The Unwritten Rules of Dragon Ball’s Art 

Toriyama really made super sayian so it would be easier to ink the hair, then made cell, which is the most annoyingly detailed character to draw

For archival purposes, the og title of this video was: "Drawing Dragon Ball is harder than you think."

It's honestly incredible how much Toriyama's art style morphed over his life and yet still, no matter how wildly different Goku looks in the Buu Saga from the Pilaf Arc, he still retains the look that literally screams, "Hey, it's me, Goku!"

I think the coolest thing about Toriyama's art is that it looks so simple to draw at first, especially in the facial features, but it's those subtle nuances to the style that really end up making it so deceptively simple, yet harder to draw in practive, and that's what makes it one of the most uniquely intriguing artstyles I've seen yet.

4:30 this was SUCH a revelation for me.

Everytime I draw piccolo I dread the amount of lines I need to do…

The iconic “Dragonball stare” that many characters like Goku are known for was reportedly drawn from Bruce Lee as an inspiration. One thing I can say about Toriyama is that he really did a solid job of combining all of his interests into his work while making something that felt unique enough on its own.

I always had this conversation with people they always reference the Anime and yeah they really do all look the same to cut corners, but in the manga and Toriyama’s actual drawings everyone looks different with there unique designs and features. Toriyama is a genius

I now want a comprehensive breakdown on Jojo's art styles, that one is truly an insane ride through the ages.

I would love to see a video going over Toyotaro's art style as well. From the days he was working on Dragon Ball AF to now, he's improved A LOT over the years. A comparison to Toriyama would also be pretty cool, discussing everything he's learned from where he used to be up to now. The Superhero arc really impressed me with his art, Cell Max looked so cool and nothing like we've ever seen in Dragon Ball before.

One of Toriyama’s older details that I like to use is the lines he would put on the back of peoples hands sometimes in early dragon ball, it was always a cool feature to me.

What I love the most about Toriyama's art is that it's a style that screams it's his art. Every artist has defining characteristics in their art, of course, but Toriyama does this in everything: the way he drew eyes, hair, clothing, vehicles, houses, trees, mountais, impact lines, everything was very authoral.

Totally Not Mark, despite not being the main theme of the channel, is my favorite art RU-vidr. This is because not only does he draw something I enjoy very much but its really because he also talks about very interesting and related things whilst doing so, which is extremely entertaining to me.

I absolutely agree to 7:40. A shape of a "normal" face, drawn with the Loomis method for example will most likely fail. Instead, you actually have to come up with your own shape for sketching Dragon Ball faces.

Toriyama will be a legend to us all, it barely feels real that he's gone.

90’s and early early 2000’s was my favorite look

As a newbie artist, i never thought i needed a video like this so bad until it came to me

Mark, please make more art videos, I love your analysis on it and watching you guys draw is always very interesting.

I love watching style studies and breakdowns. And this one might just be my favorite, no stone feels unturned and it really shows an understanding of Toriyama’s sensibilities in every style, as well as showing the upper limits of where dragon ball can be pushed before it starts to loose that dragon ball identity.

0:54 Song is Dragon Ball Legends main theme

Absolutely love this idea for a video! I’ve studied Toriyama’s art style for years and am very familiar with the evolution and all the artists here absolutely NAILED each one. Excellent work!

I really enjoy the way you are able to break down what's going on in Toriyamas' work. The format of your channel in general is super compelling, Awesome video!

I missed these drawing commentary videos! Learned a bunch whilst got to see you guys flex! Love it!

As someone who learned to draw Dragonball during school life this video is a gift, like all my thoughts I couldn’t express put into words

I was just watching your old re-drawing video's I love these!!

Hey man, thank you so much for uploading. Especially after everything you have been through over these past few years. Your content really helps people get through rough days. My mother almost overdosed today, and watching your videos are really helping me calm down after a stressful day. You help many people just pushing through and uploading. You deserve all the love and support you get and more some. Thank you for making awesome content, and again thank you for letting people escape life for a few minutes.❤

Seeing the first drawing on this video fascinates me most, and is something I always thought about would be cool if more explored. I had always thought about how interesting it'd be if Z-era Dragon Ball characters in particular, maybe Super, were drawn in an early Dragon Ball style how it'd look. Like thinking about if Toriyama had kept his initial art style instead of evolving it, how characters such as Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, Freeza, and Cell for example, how different they'd look. I know it was hard, but thanks for doing this video. These art videos are the ones on this channel that excite me the most. Toriyama is such a hard style to nail down as it looks so deceptively simple!

Great and detailed breakdown of Toriama's art progressiaon over the years. Trully amazing how in depth, analitic it was and how well you understand what makes Toriama's art so special and distinguishible.

Hey Mark, great video! I'd LOVE another episode of this series analyzing Toyotaro's art traits 🙌🏻

Amazing job y’all! Thanks for explaining everything Mark! 🔥🔥🔥

It’s been… so long since I’ve felt excitement towards drawing, but this video change that. I had forgotten how much I enjoy drawing and inking, but you’ve genuinely reminded me. Thank you for that. Now, what I’d really love to see is a video on Toriyama-sama’s design development with the Dragon Quest series, or even a Toriyama X Amano study where Amano’s Final Fantasy characters are drawn in DQ styles and vice-versa.

Man is really trolling with that, "BUTT"😭

15:42 man the left style is just perfection, I wish that stayed, maybe super wouldn’t look like everyone needed a good meal 🙁

16:11 it's not like ive forgotten that Toriyama died, but this ahocked me again I was like "WHAT!? WHEN!?.. oh right.." Rip 🧡

Man. Watching this video made me realize how distinct is the way I draw DB compared to the manga and such. But it also helped me understand the style more! Definetly will take all the info from this video in mind to help me out with my future DB drawings! Fantastic video as always Mark 👍

I am working on my own comic and a hell of a lot of it is inspired by Dragon Ball and Akira Toriyama's writing style in particular. I love the expansive worlds of One Piece, MHA, JJK, etc. but there's something so wonderfully simple about DB that always draws me back in and inspires me. I think the fact that a lot of it was improvised really speaks to me, I have a similar attention span, and then fact that he was never afraid of changing his story in whatever direction he felt like. He was really a fantastic artist and it's gonna be a weird world for some more time without his influence in it.

It would be interesting to see you talk about the various artist that have handled the promotional art for the series. There's a lot of talent there and I think that it would be cool for them to get a nod for what they've done for the series as well.

As an aspiring artist (right now I work only with pixel art), I cannot describe how valuable these kind of videos are. **please** do more, with other manga authors too! Love Toriyama, I cannot describe how much his work has fundamentally shaped my expectations towards other art ❤

I LOVE these types of videos PLEASE make them more often

Thank yall for this. It’s genuinely helpful

When I was studying Toriyamas work for a fan manga I was making I had to find a lot of things out for my self, this video really would of helped back then😂

Always love the art videos, thanks Mark 🖤

I’m so glad you’ve made this video. I completely agree with the fact that you can draw dragon ball in many different ways and it still looks like dragon ball. I’m proud of my style, I’ve worked hard at understanding these unspoken rules and how to take other stylistic liberties to make things feel like my own. So thankful for Akira, may he live on forever through us all. ❤

I love all the different styles and versions but the raw anger and energy, the jagged lines and badass rock music of the 90s style of the OG frieza through cell sagas, looked so sick

As an artist, I gotta say this helped a lot with some aspects I was missing. Thanks to Mark and Team! You've helped me greatly!

A person's artstyle is really just that particular artist's shorthand for conveying certain information visually (usually developed from an understanding of drawing fundamentals), and keeps changing throughout your career depending on what you draw, the tone, and even just personal taste. And as such, they will always end up having a greater understanding than anyone else of it, because they know the thinking behind it that an imitator won't. I really liked that you pointed out the eyes in the video, because it's something that a beginner would see as just a tip to keep in mind, but likely for Toriyama, it stemmed from an understanding of how the eye works in 3D space, and why at least that is important for relating emotion to the reader (since most of the feature PLACEMENT is warped to enhance expression over realism). This is why it's easy to tell apart artists who learn drawing by imitating a specific artstyle vs. an artist that is forming their own from their understanding of the fundamentals and the requirement of their work. It's why blindly imitating an artstyle can instill wrong habits and stunt your growth as a beginner artist. EDIT: and yeah, the Buu Arc really took a slip in the art department. For every panel of Ultimate Gohan that looks badass, there's three panels with stick arms, but a neck fatter than a hippo's ass

0:01 I really loved the use of dragon ball legend's theme for the intro

Great breakdown and fantastic drawings by all, love it

I think Toriyama took a lot of artistic leaning and influence from Osamu Tezuka, at least early on. The hair thing, the shape and the way it flipped was reminiscent of Astro Boy. The hair losing its spot black or “shining” when he turned Super Saiyan is also reminiscent of Astro Boy when Astro hit 1 million horsepower and transformed into a super powered fighting mode, just like super saiyan ended up doing. Toriyama made claims publicly concerning why he did certain things, but if you track his influences and see the similarities it doesn’t seem like a mere coincidence. He also borrowed from Star Wars and heavily from Terminator (T2) for the Android saga. He drew based on his inspirations, and it showed.

You should definitely dedicate the entire month of October to Devilman for Halloween. First you start with the original manga, then the sequel, Devil Lady, then Amon: The Apocalypse of Devilman and finally finish it with a video talking about all the adaptations: The 70s anime, the 80s OVA, the Devil Lady anime, the Amon OVA, the live-action movie from 2004 and finally Devilman Crybaby. It is considered Go Nagai's magnum opus and it's said to be ahead of its time in terms of dark shounen. It is even considered an inspiration for Chainsaw Man.

Fascinating! Great detailed video.

Bro i miss toriyama. I feel like buu arc was his prime with the 3 shades and pointy bulky characters . I hope yuya takahashi stays in the cut cause i can really see his love for the franchise in every shot 🙏🏾❤️

This video does its job of really going over Toriyama's evolution as a artist and what made his art style so unique. Its also pretty cool how you go into Toyotaro's way of designing characters.

Incredible video. My favorite part might be the discussion of Toriyama musculature. I think it puts so clearly into focus why some people adamantly prefer his work over Toyotarou’s even when comparing a Tori manga panel to a Toyo cover. It’s just preference and audience comfort with the older design.

14:08 This isn't only the evolution of his style. It's what he had time to do. He never would have drawn these for the actual manga and that's clear with his drawings for DB Super.

7:33 Don't forget about the games that have a 3D model of the character. If you want the best results of drawing the characters, use the 3D models as a reference.

As in, there's no in-house rules, as those can change as time goes on when an artist hones his skills and adapts to new techniques. I still remember how AI bros used "adapt or die!" as a TAUNT, but fail to understand we artists have been doing exactly that for years: pretty much an unwritten rule, while the "adapt" part is true, what the AI bros fail to understand is that the turtle school mantra rings true for all artists, big or small. Goku DOES meditate, in his own way as he rests, since it's one of the defining traits of Taoism and Buddhism. Why Cell is a terrifying foe as he's a technorganic machine made up of stolen data of various fighters around the globe and his very existence is an affront to life itself.

This video is a Godsend! I love drawing Dragon Ball but only noticed a few of these details myself.

I love these art videos so much!

Toriyama's style baffled me when I finally started to read the manga as I had a vague grasp of drawing techniques by that point. His faces used to throw me off the most. More-so when I tried to draw any of the characters as they always looked a little uncanny. I could understand what he was doing in theory, but couldn't quite implement similar techniques in a way that read like his style into my own drawings. Even the times I traced his stuff to try and work on learning his style, my lines never looked right as something was off (line weight, the confidence of the lines, I missed something). It's such a deceptively simple style that to this day, many years after my first attempts at drawing it, I still can't get right. At the very least, I was able to learn things to incorporate in my own style from how he drew mouths, ears (of all things), dynamic/expressive eyes (with some of the directional rules he used), and hatched shadows on characters.

I´ll never get tired of your DB videos

What a sweet video. Cheers to the talented artists that participated !

Amazing video, so accurate!!

It’s amazing how much Marks art has improved over the years. I’m consistently impressed to see his work

Do more dragon ball redraw videos. I enjoyed them a lot

9:05 "...And with it comes HUGE muscles as a running trend" I'd like to point out that the increase in muscle size in the Cell Saga was so great that it LITERALLY became a plot point!

Toriyama improved his skills.

Really impressive. Thanks!

Very good video. Cannot wait for Daima. The art style and animation look craaazy

Thanks For this!! Love your content 😊😊😊

Thank you for making this. I have some studying to do.

Love your drawing videos mark!

10:46 mark says "and the next one up issssssssss..." ad plays and says: FLANKLIN UNIVERSITY!!!!

Love these art videos!

I love these art educational episodes, especially with drawn examples!

My favorite little nuance that Toriyama did is the outline to the eyes in Goku and his family from base to Super Saiyan

Honestly, looking at the two examples in the thumbnail, I think I prefer the 1988 style personally

Interesting video. I keep thinking Toriyama's artsyle peak was buu saga, at least standing by my personal taste.

Would definitely be interested in seeing how other artists like toyotaro, or even some of the animators like Misaki Satos progression and evolution in there own DB art style. Maybe as a sort of follow up to this as a comparison to toriyama’s art style here

I always have problems with which manga book I need to look at to get the art right. This video helped with how I should think when using the manga as reference.

26 years... I've been drawing Dragonball characters for 26 years... And I didn't know about the fact that the eye lines face the same direction when the characters look to the side... Now I know why my eyes on the furthest side always looked cluttered or difficult to capture the correct perspective! You guys are awesome...

I've been waiting for this video ! Can you make a video to teach us how to draw his different styles more precisely ? I've been trying my best all my life to imitate Toriyama-Sensei but never reached a percent of one of his styles

Thanks for uploading Mark.

This an interesting evolution of Toriyama-sensei's art-style. I need to see more of paneling, I can study it and use the paneling technique myself.

Toriyama was basically the mangaka Shakespeare

The one change I kept waiting for you to mention was around the Buu arc and seemed to be carried over for a lot of both his designs and others during certain...other tours. The necks DRASTICALLY shrunk again for a lot of characters. Like you mentioned for Cell they all got super beefy necks, but then suddenly for Buu on a lot of characters started sporting much thinner necks with much squarer heads. It sticks out the most with Mr Satan especially, and while I'm sure that was more intentional to show him aging and weakening, a lot of other characters seem to follow that style. Originally he had a neck that was wider than his head at the base and tapered up. But buu onward his neck started shrinking until it almost takes on more of a tube shape going into a very blocky head. And you really start seeing that design a lot more I feel

DBZ was my biggest inspiration and influence in my art. As a kid I'd draw characters from memory and got pretty good at it. Now, at 31, imitating a Toriyama-esque style is almost second nature.

How the eyes are done when looking in a direction it reminds me of when I was learning perspective drawing utilizing light as a vanishing point to show where the light source is at.

thank you mark for this video, it is helping me as a beginner digital artist

4:16 i feel sorta proud that i noticed this, as early in my art carrier i studied toriyamas artstyle, until the point (what i would say) it is indistinguishable form his. i never really stepped out of that until a year or so later.

I'm so glad you made this video. I always wondered why Dragon Ball's art is so amazing to look at I don't know why but Toyotaro's art feels like "ok this is certainly Dragon Ball" when reading the DBS manga, but whenever you compare a panel of Toyotaro featuring Goku and you compare it to the original Dragon Ball manga, Toriyama's art feels so much more impactful and detailed, even though I have no idea what the details and differences are. There is a specific side by side comparison image I've seen online of Goku showing up in front of his kids in the latest chapters of Super alongside a panel of End of Z Goku, and you can just tell how old Toriyama's Goku is just by looking at his face. He looks like a wise master while Toyotaro's Goku feels like a teenager in design. I simply don't have the expertise to explain why that's the case but it certainly is. This video helps explain some of the "magic" Toriyama's style gives off

I would say my favourite era of Dragon Ball's art (by Toriyama in the manga) is in the Namek Saga, it feels like the perfect inbetween of what came before in the Saiyan saga and what will come later. I also really like the less "serious" feeling of the art in earlier arcs. Dragon Ball will always have one of my favourite fundamental styles, Akira Toriyama created something amazing.

I'd be interested in seeing more redraws of modern manga scenes using the mangakas style in their early chapters. So many artists change their style drastically by the end of their run that it'd be interesting to see if certain panels have the same impact if the style remained the same.

I go back and forth between the 23rd tenkaichi budokai and the sayian arc for which era’s art style is my favourite. The balance of detail and dynamism in the saiyan arc is incredible, but the slightly more lighthearted approach to proportions in the tenkaichi budokai also really appeals to me (I especially love how scary piccolo is drawn in that arc)

I have to ve absolutely honest, my favorite toriyama style is the modern one, i adore the way he made everything so circular and happy,it really shows whats what he thought was the best part of his work, and my personal favorite too, it also lends itself to more stuff, it is a drsgon ball style, but is also a dragon quest, a sandland, it encompases a lot of his work

I wonder if you'll ever do episodes about the backgrounds/have sections of the redraw episodes about the background rendering (and maybe some specific way to mimic the style of old school celluloid era backgrounds via the photoshop brushes settings, mainly the paintstroke look). It's ok if you don't do that, excellent work as always.

Another banger, thank you Mark 🙏

Can we just appreciate how TNM has one of the best amv cutaway?

Damn mark! I remember when you did the what if dragon ball super was in the 90s and the goku black looked a bit off but when you drew the goku in the original style it looks so good

5:18 that mean you gonna do a full mha series review, cause I'd be down for that, it's my favourite anime