One Piece's Roronoa Zoro comes to life in a stunning new hand crafted figure.
The impressive new take on One Piece's most famous swordsman comes from a sculptor and YouTuber known as Dr. Garuda. The artist documented the process for creating the figure in a new video, which shows how they took the idea from a rough sketch to a fully sculpted and painted statue. Dr. Garuda portrays Zoro with his post-timeskip appearance, as the Straw Hat Pirate unleashes his iconic Three Sword Style of sword fighting. Despite displaying a level of detail that rivals what's seen in official scale figures that costs hundreds of dollars, the Zoro sculpture was created using only terracotta plasticine, aluminum wire and acrylic paint.
More of Dr. Garuda's impressive work can be seen on their YouTube channel, where they document the creation of all of their sculptures. The sculptor has also created figures based on Dragon Ball Z and Attack on Titan. In addition to their anime-inspired works, they have also made numerous statues inspired by video games and comics, including Kratos from God of War, and most recently, a statue of The Batman's new reimagining of the Dark Knight.
Roronoa Zoro first appeared in Chapter 3 of the One Piece manga. The bounty hunter is one of the first friends that protagonist Monkey D. Luffy makes on his adventure, and he is the second member to officially join the Straw Hat Pirate crew. His unique Three Sword Style has made him one of the most feared and powerful combatants in the series.
Dr. Garuda's new work isn't the only statue of of the Worst Generation swordsman to be revealed recently: in January, a bronze statue of Zoro was erected in Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan. The new Zoro figure is just one of several One Piece statues that have been installed in the area, and are part of an initiative by series creator Eiichiro Oda, who was born and raised in Kumamoto, and the prefecture's local governments that seeks to reinvigorate tourism to the era.
The original One Piece manga is available in English from VIZ Media. The full anime series, which now totals over 1000 episodes, can be streamed from Funimation and Crunchyroll, while parts of the series are available on Hulu and Netflix. The anime was recently placed on hiatus after Toei Animation, which produces the series, suffered a hack that shut down its internal networks and reportedly destroyed files related to the show's production.
Source: YouTube
