Book Description: Shoujo manga is one of the most popular styles of Japanese animation, featuring the most recognizable characters in manga-seen everywhere in comics, books, toys, television, film, and video. Since shoujo is based on stories that focus on peer pressure, romance, and friendship, it initially appealed to young females, but today more and more boys are attracted to this genre, which inevitably includes young male heroes. Best-selling author Christopher Hart once again reveals the secrets and techniques that go into building all the basics of the shoujo style-the big eyes, the miniscule noses, and the cute or angst-ridden expressions. Teen body language is explored. In addition, artists learn to draw teen clothing styles and also different character types, from school kids and cuddly creatures and cute pets to heartthrobs.
Manga Book is Great! My 14-year-old loves to draw Manga, and after checking out every book at the library, I had her pick one to buy. After searching for awhile, she chose this one and loves it. I looked through it, and it is modest, cute, and very conservative in the drawing, which I was thankful for. Great buy; she has spent hours drawing with it!
ANOTHER RATHER INSPIRATIONAL AND HELPFUL WORK. While this book was quite helpful in my case, I suspect that it would not be suitable for the absolute beginner. A bit of expierence is probably needed to glean the full benefits of this work. Now that being said, I feel there is a great amount that can be learned from this books. As with all of Christopher Hart's book, it is quite detailed and their is an abundance of text to go along with the actual drawing and coloring. The techniques Hart illustrates actually work. I like to work on individual aspects of figures, isolating different areas such as eyes, mouth, nose, etc. This works well for me and with this work, the author has given us plenty of information. No one book can do it all and the serious student of this art form will want many. This is just another valuable work to add to your collection. I find that young folk, in particular, like this one and actually do quite well with it. I do highly recommend this one.
ehh I book this book as a set with another one thinking i would use it. But after going threw it a few times haven't used it or cracked it open since. It's just about glamorizing you drawings up. Not very informative.
One of Chris Hart's better items All art books are faced with striking a balance between how much space to devote to 'the basics' ( figure ,perspective, shading, color theory ,etc) and the specific aspects of a narrowly focused subject. (what are the proportions of a typical manga 'bisho' boy? What is a good creative process for designing a tranforming mecha?). This title winds up with four stars because of what it DOESN'T try to do. It doesn't try to take you from stick figures to Masamune Shirow in one book like his first two titles. And yes this IS a lousy book for beginners, because beginners need a focus on 'the basics' and 'the basics' are worth a lot more than one book. This book is for intermediate+ amatuer artist who want a solid sourcebook for the design elements of the shoujo manga genre. Even a professional aritst who wanted a 'instant expert' guide would find it useful. As for the quality of the art in the book, yeah, they don't do it like Clamp, but that may be to the good. If they did, the relative beginners might be a bit intimidated! I find the style of the books art give the whole thing an air of 'Hey I can do that', which makes you want to wade right in. Especially since they show a lont of the art with the multi-stage construction drawings with it. So I would say the book is well worth it. As long as you know what it's trying to do.
Helpful IT SHOULD BE THREE INSTEAD OF FIVE STARS, MY MISTAKE.
With everything there are always pros and cons this book is no exception.
The pros is that it goes through about every little thing that you can thing of. From facial angles to foreshortening (which I had no idea how to do before I purchased this book. It also helped with shadows and clothing folds.
It contains a section on the beloved chibis and it covers male characters. It even had Bishies(beautifully drawn male characters)
Some of the art work is great!
The cons are that it doesn't go into great detail and a few of the pictures look like they were done by a first grader.
All in all I like this book very much and for a 144 pages it's a steal.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
