Series Sketches:

Akira Toriyama spent many hours working on his drawings and design of characters. He drew many ideas, some that would never exist and others that we've seen on the series or manga today. Below is Akira Toriyama's sketches as well as brief character design.

Toriyama's first designs were based heavily on the old Chinese legend "Journey to the West." The monkey like character heavily resembles his Chinese counterpart, as does Oolong's early incarnation.

As Toriyama mentions on one of his comics, he nearly gave Goku a sailor boy look as pictured here. I can only imagine the Sailor Moon jokes Dragon Ball fans would be hearing today if Toriyama hadn't found the design uninteresting.

Character Designs:

Goku:

It's Neanderthal Goku?!?! Quite an imposing figure indeed. I am glad that Akira lengthened the SSj3 hair in its final incarnation, which makes for a more dramatic transformation.

Gohan:

Held in the hearts of some of Dragon Ball's female fans as the sexiest character, Teenage Gohan could have become the ultimate chick repellent! Just one look at Boy Scout Gohan would send most girls running to the loving embrace of Trunks.

Cell:

From the looks of these concept sketches, the infamous Cell could have ended up with a very human appearance on one extreme or a very demon-like appearance on the other. Some sketches even resemble characters such as Guldo, Cooler, Frieza, and even Namek look alikes.

Mr. Satan:

Not much of a difference from the actual one but if you look at the bottom right you'll notice it. We could have ended up with a bald Mr.Satan(which in fact we do in DB GT).

King Kai:

There isn't too much variation here either. As you can see, King Kai could have ended up looking like a Japanese sumo wrestler or in a more American "Chinese-stereotype" form.

Mr. Popo:

He could have come out looking world's different than he did. For instance, we could be watching a fish-like creature running through the bowels of heaven with Kami, or we could have seen a weathered old man chasing Goten and Trunks around heaven.

Majin Buu:

We could have ended up with many various looks to Majin Buu. As you can see Majin Buu resembles a cute fluffy demon, others resemble a super evil demon. Its a good thing we ended up with the current Majin Buu design, I like it better than the sketches.