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Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art: Learn to Draw, Color and Design Characters

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Bursting with knowledge and brilliant artwork, Beginner’s Guide to Creating Manga Art offers a comprehensive, practical guide to this art form and is an unmissable title for anyone wanting to learn how to capture that classic manga style. Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art explores the core aspects of this artistic style and takes you through the process of designing manga- and anime-style characters from the initial concept to full-color images. The diversity of the authors featured in these pages offers an exciting blend of perspectives and techniques from around the world, with industry greats including Steven Cummings (an American comic book artist in Japan whose clients include Marvel and DC Comics) and Gonzalo Ordoñez (the author of Legendary The Art of Genzoman ) among the leading names. These talented artists open a window into their world and present tutorials covering everything from drawing features, anatomy, and expressions to designing clothing, perfecting poses, and coloring characters with a mixture of traditional and digital artistic tools. Steven Cummings is an American comic book artist who has worked for the likes of DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and is currently a member of the famous Udon Entertainment team in Japan. Gonzalo Ordoñez specializes in manga characters and is the author of the popular book Legendary The Art of Genzoman .

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2013

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244 people want to read

About the author

Steven Cummings

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Parka.
797 reviews479 followers
August 14, 2013
( More pictures on my blog )

Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art is a more of a tips and techniques book rather than a structured course on drawing manga from start to end. The book covers only characters.

It starts with lessons on features, expressions, anatomy, poses, clothing and character designs. The lessons are brief and are covered under 30 pages. For example, for drawing of heads, the front and sides are taught. But for heads at other angles, while there are illustrated examples with guidelines, there aren't enough in depth explanation to go with it. This section is just an introduction on figure drawing.

The second part of the book features tutorials from various artists on designing characters. There are many useful tips on drawing, what type of materials to use and things to look out for. Many artists are using traditional medium but there are a few tutorials on Photoshop.

The third part is on colouring the characters that were drawn in the previous chapter. The tutorials cover a variety of tools that are used, such as coloured pencils, markers, watercolour and Photoshop. Again, there are good tips on handling the specific mediums.

The last few pages feature a manga art gallery from various artists.

Overall, this book is more on understanding the style of manga art, and the tutorials that show you how to create them.

For beginners, I would also recommend getting dedicated books such as Drawing the Head and Hands and Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. With basic figure drawing skills, stylizing characters for manga will be much easier.
Profile Image for Kai.
2 reviews
May 25, 2013
Beautiful works, and guidelines that actually contain useful information -- not just about drawing, but about software and technique as well.
Profile Image for Jaime Guzman.
446 reviews1 follower
October 4, 2018
3D Total Publishing puts out art tutorial books that are exceptionally well done. It covers all types of drawing media from pencils to digital art and in fully detailed step by step instruction. The art work is also really nice as well. The book is a nice 12 x 8.5 inches printed on thick paper. It's definitely a book that will be on my art book shelf.
Profile Image for King Goat.
1 review
August 2, 2015
I think the title is inaccurate. The art at best is intermediate to professional and the best for beginners is the start which briefly explains the basics. Besides that nitpick, the art is fabulous. While not best explained, at least looking at the process of many different art styles and the mediums they use step by step is incredibly fascinating and inspiring. It's a very good reference book for inspiration, tutorials or just to look up to. For any aspiring artist in the manga medium or graphic novel medium, this is a useful and informative book to spark creativity.
Profile Image for Labeba Salameh.
828 reviews265 followers
August 1, 2015
يركز في اغلبه على كيفية تصميم شخصيتك وطرق التلوين المختلفة
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

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