How to Draw Luffy from One Piece Full Body

Step 1

Step 01: As all of our returning mangakas will already know all of the blue lines you see in this tutorial are only construction lines and we’ll be erasing them later on. So, it’s important not to press too hard on your pencil when drawing these lines. You’ll see our final lines in black towards the end of the tutorial.

We need to begin by drawing a stick figure frame for Luffy’s body and some rudimentary shapes for his main appendages. We’ll begin with head and work our way down. But the whole body including the head is about 7.5 heads tall so after you draw your head you might want to measure and make a mark at the bottom of your paper to help you proportion everything correctly. The head to the waist is about 3 heads high with the legs and feet being longer at about 4.5 heads.

Let’s start by drawing a vertical ellipse for Luffy’s head at the top of our paper. Beneath that we’ll draw a square like shape with rounded edges that tapers towards the bottom for the trunk of his body and we’ll connect the trunk to the head with a small straight line. Beneath the trunk, we’ll draw an upside down triangle with rounded edges for the pelvis and we’ll connect that to the trunk with a short straight line. Next we’ll draw two straight lines from about half way up the pelvis and add two small circles to the ends for Luffy’s knees. Continue with another straight line down on each leg and add a rounded triangle shape at the end of both for his ankle. Lastly, we’ll draw a rounded rectangle or horizontal ellipse shape that overlaps the triangle ankles. You can see that it should overlap more on the right than on the left.

Step 2

Step 02: Now, we’ll draw our center and eye lines to the head circle. The center line is vertical and divides Luffy’s head nicely into two, while the eye line is horizontal and just below the half way point on the head circle. Next, we’ll draw two small circles on either side of the body trunk in the upper corners for his shoulders; the circle on the right is slightly higher than the one on the left. Then, we’ll draw two small circles again near the bottom corners of the body trunk; the circle on the left is further away from the body trunk whereas the one on the right just touches it. Lastly, we’ll draw a line connecting the circles on the right and those on the left for his upper arm and two crisscrossing lines across the body shape for the lower arms.

Step 3

Step 03: We’re doing great so far everyone. Let’s continue by working some more on the arms. We need to draw two lines for each of his arms using the small circles as guides to the joints. We should begin with the arm on the left. As you can see the bottom of the arm of the left and the top of the arm on the right are made by the same line. Once you’ve got them in place, we’ll draw a trapezoid shape (wider at the bottom) for the rest of Luffy’s vest starting at the elbows, touching the corners of the pelvis and stopping about half way down the pelvis.

Step 4

Step 04: Now we’ll move down and do Luffy’s shorts and legs. It’s fairly straightforward. We’ll start with the shorts from the bottom of the shirt and draw two rectangles with a sliver of empty space between them that meet at the bottom of the pelvis. Next, we’ll draw two lines on either side of our straight lines for the legs. These lines shouldn’t be perfectly shaped but slightly curved to suggest the calf muscles and ankle. In the end, the legs will be about half the width of the shorts.

Step 5

Step 05: Back up again, this time to the head and we’ll draw Luffy’s features and hat. We can start with two fairly sizable circles for his eyes on the eye line and two much smaller circles inside for his pupils also on the eye line. Below the eyes and taking up most of the rest of Luffy’s lower face is his mouth which we’ll make by drawing a half circle and adding a curved line inside for his tongue. Before finishing with his face let’s add the squiggle on the center line for Luffy’s nose, the two curved lines over the eyes for his eyebrows and a last curved line under the eye on the right for his scar. Beneath the head we’ll draw two lines that curve outward as they approach the body trunk for his neck. Lastly, we’ll draw Luffy’s inseparable hat. Start with a large near complete circle starting near the bottom of the head circle. Then, add a small curving line to the top. Got it? Great! Let’s move on.

Step 6

Step 06: Alright, mangakas, we’ve got a bit of a complicated step here with lots of details. Let’s start up at the head where we left off with the last step. Let’s start by adding to cup handle shapes to the bottom side of the head on either side for Luffy’s ears. Inside the ears there are some irregular shapes for the inner ear. Then, we should draw the hair: the bangs start at about the eye line and the top of his hair starts at the ears. The hair spikes over his forehead should be longer than those that overlap the hat.

Moving down to the trunk we’ll draw two squiggly lines connecting the neck lines to the shoulder for the top of his shirt. Then we’ll draw an incomplete heart like shape for the “V” cut to his shirt. And below that, but just above the arms we’ll draw a small circle for a button. We can draw another small circle where the pelvis touches the connecting line for the trunk for another button. Before doing the fingers let’s continue down and finish up the shorts. At the bottom of the shorts we should draw a squiggly rectangle on both sides, Luffy is a pirate and I doubt he makes it to the tailor’s that often ^_^. In the pelvis triangle we have to draw the zipper and wrinkles to his shorts. It should look a bit like a carrot with a lot of thin roots coming off of it and a small tent like shape on the top. Lastly, we can return to the arms and add the four squashed ellipses for the fingers of his hand on the left and three small half ellipses on the right.

Step 7

Step 07: Great job, everyone. That does it for the construction lines for his upper body, let’s move down and focus on the feet. Inside the overlapping rectangle shape we’ll draw Luffy’s toes. Start with the largest “thumb” toe which is nearly a complete ellipse and then add four smaller “c” shapes for the rest of the toes. Starting on the inner corner of the triangle shapes we’ll draw two concentric “C” shapes all the way around for his sandals.

Step 8

Step 08: Continuing with the feet we’ll add a crescent shape inside both big toes for the toe nail and smaller more circular shapes to the rest of the toes for the remaining toe nails. Then we’ll draw the straps to his sandals using two arches on both feet that stop between the first and second toes before continuing and a larger single arch over the middle of the foot.

Step 9

Step 09: That’s it for our construction lines. Use your eraser to lighten all of the lines we’ve made so far and then take up your pen and trace out your final lines. You’ll notice how the hair overlaps the hat (overlapping 3D principle), there is a gap in the eyes that are not completely traced, we’ve added fingernails to the hand on the left, and just a little part of a button sticking out from under his folded arms. We’ve also added some shading in this step to add depth to the picture. We’ve shaded the areas under his hat, on the neck just below the jaw, the bottom part of the buttons, a small part on the shorts just below the vest, the knees just under the shorts and the top part of the sandals that we can see. Give it a shot and you’ll see how we apply our 3D shading principle.

Step 10

Step 10: Once your ink is dry you can completely erase any remaining construction lines. Luffy is looking pretty good, eh? Let’s do one more step of filling just to add some more contrast.

Step 11

Click here for more One Piece tutorials

Step 11: Just fill in Luffy’s vest in black except for the buttons and also his hair. Great job, everyone. Step back and take a look at your full body standing Luffy from One Piece! If your goal is to become a great mangaka make sure to draw Luffy again from memory. Then compare the final drawing with the original and correct any mistakes you might have made. Try once again from memory. This is the best way to build a huge library of shapes and get the tracing experience necessary that you can use in the future for your own manga characters.

Draw with passion! -_^

Hiroshi