Product Description

A how-to book for drawing Japanese comic art includes chapters on getting started, faces, expressions, bodies, finishing touches, and materials.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160950 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

Customer Reviews

A young Manga Super-fan teaches kids how to draw their own
I have recently started to explore the world of manga, although my focus has been on more adult works such as "Lone Wolf & Cub" and "The Ghost in the Shell." This book on "How to Draw Manga" deals more with television shows such as "Pokemon," "Sailor Moon," "Speed Racer," and "Dragonball Z," which is a totally different part of the genre. Still, I found this to be a very interesting little book since it was written and drawn by seventeen-year-old Katy Coope, a self-professed "Manga Super-fan." She is not a professional, which means this book will be of little interest to those who aspire to be such or have had basic art training. However, for kids sitting around the dining room table trying to draw manga characters this is a book that functions on their level with an eye on practicality.

Coope has apparently been working on her own style ever since she discovered manga and anime several years ago. I have no idea as to her training with regards to drawing, but I do know that kids are going to be able to pick up this book and start learning how to draw manga characters, which is, after all, the stated intention of the book. The parts that most impressed me in this book had to do with drawing eyes. Coope deals first with eyes as part of the Face, showing how to do them from three-quarter, side and front views, and then moving on to how to color to color the iris, how to make a girl's eyes, etc. She returns to eyes in the section on Expressions as part of "eye expression," covering how to make eyes look tired, angry, hypnotized, etc., before devoting a whole page to how to draw closed eyes and another on eyebrows. The goal is to be able to use these drawings to tell a story and she clearly lays out much more than the basics. The book is divided into chapters devoted to Getting Started, Faces, Expressions, Bodies, Finishing Touches, and Materials.

I too wonder how a teenager got a book deal like this, but apparently someone gave Coope the chance to show that she could help other manga fans to do what she had learned to do. This is a book that will have kids drawing manga characters before they are even halfway through the pages. Someday they can move on to more detailed discourses on manga art, but Coope's book is going to work a lot more successfully with young kids who just want to draw their favorite characters from TV. If "How to Draw Manga" inspires them to create their own graphic narratives, then who is going to complain about that? Not me, boys and girls, not me.

thumbs up
I recently started learning how to draw in manga style so I ordered this book and it was great. The illustrations and steps are clear and easy to follow and it shows great techniques used to produce good characters.
It's a 'must buy' for beginners I reckon.

Ok
When i came on Amazon search for a how to draw manga book, to be honest, this was not the style i had in mind. I had been working on manga techniques for awhile. This book was in a sense, helpful to me. I can't put it down, because it would be perfect for a person looking to draw a cartoony kind of manga. It gives very good details into faces and the chibi style section is very good if you want to learn that. I found this book easy to follow, maybe because i was working on something harder before... but i would suggest this book to anyone starting off, ot anyone who wanted to learn some various hints on chibis ;)