Zorro reimagined

David Nakayama explains his process of redesigning and drawing a modern and culturally relevant new version of Zorro

Learn how David Nakayama paints a new version of the classic comic hero.

Created in 1919, Zorro (Spanish for ‘fox’) is a classic pulp character who’s appeared in books, comics, TV and films over the decades. His story includes a secret identity, a hidden base of operations, and many other tropes that would go on to inspire modern superhero characters such as Batman. However, in recent years, the popularity of Zorro has been less present in popular culture, so perhaps it’s time to reinvigorate the character with a reinvention.

There have been many versions of Zorro over the years and many characters inspired by him as well. But for this exercise, I like the idea of creating a legacy character who would take up the mantle of the original. That’s always fun and always feels fresh. So how about a female heir to the original? (‘Zorra’ perhaps, since that’s the female form of the word in Spanish?) And while we’re at it, for a change, I like the idea of her being noticeably Latina in skin tone and facial features. She’ll have a slick, modernised outfit that still has the iconic hat, cape, and sword, but with everything streamlined.

Let’s go through the steps now, shall we? And in the end we’ll have a full illustration worthy of a modern cover.

1 Create a range of possible costume designs

I always start by sketching the expected thing first, to get it out of my system (in this case the Antonio Banderas film costume on a female figure). Right away, I feel like the large cape would be a hindrance, so I shorten it. Then it’s a matter of balancing form and function: she needs to look simultaneously agile, powerful, beautiful and modern. I settle on something that’s form-fitting and has colour pops to add interest.

2 Developing the cover composition

When designing a cover-style image, it’s important to lead the eye through the space, highlight your central figure, and show off the character’s special attributes. Here, I make use of Zorro’s iconic ‘Z’-slash to lead us from left to right while framing the character. I deliberately make the art tiny on my screen, forcing myself to focus on the overall picture and not the details. I also leave plenty of space for text and titles.

4 Proportion check 3 Blocking in values

Now I can start to focus on the figure itself. It helps to use an all-white layer to hide everything else. Using a blocky textural brush as well as a soft Round for overall gradients, I work in greyscale trying to figure out the general placement of lights and darks across the full figure. I’m thinking about both core lighting and also bounce lights that’ll help me read edges. Now it’s a good time for that old illustrator’s trick where you flip the image left to right in order to expose proportional mistakes. I notice little things that bother me throughout the image and use the Liquefy tool to push them into the correct place. I’m also starting to separate skin, leather, ribbing and other materials into their own layers for easy editing later.

5 Making sure the face grab’s the viewer’s attention

I constantly ask myself, “What’s the worst part of this drawing?’ in order to decide what to render next. This helps focus my time and attention on the big picture instead of obsessing on a particular detail. The face is the most important part of any figure drawing, so I zoom in and start to focus on individual features, expression and overall tones. It helps to have a few reference faces on your screen while you do this.

6 Seeing the bigger picture

It’s important to keep moving around at this stage, roughing in elements all over the image to make sure everything’s working together. After I make some progress on the face, I build up detail on the cloth wrinkles, hands and overall sheens. I start to drop in some rim lighting where I know it’s going to be necessary.

7 Time to focus

Once the entire image is 50 per cent detailed, it’s time to start rendering the finer details in individual areas, starting with the face. I find internet reference for the skin tone I want and sample light, shadow and warmer cheek colours while I work. I use separate references for the shape of the facial features.

8 Finesse the fine details of the face

I use a harder edge textural brush to block in shapes and a soft Round brush or the Blur tool to soften edges. Now I focus on details like specular white highlights, lit edges, subtle rim lights, eyelashes and warm (cheeks, nose) versus cool (chin, orbital bones) areas in the skin.

9 Create the sheen of her costume

Now I consider the particular materials in the costume. Skin and cloth react to light differently of course, so here I’m working on the highly specular black portion of her outfit. And again, reference comes in very handy here to help you understand how reflections and white hotspots appear on round versus flat forms. I’m still focused on materiality here, trying to make the fabric look textural not just in the way I’m rendering hard light playing over the forms, but also with some strategic application of a texture brush. This particular brush adds some grit and noise to give the fabric a more realistic appearance. I don’t use a lot of different brushes, but it helps to add noise sometimes.

11 Ribbing the outer glow

One trick I really like is painting thin linear marks such as the ribbing and laces shown here on their own separate layer and then using Layer Fx/outer Glow to add depth and shadow automatically. Play with a low Size value and low- to mid-range value to get a nice effect.

13 Create the tints

With all the basic rendering complete, it’s time to improve things with Adjustment Layers. Currently, all the black material is a little too dark with the interior details difficult to read; likewise, the lighting feels unsaturated and boring. I crank up the Levels and add a Color Balance layer to amp up the red.

12 Introducing the final details

I’m getting to the end of the rendering process, and it’s time to start putting in final details, such as the hat. I also add gold stitching details (reminiscent of Mariachi outfits) throughout using the same Outer Glow technique.

14 Making finishing touches

In the final pass, I add Linear Dodge (Add) lighting glows along the edges and some subtle white light blooms. Then on a separate later, an orange tint on Overlay to warm up the figure overall. Some final Liquify and some last-minute texture overlays, and we’re done!