The Artist's Guide to Drawing Manga

Ben Krefta

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781398814059
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Immerse yourself in the dynamic world of Japanese manga drawing with this inspirational drawing book. Master manga artist Ben Krefta guides you through a variety of exciting character designs, from 'Mecha' robots to 'Shinobi' ninjas. He also provides you will a toolkit of techniques, including:

• Constructing manga eyes
• Portraying movement and using speed lines
• Creating manga's distinctive facial expressions
• Designing clothes, weapons and accessories
• Drawing a manga comic strip

Each lesson is broken down into step-by-step components, so seemingly complex artworks are easy to achieve. This full-colour workbook celebrates the originality and diversity of different manga styles and provides you with the tools to bring your own characters to life.

Faces

In real life, faces have a variety of shapes, sizes and characteristics and in manga these varieties can be exaggerated despite the simplified aesthetic. In the last chapter we looked at constructing a complete head and now we shall consider the individual features which go into creating distinctive personalities. By reproportioning facial features you can indicate whether a character is old, young, male, female, good or evil.

Over recent years, more and more people have become familiar with the huge array of styles within the manga genre. Fans appreciate that the fantastically popular Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z are just two examples of a vast and varied output. Even so, there are many shared themes, traits and considerations which make manga distinguishable from comics and cartoon styles produced in the West. Manga is more of a graphic illustrative style; it doesn’t often use a lot of linework and heavily shadowed areas like a typical Marvel comic, instead stylizing faces with simplified, neat and elegant lines. If need be, the style and shape of the face will allow for a wide range of exaggerated expressions to convey a character’s mood. Large, round eyes or simple noses and mouths represented with just a few dashes or curves may sound easy to draw, but there are still right and wrong ways to show the features which are outlined in this section.

Eyes

Manga faces revolve around the eyes. They’re the key component to give your characters emotion, personality and a unique style. They’re lots of fun to practice and experiment with but can be tricky to get right as they need to be balanced, symmetrical and placed correctly. They’re usually positioned halfway down the head and spaced one eye’s width apart. If the eyes are quite large, you’ll need to draw the head a little wider to accommodate them.

How detailed you choose to make your characters’ eyes is a matter of personal taste. Since there’s not a lot of focus on manga characters’ noses and mouths some artists like putting a lot of details, colors, lighting effects and flares in or around the eye to create a focal point on the face. However, they are always simplified to some degree since such characters would probably need to be redrawn a number of times as part of a comic or animation.

While large saucer eyes are a common trait in manga, eyes can come in a variety of shapes and sizes which still adhere to a manga aesthetic. I’ve drawn some examples here to give you ideas and some reference to use.

Adjusting the iris, pupil and color schemes can create villains and demons.

The shiny look is achieved by using a ball of light reflection which contrasts against the pupil and iris.

The eyelid covers the top of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Tools and Materials
• Heads
• Faces
• Hands and Feet
• Figures
• Clothing
• Action
• Color and Tone
• Manga Pages
• Creating Characters
• Art Questions and Answers
• Glossary
• Copyright