Product Description

A raised eyebrow, a curled lip, a wink of the eye. All it takes is a single clever stroke of the G-pen to instantly change a manga character's mood from one extreme to the other: glad to sad, sassy to shy, angry to embarrassed. Illustrator Saori Takarai presents original pencil sketches alongside her finished, full-color drawings, to show just how the transformations take place. In addition, each of the facial expressions is labeled with the Japanese word for the mood being depicted, along with common Japanese conversational phrases and simple translations, making this delightful book a great gift for aspiring artists, language enthusiasts and manga fans alike!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4302 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

Customer Reviews

Manga moods
This book is tiny, cute and definitely a gorgeous gift for any manga fan, however, I bought it to improve my own grasp of facial expression and find it less detailed that I expected, and also it would not be as helpful as something which explained why you are for example raising the eyebrows or dropping the shoulders of your character.

The images are however presented beautifully and acompanied by phrases in Japanese - perfect for a fan. All of the characters are done in the same style which is very helpful and they're all really pretty. - and all very girly - something you may like to take into consideration if buying for a guy. The book portrays the actual emotions and moods well, and the phrases are fun.

Some of the titles do not seem to match up with the images - for example the malicious one is coupled with the phrase "some day I'll rule the world" and the image is different again, however this just makes the book extra quirky.

It's super small - which is something I didn't expect - but still well worth it. It's packed with the good stuff.

''40 faces and 80 phrases indeed''
this book is surprisingly small in size comparison compared to my large manga collection, but the facts it packs is pretty awesome, ok where to start?

when it says ''faces'' it also means ''emotions/expressions/body language'' although they are all face shots, the level of detailing in them is uncanny, every gorgeous illustrated picture has been coloured to perfection using CG (computer graphics)and the work is nothing short of astounding, alongside with each face are 2 phrases that relate to the picture your viewing it shows you the Japanese phrase then an English translation in brackets below it, so you learn a bit of japanese while viewing the faces! the reason why i 5 star'd this item is the sheer amount of work thats been put into such a small book, some of the expressions/faces don't exactly match up to their title name, but what do you expect with CG art? i'm an CG artist and i find it damn hard to pull off realistic expressions. its actually quite a feat to actually achieve 40 different expressions. Also in the back of the book, it displays ''The 46 Basic Hiragana Characters, Contracted Hiragana and two dash and one circle Hiragana'' which for those of you who don't know are Japanese symbols. this book is pretty much a must have for lovers of cute anime and typical anime expressions, this book would also be perfect for manga illustrators/artists/beginners its a handy little expression book not much bigger than your hand :D

Suprising little book
Little book with lots of little phrashes in Japanese and then in english, doesnt show you how to draw the expressions but can easily be drawn. Simple drawings but very effective, brightly coloured. Both boys and girls with expressions like grumpy and giddy, frightened and bewildered, celebratory and lovesick. 40 different faces and 80 phrases for such a small book i would definately recommend this to anyone interested in anime and manga. Yokatta! (awesome!)