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Suppose that you have a graphic novel that you want to do; a manga graphic novel that you really believe in. But you’re having trouble. Publishers aren’t that interested in it, or, maybe they are, but you want complete control over your creative vision. You might consider self-publishing.

Now, there are two ways to do that right now. Electronically, or in print. Print has some real challenges, if you’re going to go that route. With print, you have to take returns from the store. They send it back to you if no one buys it. You have to ship it to them. You have to make it, which is even more expensive. And the worst of all, most retail bookstores will not stock on the shelves, a self-published book. Why? They have just so much shelf space, and no more. They need to make sure that every author’s book that they put on that shelf, is a good selling author with a track record, if they can help it.

However, on the other hand, in cyberspace, there is no bookshelf. Retailers can stock everything they want to. There’s space for you. There’s usually not that resistance. You don’t have to ship anything to anybody. You don’t have to take returns. It’s cheaper to make than a print book. And instead of taking a year, or a year and a half for it to get produced and published, an e-book can get made and published in months.

Many online retail stores, even very, very big ones, will stock your e-book, even if it’s self-published. But in cyberspace, there’s unlimited shelf-space, so you have a better shot of being listed. Now if I were to go the electronic way, what I would suggest first, is try to serialize your graphic novel on a website. That way, you can get feedback from your readers. You can adjust it, change it a little bit, maybe discover that they like Character A more than Character B, and maybe try to feature that one more.

You know, this is the wave of the future, especially for comics, because there always have been successful self-published comic book authors, whether it’s manga or American comics.

So, these are several options, I hope this has been helpful.

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A very popular style of manga is called Shonen. A Shonen is known as the boys action style. It’s got a lot of fighting. It’s got a lot intense characters. A lot of different styles of characters, and beasts, and things like that. The thing that’s kind of neat about Shonen, is that unlike American comics, where the hero has got to be hugely bulked up and walk through a wall of Plutonium just to save the girl, these are regular guys who are fighting super guys. It makes it much more of a David and Goliath type thing, than if you have a super type person fighting another super type of bad guy.

Now the style of art is interesting too. It looks like another style, a little bit, called Shoujo [SP], which is a girl style. Because the characters often have a softer looking face. A little rounder. They have the large, glistening eyes generally. But this is where you’ll also find characters with that spiky hair look that’s very famous in manga. That hair that goes forward. They also often have elaborate costumes, because it’s an action style. So you might have like a Warlord who’s in some sort of elaborate costume. Very colorful.

Now here’s a sample of the action style. You might find like a Samurai is a type that’s very popular in Shonen. Also, who is he fighting? Could be a person. Could be a Warlord. Could be a beast. And who’s more popular than the king of beasts? Dragons! This is sort of the key of the attraction and appeal of manga. There are people we can relate to doing things we might like to do.

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Tiny manga monsters are fan favorites. They have so much personality for their little size. Let’s get some hints on how to draw them. We start with this manga monster. As you can see, he’s a little sad. People think sad, when it’s cute, is very endearing. You don’t want to get too close because he’ll clobber you with those maces, those tails. But here’s the basic construction of that guy.

Now as you can see, the head is very round, almost a circle but it’s a little narrower on top. The body is like a pillow sac, and the eyes are very, very low on the head. That’s important, very low. Also, another thing you’ll notice is that manga monsters don’t have shines in the eyes. Sometimes they do, it’s a matter of personal taste

OK, so let’s start with the horns. The horns don’t just go straight up. That looks a little odd. We’re going to make them go out to the side at a diagonal, and not too long either because we don’t want them to really look like weapons that could hurt you. This is just a cute monster.

Then we’ll have ears that droop. Now why are they drooping? Because with cartoons and manga and creatures, ears also demonstrate the mood of the character. So he’s sad, so his ears going to be drooping. And we’ll make them two-toned.

Now for his expression. No nose, but a very tiny little mouth right here, right next to the center of the face. And if you want, you can give him a bridge of the nose. I haven’t in the final one, but you can. It’s very cute. And a little marking for the tummy, which should be a different color from the rest of it, usually lighter not darker. All right, so there is our little guy with a tear. Our manga monster.

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Hi, my name is Chris Hart. Howcast has selected me to be your how to draw a Manga expert. I am an author of How To Draw a Manga books and many other books on cartooning, on comics, on animals. My books have sold over three million copies domestically and have been translated into twenty languages.

My first book on Manga was the number one art book in America for a year and that was called Manga Mania, it’s become a big series. I’m very fortunate to have had twenty nine of my books hit the Neilson Book Stand top fifty list and that measures the top fifty books in the country week by week according to category like gardening or art.

Here are a few of my popular books. This one is Manga for the Beginner, and another one which Manga is based on also which is figure drawing, it’s called Figure It Out. My philosophy on teaching is different from other art teachers. I believe you should concentrate on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. You see by concentrating your strengths you’ll enjoy it more, you’ll want to draw more, you’re probably better at it and you’ll probably improve faster.

You can take this improved level of skills and more easily focus on your weak points, you’ll be better. So, if you’d like to see more about my books or about me, or drop a line, please visit my website I’m at www.chrishartbooks.com.

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Maids and service workers are very popular characters in manga, and they’re often glamorized. That’s the case with the maid, very glamorous with a frilly outfit, and they combine with catgirls often, in order to make a character like this, very appealing. Now, we’re going to learn a few tricks about drawing the maid catgirl.

First thing we want to do is draw the ears, obviously. And the ears, on most mammals, not human, start at a diagonal, like this, rather than on the side of the head, go off on a diagonal on the head. The inner flap is rounded, to give it life. If you draw it straight, it doesn’t look quite as convincing. I’m going to darken the interior, and then the tail, we want it to be perky, because a catgirl actually has some of the qualities of a cat.

So, we’re going to make this one kind of perky. To do that, we curve the tail, make it curled, into the bottom of the spine, rather than making it straight or hanging down, sort of droopy. And most of the tails on catgirls are thin, like this, but curvy.

Then we draw the apron. Now, to draw the apron, we have to follow the contour of the dress. See the dress is rounding here, like that? So, the apron is going to round off here. And as far as the bottom of the apron is concerned. This dress is rounding off this way at the bottom, so the apron also rounds off this way. We put some flounces or curls right here, a nice bow. Add a little contour to it. Add a little depth. A second bow up here, and a knot back here, hiding back here is a knot. And so those are some tricks to drawing a maid catgirl.

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Here’s some tip for drawing the figure. Some proportions and contours. We’re going to use a manga girl. Now, as you can see, the top of her body is a little bit short, and the bottom of her body is a little bit longer. These are the idealized proportions of the figure. Now the back, crunches right here. A lot of action going on right here. Most people think the back is straight and you draw the character just like this. No the back has to be flexible, the spine is flexible. So this makes an attractive pose.

Now you can really see the back, the dynamic here, the s curve right here, how much movement there is compared to the front of the body where it’s barely flat. Most people think the front is where all the dynamics happen, it’s actually the back. Okay now let’s draw it, give you some hints along the way. First the upper back is rounded and it’s got the most mass. So it comes out to here, then go straight for a little while, but the lower back is very curved right here. Which gives her a feminine look, then she rounds out right here at the bottom and that rounding goes out beyond the top of the back.

That protrudes the most. So look at this. Now you see it’s nice and fluid, nothing’s choppy about that and it creates a dynamic pose.

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Here are some hints on how to draw a manga boy. Now, there are several different types. The most popular are the teen idol, the sort of like 19-year-old boy. And the other type is a younger boy, like 14. He’s kind of loyal and brave and that kind of stuff. This one is the older type. He’s got sleek features and almond-shaped eyes. The other type is a shojo type, which is a certain genre of manga. And as you can see, he’s got a wider face, larger eyes. He’s kind of cute and young-looking.

So we’re going to learn how to draw this guy. And what we’re going to do is to draw him is we’re going to start on a construction. Now this is sort of like a grid on how we draw a character. I’m going to start by explaining the center line and the eye line. In order to keep everything in perspective, we draw a center line that goes right down the middle of the face, intersects with the bridge of the nose, and right through the mouth to the chin.

The eye line is very important so both eyes are even. You don’t want one higher than the other. Here’s a challenging part for drawing three-quarter views for beginners. It’s the edge of the face. So to make that nice and appealing, what we do is we draw a concave line here at the forehead. Bring it down, like so. And we have to now leave a little bump for the cheek right out here. See how that bumps out a little bit right here?

Then we bring it back in, and you make another concave line like so, and attach that to the jaw like this. Now we have to think about shadows. Light generally comes from above, either from a ceiling light or from the sun. It comes down, but it’s blocked from the neck by the chin. So there’s a shadow that appears here. We’re going to draw that shadow right in here. Now, he’s a very full-faced guy. Another alternative is to bring the chin in at an even more severe angle like this, to make a different look for the character. You can adjust these to suit yourself.

And now at this point we add a little shading right here across the bridge of the nose and fill in the ear. The ear gives people trouble, but you simplify it basically. It’s like this. The edge, the rim right here, and show an ear flap, and then one interior articulation. And that’s all you really need. So let’s take a look. There is our manga boy.

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Here are some tips in drawing a Manga girl. Now, this Manga girl is in the Shojo genre, which means it’s kind of cute and perky and she happens to be a cat girl, which is a popular style, popular kind of character. So I’m going to give you some tips that I think will be helpful for you in learning how to draw the Manga girl.

Start with our construction. This is how she’s built. This is the construction that holds everything together. We have a solid head shape, we have the hair on top, and you give room, volume for the hair. Notice that the side of the head is very curvy on a girl. It’s a very appealing look.

Now, we’re going to give her an expression that is very popular in Manga, which is looking at the rear and winking. That’s a fun, playful expression for a girl, and especially cat girls. So what we’re going to do is start up high and go low. See, some people think that a wink goes like this, like an upside down U. Not exactly. It starts up high, like here, at the edge of the face, and then goes like this, very sharply down.

We’ll add some eye lashes and they brush back. They don’t go straight out they brush back. Then we add the eyebrow, but that’s not the same as the other eyebrow. This one is kind of pushing down; it’s kind of crunching the eye. So we’ll push it down a little bit like that.

And now we want to give her a gleaming smile. How do you do that? A gleaming smile. Well, what you do is first, this line right here goes down not up. You think a smile goes up but not down. You see, the top lip is stretched over the teeth so it goes down. So most of the smile, the real expression has to happen in the bottom lip, like this. Now, we’re going to leave this open, this area. And see, by leaving this open it makes it look like there’s a sheen, kind of like it’s glistening. Kind of bright.

Now, to give her some depth, instead of having all the hair in front of the girl, we’re going to add a layer behind her too. So we’ll take a strand of hair, kind of a nice, delicate strand of hair, and add it here. Then we’ll fill it out and thicken it with a few more strands. This is a popular look in Manga. Notice that it’s curving. It;s not straight.

And then we’re going to fill in the eye. We’re going to blacken it here. And this little part here is the pupil area and it’s connected to this big shine. Then we can also leave another shine down here, which we will outline more thickly, and then sort of lightly fill in the other areas so that it has two different tones. See?

Give it a little bit of a shadow under the lip. And this will be striped because she’s a Manga girl. Give her little zebra stripes, tiger stripes and shade the interior of it.

So as you can see, we come up with a Manga girl.

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Here are some hints for drawing manga hair for a girl. Now I picked a character that has a lot of elements to it. For instance, she’s got a ponytail. She’s got the famous manga ear strands. She’s got a brushed-back set of bangs. So all these things together combine to make a nice-looking hairstyle. Now you’ll notice that the hair doesn’t paste right to the top of the skull. This is the basic underlying look of the head.

So what you want to do is when you draw bangs, you don’t want to go straight down unless you’re doing sort of a kimono-style girl where it’s very severe. You want to brush it back, like there was some wind, just a more natural look. Look how low down on the forehead it goes. You see? It was nice and low. It doesn’t give her a lot of forehead to look at, because that’s not as attractive. Now we’re also going to give her some of those famous manga strands of hair, and they’re not strings. See how this comes out a little bit? Out a little bit, comes down. See, there’s a little volume here, right here, and it’s thinner here.

Now to make sure she looks like she has some depth, we’re also going to put it on the other side as well. And we’ll add some strands here, some little bit of line work so it doesn’t look just empty. And now we’re going to work on the ponytail. A ponytail is simple, but there are a few tricks you need to know. For instance, it starts at the top of the head, not the bottom. And it goes up before it goes down. So we’re going to draw it up high like this. It goes up. Make it nice and full like this, but rather than go straight down, let’s give it a little twist.

So we’ll do something called a reverse curve. See how it curves this way? But then it goes back and curves in the opposite direction. This is a very important concept in many things, including drawing the body. It’s a pleasing way to draw. It’s attractive to the eye, a reverse curve. It’s a ponytail. We’re going to add a little more thickness to the line below, because light hits from above here. It does not hit down here. So that will be thicker, and look a little like shadow. Comes back down in here, tapers to the end.

And I’ll add a little doo-dad here. Shade on the bottom for the same reason. And now that this is curving here, we’ll curve back the other way. Add a little tuft of hair that’s being held into place by the doo-dad, like that. And if you want you could even add a couple striations, give it a little like that so it’s a little fantasy-looking. And there are some tips for drawing manga hair.

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Here are some tips for drawing the manga eye. We’re going to concentrate on the pupils, making them shiny, that glisteny look where the shines are. Here’s your basic kimono type manga girl. As you can see, the eyes are arched here, the eyelashes brushed back to the sides. The upper eyelid is always thicker than the lower eyelid.

Now we’ll focus on the pupil, that place where it’s all glisteny and everything. It makes manga eyes famous. One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that the light hits both pupils from the same direction. You see, the light is coming from here. We can tell that because the shine is here. It’s like this. But you wouldn’t want to put this shine over here, because that would mean the light would be coming this way. It comes this way for both sets of eyes.

So, we start off with the biggest shine. We’re going to make it round like this. The reason it’s a little round rather than square or just circular is because the eye is round. So, it’s actually going around the eye. See that? Going around the eye. Then we add another shine which is often, you could do any shine you want but this is a classic way of doing it, diagonally to the first shine. This is the major one right here. This is a smaller one. Then, sometimes, you can add a third one which is the minor one. That can be a little circle, just a little circle of light.

Now we fill in around these areas. Be careful not to go over it. This is how to do a shine with one tone, one basic tone. If you erase something, like so, and you think it leaves a mark – like it has here – you can always use correcting white paint which is what I did. Just add it right here, and this will not show up when you scan. It will just look white even in large size. Just like that. Then, once it dries you can go mottle it again with your pencil. Go back over it and get all the edges to look right, like so. If you want you can just add a little bit of color here, or shading, just over the eyelids.

That’s how you do a manga eye.

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Maybe you haven’t thought of drawing a manga cat, but what about a kitten? What about a Chibi kitten? Who can resist that? So let’s give that a try today.

You’ll notice on this guy, that the head is oversized and really cute because his eyes and muzzle are so low and the body is very tiny, but still chunky. And that’s some of the keys to making it cute. But here is the underlying construction so you can see clearly what goes into making it cute. You see the body here is done in a sort of kidney bean shape, which means that when we curve in here at the back, we curve out at the bottom and the tummy is rounded and goes forward.

Okay, then we’re going to start with the muzzle. The muzzle, like the eyes, is very low to the bottom of the face. That makes it cute. And here’s the bridge of the nose – very tiny. Now, if you give him a big nose, it’s not going to be as cute. So we’re going to give him a very tiny little nose right here on the center line. See how that center line goes down the middle? Now we’re going to add an ear. Just a little tiny triangle of an ear. Now, kittens in general have ears that are very big in proportion to their heads. But cartoons and manga kittens have tiny ears.

Tiny triangle of an ear and we’re going to make it facing this way. And the reason is he’s looking over here, so he probably hears something over there. And a cat’s ear can point in a direction in which it’s hearing. Okay now we’re going to give him some whiskers. So we’ll give the whiskers a little thickness and make them kind of spiky, which is what we think of when we think of manga hair. We think of it sometimes on some characters as spiky.

And then to make him look like a real samurai, we’re going to give him a headband. Now, the headband is rounded. See how that’s curved? If you make this flat, the head’s going to look flat. Okay, and notice that I bring the other side right here under the hair. And what does that do? It gives it overlap. The hair is overlapping the headband, which gives a look of depth. And to even accentuate that more, we’re going to give a little shadow. And you could add any kind of motif you want. Kind of a happy sun.

And notice that even though this here is covered with clothing, we generally draw the entire figure. It gives us the placement. So we’ll just color that in a little bit. And this is our samurai Chibi kitty.

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Now I’m going to show you how to draw a manga-style horse. Now as you can see, it’s not just a regular horse. I’ve made a unicorn, and even more than that a fantasy unicorn, because it’s got this ornamentation on its face. Okay. Now let’s start with the basic structure of the horse’s head. It’s very simple. This is the basic structure, the basic outline of a horse’s head. Of course we have to sculpt this and add details.

The first thing you want to do is bump out over here. This is the far side of the eye, which protrudes. You can’t even see the eye. This is the bone. The eye is in here. You also want to round out the jaw over here, a little bit round. Now I’m going to skip ahead a few steps. We’re going to see from this advanced construction how we finish the horse’s head. So let’s draw the horn first. To do that we’ll go to up here right in the center of the horn, and we will draw a little dot. So we know where we’re going toward, which helps.

And we bring that down to the edge of the circle, which is really an oval, because it’s perspective, and the other side. And you could also curve your horn if you like or make it a little jagged like that, a little more like a weapon if you want. Notice how the hair goes around it. That makes it look more real. We articulate this part so that it looks like the horse has a top and a side. If you don’t add this in, it just looks like one big empty space.

Okay. Now we’re going to do the bottom of the jaw, and this is the tricky part for everybody. They don’t quite understand it if they’re beginners. Some of you may, but in case you don’t, the jaw goes around here, and it indents into the basic frame of the shape like that. Now instead of a straight line, this comes out a little bit. It’s a curve out and back in. See that? It’s subtle, but it’s important.

Then here’s the chin. The chin is like a cup. It’s very pronounced, but it’s small. And it leads up to the thick lower lip. So sometimes I will use striations, diagonal striations on the unicorn’s horn. It gives it a nice decorative look. And notice I draw right through the hair, draw right through it. You could always erase it later. This way, you get the placement of the hair correct. Okay. And there is a unicorn.

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Here’s some tips and some suggestions of how to draw a manga dragon. Now these are very popular in the genres of fantasy manga, shonen manga. They show up a lot of places, and they’re really impressive beasts. And here’s the dragon, the final drawing of the dragon. Now let’s go back to look at the construction. The construction’s pretty easy, big head, narrow snout, big nose. But what you want to do to make it look really gothic is you want to take that construction and find the planes, the different planes, meaning the different sides and really articulate them and have this.

Now let’s go into the details, the things that give people a little bit of trouble. First, the horns. Now a dragon’s horns can go in any direction, but I think since he’s such an aggressive creature, it’s looks particularly good if the horns go forward. So I’m going to draw the first horn forward like this. The base is round here. See how it’s round and not flat? That’s because it’s not a block of wood. It’s a round cylinder. Comes up this way, and then draw the horn to a very sharp point. And also to make it look more real, we give it a little depth. And how we do that? We show a little bit of the interior with a shadow. See, now it looks like it’s got some volume.

The other one is hidden behind his head. It’s overlapping. And that’s good. Don’t apologize for that. Let things overlap. It makes them look like they have depth. Again, a little bit of a shadow can be used here. Now for the plates, the plates that go on the back of a dragon. A lot of people just put them right on the back of the neck. That’s fine if you want to do that, but here’s the center line. It means it goes down what would be the center of the back of the neck. And if you put the plates here inside of the outline of the neck, it just looks more real. So place it inside, sort of like that.

The last bit of trickiness to draw a dragon is the smoke. Now it’s smoke. They’re not clouds. So you’re not going to get any bumpy stuff like this. That’s cartoony. Instead, believe it or not, you want the smoke to look a little angular, which makes it look a little angry. Curl as it lofts up like this. See it’s got some actual angles to it, and it’s unpredictable. It’s very random. It gives it sort of a gothic, mysterious look. And if you want, which I suggest, you put a few striations on this. The horn could use a little decorating, and I like to darken the tips. It’s looks like it’s been used. And that’s a manga dragon.

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Now let’s draw a manga schoolgirl. This is a very popular type of character in shojo, which is the girl style of manga, although boys like it, too, because of the intense characters. Now here’s a typical manga shojo schoolgirl. As you can see, she’s wearing her school uniform. And as you can also see, she has lapels, a collar, a tie, buttons, and it gets a little complicated. Don’t worry if it’s tough for you to draw that right now. I’m going to give you some hints so that you can draw it. Take a little of the mystery out of it.

Here’s the basic instruction of the girl. Square shoulders, narrow waist. Notice on a female character, the waist is very high. So we start here at the middle of the neck, and we take this out diagonally to make the collar. Slight curve in, slight curve in. And since it’s coming toward you, the near side is larger than the far side. See how this is narrower than this? Okay.

Then we’re going to do the lapels, and it’s kind of like a reverse curve. It curves around, and then back the other way and meets up with this, this line here. This lapel does the same thing, except that it goes slightly under this one, doesn’t meet it exactly halfway. One lapel has to go over the other. We’ll widen them out, and we’ll follow the contour of the main one. Follow the contour of the inner lapel, like this.

Now we’re going to draw a little pocket here, but we’re not going to draw it straight, because the body is curved. The body has contours. So we’re going to follow those contours and curve it just ever so slightly. [inaudible02:01] Then we’ll add the ribbon. First a little knot here,and you could tuck it into the jacket if you want, but it’s always nice if something is breezy and flowing. And it should flow in the same direction as the hair, because the wind is coming from one direction, not two at the same time. The hair is going this way, so the bow should go this way. So we’ll bring it up over like this. Nice curved lines. Color that in, and there is your manga schoolgirl.

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Here are some tips on drawing a Manga Vampire. Now, the vampire has to be dramatic. Everything about him should look mysterious. You see, he’s got mysterious eyes, his hair is wind swept, he’s got the cape.

So let me give you some tips on drawing one of the most important parts of the vampire, which are the eyes. This is pretty simple. Now we start, like, just a long curve down, a long curve across and half circles. What you want to do is start with a very small, very small pupil and make sure that it’s cut off by the top of the eyelid. Next to that pupil, we’ll draw a shine and it actually bumps up right up against that pupil. Now, we’re going to add another little shine, a tiny one right here, it’s a circle.

Now, this is an important but subtle point, leave that top pupil over here, right next to the edge of the top eyelid. And the reason we do this is because this is where the shadow appears. And then we’ll just can lightly fill in the rest of the eye. Now, we’re gonna darken the top eyelid, always darker and thicker then the bottom. And a few slight eyelashes. These are vampires. And add some shadow. Make them even look more mysterious. Add some shadow just in the pocket under the eyebrows and for the eyes.

Now, one more little touch on that is the shadow for the hair, we’ve been talking about shadow. Now, the hair on the top looks flat. The reason is there’s no shadow. Watch what happens when we add shadow. Here’s a shadow for this little strand. The shadows all occur in the same place. I wouldn’t have a shadow on the left of the hair, here, and on the right of the hair, here, because the light’s obviously coming from this side. More shadow here, which covers the eye and finally, shadow here. Leave that over as well. And that’s how you add style to a Manga Vampire.

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Hey, let’s draw everybody’s favorite and those are Chibis those adorable mini characters. Now, I love to draw Chibis because I like to drive my readers insane with unbearable cuteness. So let’s get started.

Here is a pajama Chibi. I’m going to show you some fine touches on how to draw this guy. Here is the basic instruction. As you can see, to make him very cute the eyes are incredibly low on a Chibi character. He’s got no nose but we indicate a little bridge of the nose. The mouth is very small typically, unless the Chibis has a big emotion, then the mouth can be huge. Big curve in here. Big curve in. Big cheek bone out this way.

Now, let’s look at the body. To make this body cute we can’t leave it like this. We’ve got to give it a pudgy look. Now most people think that comes from the tummy being pudgy, it doesn’t. It actually comes from giving the back curve, like this, you see? Look at that curve. Suddenly he looks cuter, more alive.

Now you use a center line down the back. Often we think of a center line as just being down the front, but no, we put it down the back, we follow the contour all the way down until we get to the legs. That helps us find the center here, of the tail. That little bunny tail that he’s got here, we don’t want to be too far off to one side so we put it right there on the center line.

The next thing we have to do is you want to give detail to the ears. So what we’re going to do is start here, but as you’ll notice, is the interior of the ears are not perfectly centered in the ear itself, because the perspective has more mass here than there is here.

So start with a thinner line here. This is a thinner area. And make it thicker on the other side. Leave more room on the other side. And that emphasizes that this little guy has some depth to him and some dimension.

Also you want to put a hair shine in. To do that, before you do any coloring, you should do an outline so that you have a guideline to go on. They sort of parallel each other, the lines on, to make the shine.

Here is your little frightened guy. A Chibi.

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In manga, shoujo is one of the sub-genres and is perhaps the most popular one of all of manga.

It’s thought of generally as girls manga as opposed to shounen which is boys action. However, there’s a lot of boys who really like shoujo because it features intense characters. Teenagers going through angst, and they’re troubled with relationships, and they may have adventures. And so it’s very compelling for everybody.

The thing that people like about it, and you will probably recognize if you don’t know already, is they have giant glistening eyes that are so attractive. And the small noses and mouths and features. The faces are subtle, large, so they are young looking. Their bodies are generally simplified so it’s not too tough to draw. I’d say that this is sort of like between easy and medium as far as drawing it.

Now, there’re very popular characters that you’ll know that come from the shoujo genre. There’s Cat Girls, there’s School Girls which is just really popular. There’s Magical Girls and there are also the boyfriends of the School Girls.

And there are two styles of boyfriends. One is the kind of loyal, heroic, young 14 year old who never gets the girl. And then there’s the kind of older, teen idol guy, good looking, mature, and he always gets the girl but doesn’t really care about her.

So here is a School Girl type that is a shoujo style. She’s kind of young and perky, that’s kind of looking cute. And here is the bishoujo type which is actually also a shoujo type genre. And he’s the kind of good looking guy who is unattainable by the girls.

So as you can tell by my just describing the characters, there’s a lot in there. And all of a sudden stories come together.

So that’s the shoujo genre. Give it a try, you might like it. It’s perhaps the most popular style of all of manga.

Transcript

Here are a few tips on developing your own character, an original character.

The first thing is to decide on a costume. Now, there’s a question you should ask yourself. Where is he? Where is your character in the story? Is she in school, where she will use a school uniform? Is she or he in a castle, where it’s kind of vampire-like and Gothic. Or perhaps its feudal Japan, with somebody in a kimono, or somebody who’s a samurai. So, where is the character.

And the next is, when is the character? How back historically do you want to go? Or is it something in the future? Or is it in a total fantasy land, where a magical girl might take place.

Asking yourself these questions, and thinking about them before you start to draw is important for designing your character.

Here’s an original character I did. It’s a schoolgirl in a school uniform. I just thought I’d make her perky, kind of bubbly, and one way I did that was to accentuate her body language, which is another thing to keep in mind.

What I did was, I shifted and tilted the shoulder-hip dynamics. The shoulders go down this way, and the hips go this way. It gives her a crunch here, and a stretch here. And what that does is that it adds energy to a character. Now, if I had to introvert a character, I might draw it straight, or with the shoulders slouching. So, the body language helps the personality.

The last is the expression. Expression is very much a part of developing your own character. As you can see, she is bright-eyed with a wide smile. Some characters can be a lot more subtle. Some will express themselves in an opposing way to how they feel. If they’re in love with a girl, they act shy rather than show love.

You have to decide what type of character you want, and how you’ll express those things. Not only in the face, but in the body language. If someone is introverted, they kind of slink away. If someone’s extroverted, the chest comes forward.

All these different things are subtle things, but they do add up to an original character, and one that communicates personality.

Instructions

• Step 1: Consider the genre of manga Concentrate on proportions that work with the genre of manga.
• Step 2: Making mistakes is ok Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you’re not erasing, you’re not creating.
• Step 3: Customizing characters When drawing an original character, change features in steps from a template starting with face then clothes and then the pose.

Transcript

I’m going to give you three tips for the aspiring Manga artists, and hopefully these hints will be helpful for you in drawing Manga. The first thing is to concentrate on the proportions that seem to work with the genre. Every sub-genre of Manga, whether it’s Shonen or Shojo or Bishojo or Chibis or Kawaii, every character has its idealized proportions. Some are lanky. Some are short. Some are cute.

For instance, this is a Chibi. As we can see, the proportions are pretty exaggerated. The head is much bigger than the body. There are genres where the proportions are much more realistic. That’s one thing.

Another is to make mistakes. You’re allowed to make mistakes. Of course, I drew this without any mistakes, just right through–no, just joking. Professional artists make mistakes all the time. We need erasers. We erase a lot. The thing is, if you are not erasing, you’re not experimenting.

Don’t try to get it right, just right on the first try. Give yourself the freedom to create. Try it this way. Try it that way. You can erase everything you want. Don’t worry about your drawing looking messy or smudged. Trace it over for the final drawing so you’ll have a clean drawing.

The last tip is on drawing original characters. I always get comments into my website and questions how to draw an original character. Here’s one technique for doing it. You can do it out of your imagination, but you can start with a character from my book or something you see in a graphic novel.

What you want to do is change it in steps. First, you might change the features, the eyes, and the hair, just a little bit. Then you will add a costume, a different costume, something different from this costume. For instance, if she’s a cat girl, maybe you want to make her a schoolgirl. Give her a schoolgirl costume.

The next thing you change is the proportions. Maybe her legs are longer. Maybe her shoulders are wider. The last thing is that you give her what I call an opposite pose. That comes from personality. If she’s a dramatic character, give her a silly pose. Everything in little increments to take it away and further from visually, this character. Do the eye test at the end.

Take a look at your finished new character and the original character, and make sure it looks different enough or you have to keep changing it. I hope these tips have been helpful for you, and that you can use them when drawing Manga.

Transcript

If you’ve never considered drawing a style of manga called Kawaii, you’re in for a treat. Kawaii is perhaps the happiest style in all of manga. It’s also huge in Japan, it’s been huge in Japan for a long time but it’s emerging now in an explosive way in the United States.

Where do you see this stuff? Well besides graphic novels, general manga, it’s huge in licensing. You’ll see it in toys, products, and apparel. It’s everywhere. Now I’m going to show you a couple of examples of kawaii. I’ve done some mini monsters in kawaii. Here’s one. Take a look at this, you’ll see that, what’s interesting about kawaii is that often, they’re not always, but often they have thick ink lines and it’s a very flat graphic look. It’s not supposed to look like it has depth.

When you simplify make sure that you add a little style. So when you simplify the hands, instead of just adding a little bit of fingers here or there, what I’ve done here is I’ve just made a rounded chubby little arm. That’s how kawaii is done, it accentuates the shapes. Here’s another example of kawaii, another mini monster. So you see, same thing, you know. Very flat looking, lots of obvious shapes, and very simplified. Kawaii has different types of characters, not just these cute monsters. It’s got people, it’s got the monsters, it’s got even inanimate personified characters like food. Funny and cute food, like cute cupcakes and ice cream. I mean, I know it sounds strange, but if you see it you’ll find it adorable. The difficulty rating of this is easy but with a caveat. You see, the shapes are easy to draw, so the characters are pretty simple. But you’ve got to work at keeping it minimal, simplified and yet making the personality come across to the reader. So that’s the key. Simple expressions, but with big personalities.

Transcript

Here are a few tips for drawing the Manga Head.

The first thing I want to cover is the eyes. And, when people draw eyes for a Manga Head, they’re concentrating on those big eyes and making them shiny and all that good stuff.

But, one thing you want to also keep in mind, is that, for different characters, the eyes have to be at different levels. The younger the character, the lower the eyes on the head. The older the character, the higher the eyes on the head.

For instance, here are a couple of examples. Here’s Young Boy. As you can see, he’s got a lot of mass up here, above the head. And, his eyes are fairly low on the head.

Now, here is a more mature, older character. His eyes are closer to the top of his head. He’s got a lot more mass down here, below. It’s an effective way to show the age of your character.

Another thing I like to talk about is character design as far as features go. Now, we all know that we create characters by drawing noses and different kinds of eyes. Different eyebrows and mouths.

But, something I don’t want you to forget is that hair is a design feature of a character. Just like eyes are. It defines the character.

If you have a beautiful woman, you don’t give her just a regular hairdo that you don’t think about. What you give her tells you something about the person.

For instance, you might give her lofting, wind-blown hair that, kind of, lyrically flows in the breeze. That would make her more wistful. A romantic character.

The last thing you want to think about it, what angle do you want to use to draw the character’s head? Instead of just drawing anything and letting it be kind of amorphous, choose an angle. Stick with it. Crystallize it.

For instance, this is a front view. This is a side view. And this is a three quarter view. The front view is very open. Used for humor. The side view can be used for a harsher look at somebody.

And the three quarter view, right here, is very sympathetic. So, you have an open face. And, also you have a special dynamic the other views don’t have.

You know what that is? It’s perspective. When I turn this way, this eye is smaller and narrower. There’s more mass on this side of the head than on this. It’s almost a push-pull. A tug between two sides.

Gives it a certain energy. Makes it look sympathetic and interesting.

So, you to consider the angles. You want to consider the hair and you also want to consider the placement of the eyes when drawing the Manga Head.

Instructions

• Step 1: The relationship between manga and anime Understand that anime is a derivative of manga.
• Step 2: Manga traits Manga is known for their intense characters and is read by more girls than boys.
• Step 3: American comics vs. manga Compared to American comic characters, manga characters having more shading and detailing with delicate lines.

Transcript

Manga is a unique form of comics and cartoons. It’s been around since the early 1960’s with the introduction of Astroboy, which you may or may not remember, as an anime. Anime, by the way, is animation based on manga. It starts as manga first, and then becomes anime, and not the other way around.

It has a unique look to it which all of us are pretty much familiar with. It’s got dazzling eyes and delicate features. This is a style that takes teen romance seriously. They’re intense and dramatic, rather than just sort of winking at the teenagers. I mean, there’s lots of humor in it. The intensity really gets the audience interested in the whole thing.

Interestingly enough, unlike regular American comics, which are very predominantly male-oriented, and read by guys, manga is slightly more girls than guys, as far as readers are concerned.

Now, let’s take a look at the difference between American comics and Japanese comics. You’ll notice some specific differences.

Here’s a vampire, done in a style called bishounen, which is sort of like the classic good-looking guy. It’s a popular type. You can see that the features are delicate, even if he’s a powerful character. There’s a lot of shading, a lot of subtlety, and a lot of mood.

This is a hero in the American comics. There’s a little humor involved, and he’s fun, too. But there isn’t that delicacy of line. There isn’t all that shading. It’s right out there, bold and powerful. Less subtle, less to sink into in a certain way.

Both are a lot of fun to draw, both are a lot of fun to read, but they are very different. Manga has its own type of style, and a lot of people who like manga are just ‘mangaphiles’. People who like the American cartoons, like that. They don’t always blend, which is a kind of an interesting phenomenon.

I hope this will be helpful to you when you give manga drawing a try.