You know cel-shade? If you don’t know, there’s an example HERE. Cel-shading is a painting technique that replaces gradient with flat colors and shadows, thus making an object (mostly toys) looks like hand-drawn artwork seen in cartoons. Well, I say, forget about Cel-shading because, someone in China has taken cartoon-style repaint up a notch.
Known only as Hlj820, this dude will turn any toy of your choice into one that look straight out of a manga. In other words, an action figure or whatnot, expressed in white base with black panel linings, and the appropriate “hash” style shading. If you read manga, you will know exactly what I mean.
The Custom Cartoon Repaint Transformers Optimus Prime you see here is one of his handiwork and this particular piece took 50 hours to complete, and save for the white base, everything else is hand-painted.
Impressive right? It does look straight out of a manga, doesn’t it? Except that Optimus Prime did not actually appear in Japanese-style manga. Comics, yes, but definitely not manga.
Hlj820 does commission works and occasionally, he sells completed pieces on Taobao’s app-based used item platform known as Xianyu (闲鱼, literally translates to “Free Fish”).
Unfortunately, foreigners like us have no access to it directly. The only way to is get it through Buy For Me services. To rub salt on the wound, you’d be hard press to find a Buy For Me service that is able to deal with Xianyu.
Images: 闲鱼(Hlj820)/YouTube (刘哥模玩).
