Masamune Shirow is a well-known manga artist who created many of the Sci-fi Anime we know and love today, from Appleseed, to Ghost In The Shell, and Even Dominion: Tank police.

I was to study his style for my "Drawing for the Graphic Novel" college course, and I discovered that his style is very, VERY hard to emulate. Most folks think manga is something that is very easy to emulate, but each artist has their own style, and it becomes difficult to emulate their style when you aren't used to it.

I had to re-draw the girl's face 5 times before I got it right. the subtle differences his style has from most others made it more of a challenge. He has a very unique style.

When I went into this piece, I didn't realize just how much detail he crammed into it, and it was daunnting, to say the least, to try and draw everything in..I know I missed a spot or two.

The other thing I had trouble with was the fact that this is technically mixed media. he used brushes, markers, and even colored pencils on this piece, which made it hard to emulate because I don't have those brushes in my Krita set yet.

An interesting note on the pilot's suit. It was a relatively new concept to have skin-tight link-suits for pilots, and Shirow thought it might be too racey to include in his portfolio.

Another thing to note is that, nnow, Shirow utilizes digital media to paint his work, and it is leaps and bounds above what this piece is, as this piece was drawn Traditionally, and Mr. Shirow hated how limited his inking was due to technical pens not being his favorite thing to ink with due to the lack of thinner lines.