Hi, everybody. X-D God, I feel so old. But I will tell you this much, this has been something I have worked on over the years, even before the way the manga ended. So since I have been feeling very UNSATISFIED by the way the ending of the manga was rushed out like this, I have been working harder on it to maybe ease my heart.
But the basic idea for this topic is simple; this is to share the redesigns for this alternate universe story, showing the path of events if Naruto had succeeded in stopping Sasuke at the Final Valley and wound up returning him to the Hidden Leaf. There's gonna be all kinds of new designs I will work on, as well as new original characters.
As you may or may not expect, the first few are gonna be done for Team Kakashi's rookies, part of the new Leaf team, the Dirty Dozen, aka the Super Rookies. So we begin with our hero, Naruto Uzumaki;
When I was designing Naruto, the idea was to keep his aesthetic similar to Part 1 and Shippuden's aesthetics for him, so his clothes match his personality pretty well. The idea of how his coat was designed came from an old design I had done for him for TDW, with the basis being from Rock Howard in the Fatal Fury franchise by SNK. I also had thought of the color scheme of white, black, and orange based on Naruto's old coat, but also being inspired by Shippuden's coat.
I also had felt about trying to show Naruto is a bit flashier than most ninja around his age. Plus I wanted to have the backstory on the coat and the gloves be they were birthday gifts from Jiraiya while he was training under him whenever Jiraiya was in the Hidden Leaf Village passing info onto Tsunade about things he learned in the world
Story-wise, Naruto is about the same as you'd expect. Though, some differences revolve around his drive and motivation; rather than to keep his promise to Sakura to save Sasuke from his darkness, Naruto's drive to become stronger has motivated him to protect everything he can, and to NOT lose anything precious to him again, something Jiraiya has found admirable and also foolish since he'd wanted Naruto to write Sasuke off, same as he did with Orochimaru.
One big focus Demon Within has is gonna be on Naruto trying to get a grip on his feelings for Sakura, since he feels she still loves Sasuke and he wants to make her happy, even if not with him, since like I can be, he's too much of a people-pleaser and doesn't try to make himself happy. But of course, he'll come to realize he can't deny he loves Sakura, and that love story will be a part of the overall growth of his character as well as an underlining focus to help him be able to find something worth fighting for.
And another aspect is Naruto learning to control Kurama's chakra earlier due to an early arc, though I haven't designed Naruto with his Kurama cloak yet, since I want to try to design a basic version of it that would act as a kind of early version BEFORE we get that super epic badass version we saw in the war.
I know I am not the best artist in the world, guys, but I hope I did well enough, since really, my style is free-form, and free-form is not emulation, but really, it's trying to form one's own path. When I've drawn these, I used an ink pen along with paper from a sketchpad I have had older designs in but decided to launch new ones in. :) Enjoy! And BELIEVE IT!!!
Ninjutsu - 4
Taijutsu - 3
Genjutsu - 2
Intelligence - 3
Strength - 3
Speed - 3
Stamina - 5
Hand seals - 3
Total - 26
Edited by Bryon_Konoha_Ninja, 21 December 2014 - 07:47 PM.