Sakura Kasugano AI art

I started working on Sakura Kasugano AI art as a tribute to my favourite Street Fighter character. When the Street Fighter II was released and became the rage back in the 90s, I was partial to Ryu and Ken but I also enjoyed using other characters because their unique moves made them interesting to play.

Then, Sakura burst onto the scene when Street Fighter Alpha 2 was released, and boy was I smitten. She’s been stealing hearts ever since and is one of the undisputed fan favourites alongside Cammy and Chun-Li. In fact, she was voted the third most popular character in Capcom’s 2002 15th Street Fighter anniversary poll, after Chun-Li and Cammy.

I had just gotten into my serafuku phase, so the outfit was on point. Her character backstory also appealed to Ryu fans. She is a fan of Ryu and travelled to find her idol so that she could ask him to train her as a fighter. That iconic white headband was given to her by Ryu, and she later switched a red headband after he started wearing the red one Ken gave to him.

Now, what sets Sakura apart from the other characters is that she’s entirely self-taught. She picked up moves from watching Ryu in action and even developed her own unique style. The character story resonates with Ryu fans. Her moves are also similar to Ryu and Ken’s so that adds to her appeal.

Background
Creation
Tools used
Downloads

Background

Due to their immense popularity, Marvel and DC character art was flooding the AI art scene. I didn’t want to work on yet another Supergirl or Wonder Woman. Being an otaku, the natural source for me to find inspiration was from anime and video games. I had created a commissioned art of Lucy Kushinada from Cyberpunk 2077:Edgerunners, so I skipped this obvious choice.

As much as I love the Gundam series, the characters are relatively more niche. I mean, how can any of the characters top Rei Ayanami or Asuka Langley Soryu? But I believe they also lose out to Motoko Kusanagi in global appeal. Despite all the controversies, people outside the otaku scene would still remember Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of Motoko in the live action movie, or perhaps even because of the backlash.

I love the Final Fantasy franchise as much as Gundam. But everyone was doing Tifa Lockhart and Aerith Gainsborough, so I avoided them for a while. If you follow my Instagram, or other platforms where I post my art, you’d have seen that I’ve succumbed and worked on Tifa and Aerith, and the aforementioned Motoko.

Studio Ghibli characters are popular worldwide. I jumped on my favourite Miyazaki character, Princess Mononoke, or, as I prefer to call her, Mononoke-hime.

Then, I looked at fighting games and Street Fighter and King of Fighter were at the top of my list. I wrote previously about how my creation process for Mai Shiranui from the King of Fighters.

Creation

The challenging part of creating Sakura art is the gloves. Hands are notoriously difficult to produce accurately with AI. Hands wearing gloves? The AI starts getting extremely creative in how it generates the hands.

That said, these were done when I was just started learning Stable Diffusion. I’ve since picked up new techniques and tricks to optimise my workflow, allowing me to create better hands with less effort. Though, fingernails still remain hit-or-miss. Luckily, we just need fists with Sakura, right?

Tools used

Stable Diffusion Web UI
Adobe Photoshop (Beta)
Huion Kamvas Pro 16

Downloads

The HD versions of these images available for download on Afdian. See the links below each image.

The 4K versions will be available to members on Patreon and Pixiv. Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified when these and new content become available.