Customer Reviews

Let's Draw Manga: Bodies And Emotions

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

 

 

I really liked this book a lot, the majority of this book is how to draw TONS of different poses! i didn't even think about drawing some poses that i do in everyday life.And she shows the difference between the anatomy of a human body, and the manga body! which i thought was a total plus! One of the only things i was dissapointed with was the facial expressions, it didn't show how to draw them at all, and thats what i really struggle with! It's a great book for learning all about different poses, anatomy and posture, but not a great book for expressions.

This was my first purchase outside of the official How To Draw Manga collection, and I chose this book because of the promise of emotions and facial expressions. But despite the official description and even the text on the book cover, this book did not live up to that implied promise.

This book focuses heavily on how to draw bodies, and the advice it gives is sound and helpful. The tone of the text is occasionally arrogant but generally constructive. But almost all of the "emotion" shown in the book is through body language and posture; indeed, half the drawings don't have faces at all.

If you're looking for simple anatomy lessons or an assortment of poses, this book could be helpful. But if you're looking for a reference for facial expressions, this is not suitable; you would find more facial expressions by picking a random book from the How To Draw Manga series.

This book is pretty good, except it as a huge part on girls but barely anything about boys. Don't get me wrong the girl part shows a lot of different poses and there really good. Its just if your looking only for boys you shouldnt by this book.

When I bought this book I was expecting to see an explanation on how to create different emotions and body frames. Well...not exactly. The emotion information they shared wasn't really helpful. Just showed a bunch of odd faces.

As for the body. It had many different poses to put a "female" character in that I have to admit were really cute. But it would've been nice to get a detailed explanation how to get all the different positions. They didn't have any on males, but they did draw out the different sizes of a male's body. Not really helpful.

Then they gave a little info on the hands and feet and the other pasrts of the body and yeah. That was pretty much it. They did have a few pictures of different kind of men and women in the back. But it really wasn't helpful.

But hey, if you're wondering about doing different poses for your character. This is the book for you. They have different pages of positions for miles.

Let's Draw Manga Bodies & Emotions is for Fine Art figure artists, as well as for Manga artists.

No book covers everything, but this book supplements the other books in your library with some very important, unique material.

A key focus of this book is body language -- how to communicate emotion and attitude with posture and gesture. In addition to providing drawing guidance, this material can also trigger ideas for how to pose live models.

The author's illustrations, showing ball-jointed croquis and their corresponding completed forms, simplifies and isolates the gestures and postures, and illustrates the relationships between the croquis and the finished forms.

Other sections of the book focus on hands (which many artists find quite difficult to draw) and feet, and on the relationship between croquis, muscle, skeleton, and finished form. Cube and cylinder drawing techniques are included.

Head and face angles are another important area that the book focuses on.

A unique contribution of this book is its discussion of body proportions. Most figure drawing books address the normal human proportions of seven or eight-head high adult figures, and variations for younger figures. This book shows how to deviate from those "normal" proportions in order to obtain alternative graphic drawing styles.

The book ends with some material on fashion and on a variety of character types, styles and ages.

I would recommend this book for any figure artist's library.

I have several books of how to draw and this one is firmly in the middle of the pack usefullness wise. Some of the shortcuts to figure construction are worthwhile, but like many of this genra of how to books, it spends too little time on storytelling and too much on pin-up drawing. Still, it is better than just about any Christopher Hart book.

This is one of the best books i have purchased from amazon. This book has good instruction And it has about 40 skeleton poses (standing And sitting) that you can replicate and put clothes and a face on. I think doing this made me a better artist because it really helped with my anatomy. The only downside is all the examples are female so im still in the dark when it comes to the male figure. Dont waste your money on American Author how to draw books. only buy ones by Japanese Artist! i own about 15 books and every one written by a American Artist was bad especially Christopher Hearts Shoujo book where the images were so bad i could of drawn it better myself. The only American book i have faith in is the one Mark Crilley is making this winter (so i heard) because hes a legit published manga artist and has made over 100 videos talking about how to draw.

The truth is no how to draw book will make you amazingly good at drawing, only your pencil and hard work will give you the real improvement. This book does give you some things to practice drawing and some pointers on anatomy. If you really want to get good at drawing manga buy a sketchbook and try to masterfully replicate 300 characters from Animecharacterdatabase.com. Just click on random female or random male and copy draw 300 times and make sure they come out near perfect. Once you finish you will know how to draw eyes 100s of ways and you will know how to draw lots of different clothing styles. I only got about 150 characters drawn using this method and i see a drastic change in my original character ability. After the 300 characters start copy drawing actual manga from citymanga.com and practice practice practice because no book can practice for you!

If you buy and cross examine the notes featured in this book and "Manga For Dummies" (which by the way, manga for dummies goes far and wide for being a great intro book) Anyways getting the too books will complete your need to buy **ANY** other tutorial books until you master what these books aim to teach and wish to move on to story boarding, hentai, animation, action scenes, etc. BUY THE TWO BOOKS AND YOU WILL BE SET!!!!