Customer Reviews

How to Draw Anime & Game Characters, Vol. 2: Expressing Emotions

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anyone interested in drawing characters (not just Manga style), the Tadashi Ozawa books are a real find. Volume one of the Anime and Game Characters (Basics for Beginners and Beyond) series was an amazingly useful book on drawing the human figure in many styles. Now he follows it up with Expressing Emotions.

As with the first book, he walks you through the techniques he's featuring for a range of different character types, from the very simple to the very realistic. He also includes extensive annotations with most of the drawings explaining why things work and pointing out the small but important details he's used. He focusses both on facial expressions and using the whole body to effectively convey feeling.

And again, he's included a section of drawings that don't quite work, with full annotations alongside revised drawings that fix the problems. While not as extensive as in volume one, it's still a great resource for the learning illustrator. Once you study these "before and afters", you wonder why more books on drawing don't use this technique. It allows you to spot your own flaws more easily, while encouraging you by showing you how to repair the problems through practice.

This book is definitely a 5 star read if you already have Volume 1 of this series (currently a bit hard to get, but keep checking for the reprint that's scheduled for release sometime). If you're already quite competent at drawing figures, this book will be of great use. If not, you'll still find it useful, but it doesn't cover how to draw figures, only how to give them more life and emotion.

If you're interested in drawing, especially Anime and Manga, grab this book while you can. And watch for the release of volume 3 (Bringing Daily Actions to Life), tentatively scheduled for this Summer 2001.

I bought this book for my teenage daughter, who has become obsessed with drawing manga. It was worth every penny! By demonstrating the particular stylistic quirks of Japanese animation (anime) and graphic novels (manga), it has helped her drawings gain the expressiveness she desires. After just one week of studying the examples, she improved dramatically.

This book does not have extensive text and thus is perfect for middle school children and older to learn by copying the examples. Unlike some of the volumes in this series, the pictures are not risque.

I recommend this book for anyone who has mastered the basics of anime style and is looking for ways to improve facial expressions.

I own the Japanese text version of this book, but the language barrier matters little. How to Draw ''Anime'' & ''Game'' Characters: Expressing Emotions, it full of self-explanatory drawings. A series of six different characters (both men and women) are used to show facial expressions of almost every conceivable emotion. The same sets of character are also use to display a wide variety of body language that express emotion. A must have resource for anyone wanting to draw anime/manga. Those interested in drawing superheroes and realistic; this is a great companion book to when pair with a facial anatomy book.

If you have problems drawing expressive characters get this book immediately! I can't begin to tell how handy it is to see a variety of characters (young to old, male and female) with their own unique manner of displaying an emotion (fear, smugness, unease, etc). The book goes a bit further and helps you how to translate that emotion into a panel or animation scene for maximum impact which I find quite useful.

This is the most comprehensive book on emotions from facial to full body expression regardless if you're into realistic or more simplistic drawings. Get your hands on one if you can.

The second book in the series, this one goes into detail on how to bring your characters to life through their facial expressions and body position. They show many different facial types for various types of characters and genders; many emotions that they go through including joy, anger, smug, embarressment, and much more; and the positions their bodies would be in while executing these emotions. At the end of the book there is a chapter on perspective and how to choose the right perspective to convey the emotion your character is going through. An excellent book for any anime artist.

I took a chance on this book because its title, "Expressing Emotions", promised to reveal the content I've been seeking for so long: a book that shows how to create facial expressions for a range of emotions. And this book really does that, and does it well.

Another book by the same artist, Tadashi Ozawa, offered a similar promise, but failed to deliver. Let's Draw Manga: Bodies And Emotions doesn't focus on faces at all; it focuses only on expressing emotion by posing the body in certain ways. Indeed, half the drawings don't have faces at all. Another book, Manga Moods, shows a huge range of emotions, but with only a single picture for each emotion and no advice on drawing.

Half this book is dedicated to facial expressions, and the other half gives corresponding full-body versions of some of these expressions. Everything is very well-annotated, with a number of notes on each drawing explaining exactly what was done to achieve the emotive effect. The drawings are clean and well-done, and the text is very clear.

But what could be a strength for this book turns out to be a weakness as well. Fourteen characters are used, a broad range of male and female characters typical of various styles of anime and games. Each character is shown with 14 facial expressions, then later with eight full-body poses. But pretty much the same 14 expressions are used for all the characters, and it just doesn't feel like it's enough to express the full range of emotions. Consider that Manga Moods has 40 expressions, and very few of them are redundant.

It's a nice touch to see the differences between how the emotion of anger is expressed by the young male detective and by the catgirl, or how smugness is expressed by the schoolgirl and the male giant-robot pilot. But I really rather would have seen more emotions reflected in this book, even at the expense of showing fewer characters.

This is still the best book I've found for learning how to draw emotions, and I'm sure I'll use it for reference quite often. I only wish there was more focus on a wider range of emotions -- how to differentiate between gloom and discomfort rather than just "unease", or defiance and confidence rather than just "smugness", for example.

I am 14 years old, and I got this book a year ago. It really helped me to figure out how to draw some of the basic expressions for people. I have been drawing manga for about 2 years now, but for a while, all of my characters had the same poses and basiccaly the same faces! And another note: not every character will express the same emotion in the same way. This also helps you to think about your character's personality and what kind of facial and body expressions they will use. I recommend this book for anyone who has the basics down, because it doesn't explain any of that. It will help anyone from a novice level, even experts could use the tips.

This book focuses directly on character design. Its best feature is that it shows various features and demonstrates precisely how, in the stylistic language of anime, these features interact to form believable character traits. Invaluable for those times when your generic cute girl character needs just a touch more strength, or needs to express a little more shyness.

It's possible to complain that the archtypes they show are too generic, but I feel that's one of the book's strengths. It explains the rules and conventions, using neutral characters so that the lesson shows clearly. It expects you, the character designer, to apply these lessons with whatever degree of subtlety you prefer.

The book is somewhat expensive for its content (especially compared with such great values as /the animator's survival kit/, by richard williams,) but it's quite useful, and still recommended.

This is a great book that provides drawing instructions on expressing emotion in anime and game characters. Helpful illustrations.

This book is all about finding the best expression for your charaters. For people who bought the first volume this depends on how well you listened and did when you were drawing. But it has been the best allowence money I spent. It has greatly aproved both my best's freinds drawing and mine. So if you HAVE THE FIRST VOLUME GET THE SECOND ONE.