Comickers Art 2: Create Amazing Manga Characters

by Comickers Magazine

Comickers Create Amazing Manga Characters delves deep into the creative process of manga and shows how to transform two-dimensional sketches into detailed, life-like characters. With beautiful full-color art from cover to cover, this second volume in the Comickers Art series showcases authentic instructions and original advice from the best manga creators—along with finished illustrations from each featured artist. Both visually-stunning and extremely informative, this book is an essential guide for all aspiring manga artists.

Genres: Art, Manga

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 4 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

In Comickers Art 2, the subject is on sketching and human expression. Note that this is not a comprehensive sketching tutorial. The text explains the basic techniques and guidelines to sketching. For example, they say to consider the use of perspective in sketches, but they don't actually teach the technique itself. They just talk about the technique, which might be a little hard to grasp without visual examples. On the back cover, it says "A visual step-by-step guide to creating authentic manga characters". That's not accurate.

The main bulk of the book is on the featured artists, their interviews and sample of their work. In this series, the artists are Hiroshi Kanno, You Higuri, Eiji Usatsuka, Hiroshi Takahashi (wiki), Tenpo Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi, Kikoushi-Enma.

There's also a gallery named Hot New Talent. It contains illustrations from unknown artists. The quality of work here of course can't be compared to the featured artists.

At the back are a few pages of manga created exclusively for Comickers Art. They are, sadly, in Japanese so I have no idea what the story is about, even if the art itself is great. It's just a few pages anyway. The contributing manga artists are Shigeki Maeshima, Miou Takaya, Yoshimi Moriyama and Natsuko Mori.

The book finishes off with a few full page coloured illustrations from Kana Ohtsuki, Toromi, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, Yukihiro Nakamura. 7 pages.

The nice thing about this book is the interviews, which gives insight into the artists' workflow, the manga and animation industry.

This review was first published on parkablogs.com. There are more pictures and videos on my blog.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely does not live up to its name, nor its predecessor. It's just a very expensive picture gallery of artists, most of which are not all that popular anymore nowadays. Don't waste your money on getting this.