Kodomo Manga: Super Cute! [Paperback]

Kamikaze Factory Studio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 2009

Discover step-by-step all the tricks - both freehand and digital - to get the best manga characters. Here is an amazing manual of manga for artists of all ages! Concentrating on Kodomo manga and Kodomo anime, Kodomo Manga is a practical, hands-on guide to learning the skills of Kodomo drawing. It includes detailed information on how to apply digital colour, 3D designs, vectorial drawing, and a host of other fascinating and useful design applications. And each project in Kodomo Manga includes step by step instructions specifying software, tools, and professional tricks to achieve the cutest and most captivating kawaii manga illustrations.

Not just for kids, Kodomo Manga takes manga artists, illustrators, and graphic designers from initial black-and-white sketches to a vibrant, fully costumed collection of characters. In six chapters, its content will be broken down as follows:

o CHAPTER ONE: ANIMALS. Featuring: In the Woods, the Circus, Under the Sea, the Farm, and the Safari.

o CHAPTER TWO: FANTASY. Featuring: Magicians, Elves and Dwarfs, the Heavenly Pegassus, Fairies, Dragons and Warriors.

o CHAPTER THREE: OFFICES. Featuring: Magic Postmen, Idols, Astronauts, Health Center Workers, and Bakers.

o CHAPTER FOUR: STORIES. Featuring: Sleeping Beauty, Pirates, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, and Snow White.

o CHAPTER FIVE: HORROR. Featuring: Halloween, Vampires, Mystery Castles, Little Monsters, She-Devils.

o CHAPTER SIX: STARS. Featuring: Baseball Players, Adventurers, Dinosaur Hunters, Card Master, The Ninja and the the Samurai, Super Cowboys

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kamikaze Factory Studio is a leading anime school and studio specializing in manga design and illustration.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Design (September 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061927554
• ISBN-13: 978-0061927553
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adorable art, great tips!, July 4, 2010

By 

Colette T. Bezio "inkwolf" (SEYMOUR, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kodomo Manga: Super Cute! (Paperback)

Kodomo Manga contains a lot of character vignettes in a cute, for-kids drawing style. You are taken step by step through the process the artist used to make the drawing, with commentary on each step.

Typical steps are:

1. Sketches --a few rough sketches of the subject, and an explanation why they chose to develop the sketch they did.

2. Outlining - Basically a stick figure in the pose, sometimes with surroundings doodled in.

3. Volume - They round out the figure.

4. Anatomy - They add physical details to the more anatomically realistic figures.

5. Details - They add costume and background details. At this stage, the drawing usually looks inked.

6. Inking and lighting - So-called. This step is kind of a cheat, as far as the actual drawing is concerned: it seems to be just a grayscale image of the final product. But the comments on the lighting and inking can be useful or interesting in some cases.

7. Color - This is usually in several steps and covers the digital coloring of the image, in depth. This is by far the most valuable and detailed information, as they talk about a lot of useful ideas using layers, patterns, textures, and special effects.

Kodomo Manga is not a beginners' or all-around manga-drawing book. A beginner could go along with it easily, simply copying the steps and images, for whatever simple imitation is worth. It won't teach you much about composition, proportion, perspective, or any of the other basics.

But it's the intermediate cartoonist who really ought to find a lot of fascinating concepts in the commentaries. Frequently, while reading the description of the steps in the coloring sections, I found ideas and processes I simply would not have thought of trying. The comments on why a particular sketch or pose was chosen are food for thought when preparing to draw your own characters. And the plethora of charming characters---covering a variety of styles from baby-simple to storybook to Anime Kid---should give you a great feel for the rules of drawing similar Kodomo characters.

By the way, this is 384 pages of heavy, smooth, bright, high-quality paper in full color. You're getting a very physically nice book for your money.

If I could suggest a few changes, one would be that the steps along the drawing look too cleaned-up. (I would like to see more of the artist's scribbly bits. Or maybe these pros don't have any scribbles.) I also think it would have been great if a CD-Rom of the images came along with it, or if they were available for download, for practicing digitally inking and coloring the pictures yourself. But you can't have everything, and what you do get is very cool, and well worth the price.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome manga book!, June 3, 2010

By 

Myra L. Spears (Jennings, La.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kodomo Manga: Super Cute! (Paperback)

I have this book and it is a very good one! Most of the book has adorable drawings but there is some people in the book that can't draw that well.These people seamed to be just fillers for the book to be bigger. It shows step by step drawing with the computer, I just wish that they put in some copic marker drawings but i love this book anyway!

5.0 out of 5 stars Manga, September 3, 2011

By 

Jacqueline Miller "Philjaa" (Wooster) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kodomo Manga: Super Cute! (Paperback)

This is a very good book. I purchased it for my Granddaughter and she just loved it. She has been drawing lots of pictures from this book.