Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art: Learn to Draw, Color and Design Characters Paperback – April 2, 2013

Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art is a great reference art book for the aspirant manga artist and manga aficionado in general. This book is not a how-to-draw manga, but guide full of very useful tips on drawing, inking and coloring high quality manga characters. And the manga art in this book is fantastic, bound to inspire your own manga art.I'm very impress with the quality of this book. This book comes in a protective transparent vinyl cover, which you have to slide off to get access to the book. It also was printed in landscape, which helps to keep tips and commentaries side-by-side with the artwork shown.The book is 208 pages long, and is organized into three chapters and a gallery:Chapter 1: The Basics of Manga is an introduction to the world of manga. It includes a brief history of manga, and very brief guides a about manga styles, drawing faces and expressive eyes, drawing bodies and posing, and drawing clothes on characters.Chapter 2: Designing Characters is a collection of guides on how to draw and ink a few interesting original manga characters. There are 11 character in total: The Barber, Ayaka the Zombie-Slaying Idol Singer, A Female Warrior, Kleo the Cat Girl, The School Girl, A Manga Duo, The Angel, A Forest Spirit, A Japanese Warrior Boy, A Lychee-Obsessed Girl and A Fantasy Elf. Each guide starts with an introduction and list of tools used. These guides include 5 - 16 figures, showing the art at various stages of development, using graphite pencils, brush pens, mechanical pencils, Copic liners, fountain pens, Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop.Chapter 3: Coloring Characters builds up on the 11 characters started on the previous chapter presenting a collection of guides on how to color these. Again, each guide starts with a brief introduction and a list of tools used. These detailed guides includine 10 - 27 figures using colored inks, pencil crayons, watercolor paints, chalk pasteles, Copic markers, Faber Castell Pitt watercolor and Photoshop.The final section is a gallery of manga art. This section consists of 10 pages loaded of manga characters. There are 3 images of manga couples, 1 image of a male manga character, 12 image of female manga characters, and two full page images (one of them a school room scenery).In all, this book is recommended for aspiring manga artists that already know the basis of drawing manga, but is definitely one book for your manga art library.

Worth every penny! It's hard to find detailed books like this and the art is beautiful!The drawing and coloring tutorials lead the reader step-by-step through each process and tells them what should be focused on most, as well as the importance of details. There are different coloring techniques as well. This book it perfect for everyone, whether you prefer to draw on your computer or sketch on paper. It's great for beginners!

I will edit this review once I finish the book, but this is my initial assessment of this product.It's good but as others have said, I believe it's for someone with previous drawing experience. Not for beginners looking for helpful tutorials on creating their own characters. This is more like a study of the art style itself. While it doesn't have character analysis, it does have other forms of helpful advice and shown tutorials on how the artist created some of their characters. Steven explains that he asks himself questions about the character in order to make his initial sketch and move on from there.They dont go throughly in depth on character construction, but it's a nice book.Packaging want the best, but the quick shipping made up for that. Plus my item came thankfully without a mark.

I was so pleased with the book, not only its contents but also the quality of the paper and the print. Gives you the basics of drawing a complete manga character from head to tow. Also there're 11 different characters to draw as a project, starts from sketching to coloring. The first 8 projects are done traditionally, and only three were digitally painted (with photoshop). I wished if they're mostly focusing on digital painting instead of traditionally, but it's up to me whether I want to color the characters digitally or traditionally. I love the book and it needs a lot of work and practice.

This is a great and informative book. I've followed Gonzalo Ordoñez's work for many years and this is like one big tutorial from him! There is also information on different coloring techniques. Another thing I would like to point out is that it isn't as sexual as other how to draw manga books... There still is some nudity and sexual pictures but it's not as graphic as much as others. Which is good for me because the over-sexualized women in anime gets old real quick.

This book is excellent! I give it 5/5 reason is because the book is so detailed the only thing that wasn't was the eyes... i mean still everything in the book is amazing! the tip they give you and all the goods they show you... even coloring.. EVEN CRAYON COLORING!!!!..The cons for this book is probably the eyes... not very detailed on how to start it!

Book arrived in great condition and is not only a high quality publication, but a fantastic addition to my art book collection. If your a fan of manga, you should definitely add the this little gem of quick education and beautiful art work to your collection. Sidenote: this kind of publicaton is more suited for a more knowledgeable and/or advanced artist/illustrator, rather than a fresh out the gate beginner to the art of manga or drawing.

A mi hijo le encantó éste hermoso libro de arte para entrenamiento de artistas en el arte del Manga. El libro tiene diseño y acabado hermoso.-

davvero un buon libro sul disegno, il colore e il design di personaggi manga.purtroppo il libro è solo in inglese

This is perfect just for basic drawing education, even better to give you knowledge about manga creation. This is a great value for what you pay.

Excellent bon livre pour commencer pas à pas à la création de personnage manga et propose différent style dans lequel on souhaiterait évoluer.Il y aussi la manière à commencer colorier les personnages.Je conseille vivement ce bouquin,

An amazing book with so much information! It's extremely helpful and full of tips and hits your art teachers never told you in college & GCSE years! You learn how to use watercolours, certain marker pens & so much more! I even used it in my first year of college (got the highest grade given that year) which as much as the examiners don't like 'anime/manga' style I did however apply the tips and tutorials in the book to my sketchbook.I wouldn't recommend it to people who haven't ever drawn people or done art classes that include life drawing; this is due to the terminology and anatomy practices being new to them.If you were to buy this book as a beginner, I'd recommend you reading Art Fundamentals sold by Beloeil first; this will help you understand anatomy of the human body and how to draw properly. I'd then consider buying this product as you'd have more knowledge and practice in drawing! Then again it all depends on how you learn as a person!I really do hope that my comment has helped you understand how useful and amazing the book is!