Customer Reviews

How To Draw Manga Volume 31: More About Pretty Gals (How to Draw Manga (Graphic-Sha Unnumbered)) (v. 31)

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

 

 

As the cover suggests, this book has a very mature theme. This book does not show you how to draw pretty girls; rather it is a book for those who already know how to draw them. There is a very useful series on a comparison between the adult and girlish figure, a page at the end of each chapter. However, there is nudity (you will see nipples) and many shots from underneath a short skirt so that you can get a good view of the underwear. Like the other titles in the how to draw manga series, this is a high quality book, with an excellent translation job and great pictures. This is not a step by step book.
This book has five chapters:

1. Roundness and Curves: A short chapter on presenting a female character in an alluring way.

2. See-through Garments and Suggesting the Body Under Clothing: Pretty much what the title suggests, this long chapter covers all sorts of materials and how they appear on the body. This section covers a detailed section on how to express transparent clothing with screen tones, or wet clothes clinging to the body. It also has some odd things like wrapping the body in ribbon, and oiled or metallic skin. The fetish and bondage fashions aren't so bad, just weird. The best part is that they show you materials like leather, rubber and stretch, and how to draw them on the body.

3. Accentuating Particular Body Parts: Starting with a sexy picture of a gorgeous manga girl titled: women are beauty incarnate; this section goes through all the parts of the body and how to express them with their own particular accessories.( Hands, arms, the nape, the back, feet etc..) This is my favorite part!

4. Attention-getting Poses and Situations: Goes through all sorts of poses and ideas for drawing characters in striking ways. This part covers jumping over fences, kissing or biting things, putting on make-up, etc. There is, of course, a part on the ever popular sailor suit, and its styles. Also, a not so useful part on what to wear under a bathing suit is also included.

5. Learn From the Pros: This last chapter has four complete artworks with a commentary and the rough sketch included. They are not cutesy pictures, but I like them al the same. The FETISH FRIENDS picture is beautifully drawn despite its controversial theme. It is a picture of two girls, one girl with her hand on the other girl's nude breast both of them with veeeery happy expressions on their faces, if you know what I mean.

This book is for advanced artists. If you don't get any use from it immediately, it will come in handy in the future as your skill improves.

i got this book as a gift from my grandmother a few days ago, and i must say it's very...mediocre. some of the art is beautiful, but about a quarter of the art is done by an artist who tends to draw females looking like robots (right-angled noses, pointed lips, flat faces). in my opinion, i think this artist should have his pencils snapped in front of his face and be promptly fired (he has done art for other HTDM books as well, all equally bad, IMO). however, with that aside, i you're an artist who tends to draw only females (like me!) then you should certainly get this book, since it covers the aspects of manga women such and curves, clothes, and styling.

NOTE: i strongly do not recommend this book for the not-quite-mature-yet drawer. it contains a great deal of bondage and skimpy outfits, and has a lot of excess nudity. just a forewarning :-).

I bought this book in October and when I'm having difficulty drawing some body part or another I can always refer to this book. It covers ways to make the hands, feet, back, neck, breasts, and waist look good. i've always found hands and feet to be two of my trouble spots when it comes to drawing manga, so this was helpful. I do have to say that there is quite a bit of nudity in the book and a few things that would not be appropriate for someone under age 13 (bondage fashions, see through clothing...) So if you're thinking to buy this as a gift, be sure the recipient is at least 13.

I found this book to be extremely usefull, but I recommend getting the first book on Bishoujo characters before this one. It covors many types of clothing, which inculdes not only different fashions, but materials, and states such as wet clothing. It does not, I noticed, covor different face types, as the first did, which is one of hte reasons I recommened this one second, since the first is abit more basic. there is quite alot of nudity, but it does not amount to porn and such. Most of the nude drawings are simply to tell what the body would look like under clothing and things like that. There are,however, afew pages on bondage clothing. In the end, there is a complete picture that would be considered extremely mature, of two women. There is also a page on a body wrapped in gauze or ribbon, though I am not exactly sure as to why.

This book was an extremely good help. I gave it 4 stars and recommed it to the experiened Manga artist.

I found this book very useful for shading and drawing various parts of the body. I also liked the section on hands, because I'm not very good at drawing them. The section on drawing backs was also helpful. by the way, I AM a girl, and yes I found every aspect of this book helpful in some way or another. I don't believe that the other female reviewers I noticed had a very good idea of how much you can learn from this book...

First off, do not, I repeat, DO NOT let the nudity turn you off to this book; most of it is in the vein of Playboy rather than hardcore skin flicks. Let's be realistic, when a book's main focus is the female form, seeing a girl's birthday suit is expected. All of the naked bodies are not gratuitous, but necessary for learning the subject. But, to each his/her own.

For the mature, knowledgable artist, this book has many wonderful sections dedicated to drawing such difficult clothing materials as leather, rubber, jeans, and others. Hayashi also goes over the subtle, sexy things about drawing a pretty gal: the nape of the neck, the back, etc. Works from well known artists are displayed in the back of the book (including "Fetish Friends") which show the genesis of the drawing all the way to the finished product.

In short, I would not recommend buying this book for a young teenager, but for the grown up artist who has the desire to improve their skills for creating sexy women (even it involves looking at a set of breasts or two.)

The book is very useful and a good follow up from the book before it. It does contain ALOT of nudity, but it helps to show body figures and movement. It also goes into detail what different textures of fabric would look like. It shows leather and rubber, and cotton and light fabric. It also shows you what clothes look like wet. A bit reavealing yes, but it does explain how the clothes look.

First of all, this is an excellent resource, and if drawing beautiful and alluring women is what you wish to accomplish, this is a must have book. The rest of this review is dedicated to addressing the complaints that have been levied against this book.

First, some have complained that this book doesn't do enough to teach how to start. This is because this book is not meant for beginning artists. It's called "More about Pretty Gals", implying that you have already learned about pretty girls and seek more information. Reading this before reading How to Draw Manga: BISHOUJO * Pretty Gals is like skipping a very crucial step; not recommended.

Second, many have complained that this book shows "too much" of the female anatomy, essentially amounting to fan service. The only complaint that should ever be levied against an art book, especially one dealing with anatomy, is that it shows TOO LITTLE. It is crucial that an artist knows every corner of the human anatomy, otherwise you're likely to make huge mistakes when rendering the body. If you can't take seeing a woman in bondage gear, or seeing a woman clinging to another woman (both of which are good lessons for clothing and physical character interactions), then perhaps you are not quite mature enough to handle detailed female anatomy. (Also, shouldn't looking at the cover be a good enough reference to judge the rest of the book? How could the contents surprise you?)

I didn't find a bit of this book that wasn't useful. Showing women clothed in different material was very helpful, and also, the sections which focused on specific parts of the female body was helpful to me, especial the parts on rendering hands and the back. I highly recommend this book to any artist who wishes to render attractive women and is mature enough to handle it.

Good drawings, most are amazing, some look off (usually due to some bad proportions or placement on the face). I would only recommend this book if you need help or references for bondage or other fetish wear. It does fetish wear amazingly, but doesn't do much else. Areas like perspective, high and low angles, and holding objects are touched on but are obviously not the focal of this book.

Not bad, just (maybe too) focused on a single aspect.

I looked over this book at my public library, and I was totally disappointed. There is really very little that this book provides, except oversaturation with fanservice. It really is a shame that this book, which is printed very professionally, is so devoid of everything that will make an artist better at drawing anything. At least, drawing anything EXCEPT for rather large naked (or almost naked) breasts in a variety of outfits. Some of these outfits are so outlandish that they would rarely ever occur in real life, let alone in any self-respecting manga drawing.

I don't think I could find a single drawing in there that was NOT designed to get a male's attention in a highly revealing manner. That's really what this book was about. (If you don't believe me, you can look at the Table of Contents at [...] - see for yourself).

If being able to draw women in a variety of slightly sexual through almost nude poses is what you want to get out of drawing manga, buy this book - it was made for you. However, if you expect this book to teach you anything else, you will find yourself in for a REAL suprise.