Product Description: This volume offers a brand-new "sketching to plan" tin can crammed full of sketching fundamentals for you to use when creating your own manga, as well as suggestions and ideas to help your artwork improve. This book is a brilliantly condensed can of artwork, jam-packed with a wide range of styles, ranging from renditions that are realistic without being slavishly naturalisitc to stylized "abstracted" and "exxagerated" renditions.
awesome help for beginners and great reference for internediate [this is NOT helena! it is her daughter jackie! haii!!!] when i first bought this book i luved it as soon as i first flipped through the pages!!! this book helped me improve A LOT and also taught me things i never noticed before!!! this book is great for beginners who are just starting out on the manga drawing experience!!! it gives some basic anatomy [not the boring useless stuff just the essentials :)] and also explans [with both pics and words] how the body moves!!! <---- nessecery for drawing [no matter wat style!!!] it is also great for intermediate artist who already no the basics and have some experience with manga style art [like myself i guess]!!! it provides lots of references and also explains anatomy and muscle structure and the way it affects the bodys movement... it helped me to greatly improve and u have no idea how important it is to be familiar with the muscle and bone structures and how they move [no im not saying that u need to be able to draw a skeleton and then all the layers of muscles on top! just now how the spin bends and wat happens when u raise ur arms...etc...] i would recomend this book for any artist no matter wat level u r at!!! its a wonderful book and is great especially if ur poses look strange, unnatural or stiff [haha just like mine DID] along with drawing the body, poses, balance, and face and all that wonderful stuff there is also a section on clothing [which i needed very badly] and one on colouring overal this was just a fantastic book!!! it was extremely helpful to me and still is!!! i highly recomend getting this book as soon as u get the chance!!! u wont regret it!!! :] [on one of the other reviews someone listed all the chapters included in the book, i suggest look through the list because i didnt list everthing that is covered!!! thank you (srry i dont remember who posted that review):) sections i found extremely helpful: haha well pretty much the whole book but especially the section on; ~balancing pose ~how the bones and muscles move and effect the body [shoulders, elbows, legs/hips...etc...] ~backbone [how it effects...well pretty much EVERYTHING] ~clothing [folds, thick/thin fabric, ...etc] ~shoulders [movement and blah] ~hands [movements and blah] ~feet [movemetns and blah] ~legs [movements and blah] haha im like naming the whole book XD well there is much more but thats all im saying for now :] plz buys this book i promise it will be much help to u [well i hope it will be as much help to u as it was to me(if not more)!!!] :]
A great drawing book regardless of style. Over the years I've slowly put together a sizable library of these How to Draw Manga books without even realizing it.
That being said, I'll be the first to admit that the usefulness of some of these books is kind of hit or miss. But the Manga Sketching books are fantastic drawing resources regardless of whether you want to draw in a Manga style or not.
This book is really more grounded in basic figure drawing techniques than other How to Draw Manga books that are largely caged in by the conventions of Japanese comic art. It's also a heftier book at being almost 60 pages longer than some of the other books in the series.
A major section of the book is dedicated to a broad survey of human anatomy, and I would say it does a better job on the subject than many books that focus strictly on anatomy for artists. There's 9 pages dedicated to the head & neck alone. And all of the examples feature the body in motion, which is far more helpful in seeing how the body fits together than a bunch of stiff poses.
Much of the rest of the text is about design tips to solidify the body type you're shooting for or "enhancing a sense of presence" as the manga books often put it, which boils down to creating more interesting, dynamic poses.
Good figure drawing has many basic principles, no matter what style is laid on top of it. "Sketching Manga Style" is a fantastic resource to have around.
Good Mid-Level Reference This book covers a modern technique used by professional artists. If you have no drawing experience whatsoever, this might not be a good place to start. Those who have spent some time learning basic techniques and can produce basic figures could will definitely profit from this book.
The brilliant part is complete sets of images showing pros creating a new drawing from scratch, with detailed notes on each step. Given sufficient talent, you could eliminate some steps and duplicate what the artists are doing to finish drawings faster.
However, by skipping directly to what the pros apparently do now, the beginning artist misses the building blocks of learning that those same pros went through to get where they are today. Generally a beginning book starts with simple shapes, basic anatomy, perspective, etc. Mastery of fundamentals gives an artist the freedom and capability to create any character and pose.
The analogy to this is the first impressionist master painters. Every one of them was first trained as a classical painter. Picasso could paint in photographic realism if he wanted. His mastery of the fundamentals made his cubist work great.
If you have the basics already, this is a wonderful reference, and I would recommend it to beginners as well so long as they also get references that teach fundamentals.
A great tool to start you off in the right direction. I was really surprised when I was actually able to get this book in my hands!!! I waited so many months before I could order this book! Any way, this book is comprised from three different artists', Hikaru Hayashi, (my fav by the way) Takehiko Matsumoto, and Kazuaki Morita. These three artists' teamed up to compile a book with there own renditions of stetching manga. Basically this book is a giant rough sketch book showing you the basic shapes they used to get their art work to look the way it does. This is actually helpful in alot of ways. It is preparing you on how to do this so that you can have a idea on how to draw your own manga masterpieces. Toward the end of the book, they give examples of some of the artist's work and how to improve the color on the artwork. The contents of this book includes:
Chapter one: Sketching while planning Differences between standard Sketching and Manga sketch frontline Part 1 Drawing a female character standing Drawing a close-up of a female charcters face A look at the Manga charcter standing Drawing the figure in reverse Manga sketching forms the foundation of planning
Chapter Two: The fundamental in sketching a face Manga style The basics of sketching a face layout (using circles and X's) Reduction of the head rendered Using a Circle and X layout The steps in drawing a face Drawing the same face Darwing an assortment of faces Ths basics in drawing the head Conceiving of the head as a solid The basics in drawing the head The face's musculature, and expressions Drawing facial expressions based on muscle movement
Chapter three: The fundamentals in drawing a figure manga style The backbone forms the base of composition The backbone travels the length of the torso The backbone is the source of movement Adding arms and legs after completing the torso The steps in drawing a figure Guideline defining the backbone from the front Drawing a standing pose using the bone and the axial line Using the axial line to draw A front view standing pose with presence Standing poses and the center of gravity Noting the spacing between the feet when drawing The body's structure Major body parts and their names Muscles affecting the exterior contours Distinguishing the genders Figure drawing Proportional differences Makeup of the primary joints and movement 1. Basic neck structure and movement 2. Basic spine structure and torso movement 3. Basic shoulder and arm connections and movement 4. Basic leg structure and movement 5. Basic hand and finger structure and maovement 6. Basic leg structure and movement
Chapter four: From sketching to design The fundamentals of stylization Character design techniques using stylization Stylized face design Stylized figure design Techniques for designing distinctive characters Thin and trim build Powerful and muscular builds Grotesquely muscular build Slender female characters Freindly super deformed (ultra stylized) characters The reality behind key poses Composition technique: Imagining a box What constitutes a three deminsional figure Placing A figure in a box The steps in drawing a figure from a box Techniques in dressing characters The ABCs of drawing clothes The reality behind dressing characters Drawing dynamic poses Cover character designing frontline Coloring characters Coloration improvement Techniques The improved Palette Improved finished artwork Artists' discuss the true nature of manga sketching
All-in all this book rocks! It is the complete how to draw book I know. It is jam packed with hepful drafts to get you on the right track. This book is not for beginners though. I think this book would be suited for those more along the lines of intermediate to advance. This book is a must buy! Add it to your how to draw arsenal now!
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
