picture.

[jjgp1112]

What bothers me the most about all the new drawings is that they completely changed the ears on the characters compared to what they were back then...

it's really obvious when you look at trunk's ears in this picture.

snip

That's always been how Yamamuro and other artists have drawn ears, though.

[Attitudefan]

I'm more for the Dragon Ball 80s era of art. Those have better proportions, detail, and care than the rest.

[Tatakae!!Ramenman]

Are you sure the same artist who did those posters did the cover to super butouden 2? The characters on that cover look better proportioned. They look like 2 different styles to me.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

I'm more for the Dragon Ball 80s era of art. Those have better proportions, detail, and care than the rest.

Not really, no.

[Attitudefan]

I'm more for the Dragon Ball 80s era of art. Those have better proportions, detail, and care than the rest.

Not really, no.

Explain. Show me why not.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

I'm more for the Dragon Ball 80s era of art. Those have better proportions, detail, and care than the rest.

Not really, no.

Explain. Show me why not.

While I do agree that 80's art style looked great, it's just different style to 90's, let alone even today. They are not any less proportioned or detail than 80's. I'm going to post some pictures for comparison's sake.

Spoiler:

These are the artworks that were done during DBZ's original run. They are all proportioned same and also have great details drawn. The difference is the style has changed over time. Toriyama's style had evolved and Toei was adapting to his style, so it's evitable that it happened. But they all still look great.

[DarkPrince_92]

Thread revival... it wasn't that old. I found this and thought I had to share. I love what he did with Gohan's hair.

[Kunzait_83]

Pretty sure long, long many moon ago I made a thread here about exactly this artist/art style.

I've no idea who he (or she?) is myself, but without the slightest doubt he's/she's always been my hands down favorite Dragon Ball artist from pretty much moment one of my getting into it. Yeah, I even kinda like this person's style better than Toriyama's. Heresy I know. Sue me. Its a lot sharper, sometimes more elegant, and does the "angular" look that so many people bitch about in the manga a whole lot more justice. I personally find it to be without a doubt the best a lot of the characters have ever looked generally, outside of some of the REALLY high end animation and some of Toriyama's more jaw dropping high points in the manga. And as noted, the shading and coloring on all these are just superb and second to none. The coloring on some of the more recent official artworks just look awful and sad in comparison to these.

I've been working for years now to collect as many high quality scans of those images as I could find. They basically pretty much all but single-handedly DEFINED the look and feel of Dragon Ball Z's entire presence (online and offline) throughout its entire original run during its early to mid 90s heyday. Hell, they pretty much played a significant role in getting me initially hooked into the series in the first place. Most of them come from posters/wallscrolls, box art, print/magazine ads, and also calendars and pencil boards (pencil boards were a big, big collector's thing in anime circles all throughout the 90s: don't ask me why). A whole bunch of my old avatars I used to use on here (the Dragon Ball related ones that is) came from these.

As someone earlier noted, there's a site called Minitokyo that has a LOT of them in ridiculously high quality. That's an excellent place to start, but of course it hardly has all of them. A long while ago I toyed with the idea of making a whole site devoted solely to gathering and displaying these particular art pieces in the best quality available. Even now I sometimes wonder about possibly making a tumblr page or something for it.

Apart from Minitokyo, its really, really stupidly hard to find a lot of these in halfway decent quality nowadays. Harder than it used to be even way, way back in the early-mid 90s. I think its gotten a lot harder in part due to not only the passage of time, but also moreover all the new official art pieces filling up the void in the interim and clogging up image searches. By comparison, older series from roughly the same time period as DBZ that haven't had so many damn revivals (like Yu Yu Hakusho or Slam Dunk or Ranma 1/2 and the like) are a LOT easier to find their original 90s promo artwork in very good quality.

Really, really glad someone made another thread for this. Hope more info on the artist and more higher res images starts eventually coming about.

[Metalwario64]

Yeah, I've also been searching for high quality versions of the old artwork, and was planning on making a Tumblr as well.

If you ever feel like beating me to the punch, then by all means, go ahead!

[Kunzait_83]

Yeah, I've also been searching for high quality versions of the old artwork, and was planning on making a Tumblr as well.

If you ever feel like beating me to the punch, then by all means, go ahead!

That sounded almost like a dare.

You know what? Fuck it. Done and done.

http://80s90sdragonballart.tumblr.com/

Layout/design of the page is obviously very, very rough and basic and is bound to be tinkered with a bunch in the near future, but it'll get the job done for now.

[InfernalVegito]

Yeah, I've also been searching for high quality versions of the old artwork, and was planning on making a Tumblr as well. :lol:

If you ever feel like beating me to the punch, then by all means, go ahead! :)

That sounded almost like a dare.

You know what? Fuck it. Done and done.

http://80s90sdragonballart.tumblr.com/

Layout/design of the page is obviously very, very rough and basic and is bound to be tinkered with a bunch in the near future, but it'll get the job done for now.

This is amazing, thank you! I bookmarked it.