That was what I was aiming for. Course, Amano is more of a painter, while I did this with a pen and pencil.
And here's where I post my own thoughts on my piece.
Often when I draw my own interpretations of characters, I may sneak in references to concept art related to the character. For Naruto, I usually draw him wearing a bag and a frowny-face button in reference to
http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/File:FIRST_NARUTO.jpg. I don't know why, but I just like that button. The design on his sleeve was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. As for why the bandanna is missing... um, he lost it during the mission? At any rate, of the characters drawn here, Naruto's the one I like most, despite his hair needing to be lightened up.
Hinata... looks kinda emo with the black lipstick... thing... that amano likes to do. I'd like to make her a little shorter than she is in this pic. Her hair might need a little work, or rather it would probably look better if I watercolor paint over it (and don't mess up).
The back of Shino's hair is something I'm not entirely pleased with.
Kurenai's lipstick looks a bit better than Hinata's, but I definitely need to either watercolor her hair or draw more hair for her. The lines between her eye and eyebrow is supposed to emulate the purplish makeup she wears there,
I have a second Team 8 piece (not in amano style), but it's too big for my scanner, and not exactly well polished.
I may get around to another piece based on either this or Nightmares of Futures Past, if I can motivate myself to get off my behind and do it.
EDIT: In a brief moment of insanity, I made classic (read: early SNES) RPG overworld sprites for Naruto.
http://james-the-fox.deviantart.com/art ... -258937722 Why is this relavant? Because of the 8 versions of Naruto posted, half of them (the bottom half) are based on his Team 8 appearance. Soo... Yeah.