When I first saw a BMW CE 04 electric scooter, I instantly fell in love with its design. It never fails to remind me of one of my favorite works of fiction: Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, more specifically Kaneda’s bike. While its iconic styling has had a huge impact on pop culture, it is the bike slide manoeuvre from the film that stole the show, having since been referenced in countless other works.
It was my time to give it a go and I believe the results speak for themselves: the CE 04 would have looked right at home in Neo-Tokyo.

Using a frame from the movie as reference for the overall composition, I then tried to best emulate the drawing style found in the original mangas, using halftone dots to achieve that traditional printed look and having analysed the line work used on some of the bike scenes to recreate the original styling that captivated me and so many others.