Manga the Mega Guide

As a self-taught manga artist, Gorel is familiar with existing manga art instruction guides-they were her principal means of learning the craft. With this book, she strives to gather and distill all the crucial practical information that prospective manga artists need to get started and develop their skills. Diagrammed step-by-step exercises lead readers through illustrating manga faces, expressions, hairstyles, the human figure, hands, and feet using a variety of media from pen and ink to colored pencils to Photoshop. Human anatomical proportions are used as a starting point, and gender differences are downplayed for a more realistic take on the genre. Some more exaggerated chibis and kemonomimi characters are also included. VERDICT This guide is best for beginners and younger readers, especially manga fans.

If you have ever aspired to being a mangaka then here is a useful book to own. As it says on the back this is a guide to drawing figures in the manga style using physical media such as paints, pencils, markers etc. This is not a book that deals with using graphics programs, nor does it give a history of manga or go into different styles in depth. Instead it plunges in getting you to start actually drawing and learning how to get the proportions right, starting with the face. From features to expressions, hair and those all-important eyes there are lots of examples to draw yourself and plenty of useful advice. The next chapter deals with the whole body, whether you are drawing basic figures or chibis. Here there are pages of helpful diagrams showing proportions and how to get the look right. Following on is a chapter on inking in and adding color containing some useful sections on line drawing pens, markers, pencils, watercolors and acrylics. Each medium has a staged project showing how to add color and there are additional pages on what paper to use, how to achieve various effects and more. Finally there are a couple of pages on scanning your image into a graphics program. Drawing manga is a huge topic but this is a good hands-on book that is sure to get anybody who already has some drawing and art skills producing some good work.

This book is very detailed .it gives easy step by step guides in every aspect of drawing Manga from simple drawing to building up a composition. I especially loved the different techniques such as inking and watercolor and using markers. I would highly recommend this book It's amazing.

I know nothing of Manga, but I do know a well laid- and thought-out book when I see one and this is first class.

It's the usual big-eyed kids, which are a bit cutesy for me, but the book seems a lot more solidly grounded in the practical aspects of drawing than many. I often remark that this kind of book is usually handy if you want to draw figures - I think the authors are somehow less hung up on the artistic side of things and therefore simplify the practical aspects. Samantha is particularly sound on the basic shapes of bodies, hands, feet and so on. If it's clothed figures you're interested in, there's plenty here too. I also like the fact that there's a lot of discussion of the properties of materials - inks, markers, watercolours, acrylics and their practical uses.

As long as you can get past the very particular style, this is a really good primer on figure drawing.

Samantha Gorel, known by her pen name Mireielle online, has been drawing manga for over 12 years and regularly attends comic conventions to sell her comic books and artworks. Samantha works as a full time freelance manga illustrator. She is entirely self-taught, which allows her to better understand how many young artists learn to draw manga. She has a passion to connect with her fans on an individual level through her tutorials and websites. Samantha lives in Arizona, United States.