45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than just a "how to draw" book, October 11, 2006
This review is from: Draw Manga: How to Draw Manga In Your Own Unique Style (Paperback)
Far too many aspiring artists who want to be the next big thing in comics or manga concentrate on the art; on how to draw their characters. What they often negelct is everything else that surrounds their characters: the backgrounds and environments, the plot and diologue, the underlying reason for their project in the first place.
Bruce Lewis' "Draw Manga" covers all of these things and more. People looking for one of those paint-by-numbers-hey-look-I-can-draw-a-hot-chick books will be sorely disappointed with this one, solely because it challenges the reader to think about everything concerned with what they're trying to accompish.
What the author is trying to convey here is that a successful (both to oneself as well as one's potential audience) manga is so much more than just nice pictures, and puts those critical elements first and foremost before the first character is ever drawn.
This is a book that should be on every new and experienced manga artist's reference bookshelf, right next to Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics".
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For Thoughtful Manga-ka in Training, June 21, 2007
This review is from: Draw Manga: How to Draw Manga In Your Own Unique Style (Paperback)
What this book is not: a trace-this how-2 for drawing Princess VaVoom of Planet Whoopee.
Lewis' "Draw Manga" promises to show the reader "how to draw figures, create believable characters and develop stories." And the book delivers.
Back to Princess VaVoom for a moment: addressing the interests of hormone-addled male teenagers, the author does devote four paragraphs on page 57 to cheesecake.
Not everyone will find the brief history of ukiyo-e and Hokusai-san's best seller, "Hokusai Manga" as interesting as I did: but I found it useful in setting up a sort of mental cargo pallet to hold the book's other thoughts.
That pallet got pretty full after reading this book. Lewis covers obvious topics, like drawing eyes and hands, discusses workspace design, the importance of research (and how to avoid it), props real and imaginary, how to shamelessly swipe plots and characters, and how to create your own unique style of art, characters, and plots.
The edition of the book I bought had a howler in it. On page 101, four balloons march across the top of the page, illustrating two good, and two not-so-good choices for digital lettering. Problem is, all four balloons contain the same sans-serif font.
However, in the same section Lewis gives a pretty good introduction to leading, size, kerning, and other aspects of making lettering legible.
That's the only glitch I can recall finding in this book's 120-odd pages, which is pretty good for something as content-rich as this.
Someone could learn to create a manga with engaging characters and good plots without reading this book, but that person would be missing a fine resource.
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this if you didn't understand what the other guy said!!... lol, November 30, 2006
This review is from: Draw Manga: How to Draw Manga In Your Own Unique Style (Paperback)
well.. first i'd like to say that this book ... is f******* awesome.. really . you would have to have one of you own to really understand how helpful this book really is... im not an expert in manga but i've learn tons of things thanx to this book. And if you're wondering if this book has like thos "step-by-step" instruccion on how to draw characters their way instead of yours... well that's what make it so awesome. it gives you examples of the estructures of the characters so you can create your own style. I've read some other books about this subject but so far this has been the best one.. im really glad i bought it. And its even cheaper than those other books that only tells you how to draw certain things in each volume.. definetly a GREAT BOOK
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