Customer Reviews

Manga Mania Shoujo: How to Draw the Charming and Romantic Characters of Japanese Comics

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The author, in the introduction, calls this book "a complete and thorough guide to drawing the world of shoujo manga." I think that's a bit too optimistic, especially considering that it's only 143 pages. There are several helpful hints and tips in this book, but I think this book would be best if read in conjunction with other manga how-to books and plenty of actual manga. The book's various sections are: the basics (things like heads, profiles, hairstyles, bodies, etc.), poses, bishies, the magical girl style, other popular shoujo styles, cool clothes, and design details.

These sections sound great, but everthing is covered VERY briefly - the step-by-step instructions are very short and would probably be, at best, only marginally helpful for beginners. The best part about this book is the artwork, although, as one reviewer wrote, even that has its issues. Much of the artwork, although nicely colored, does not really look that good - it's nice, however, that the artwork varies in style, so that it doesn't appear that all manga art looks the same. Still, I think this book would've benefitted from using examples from actual manga and discussing how those examples reinforce the book's hints and tips. At the very least, "further reading" lists at the ends of each section might have been nice.

As with many how-to art books, this book seems to assume that its readers have some previous drawing knowledge, so I wouldn't recommend this book for absolute beginners, but if you've tried to draw manga characters and have been having problems, this book might help you out. Or it might not. While it covers quite a few drawing hints and tips, some of which I, for instance, found very helpful, there is an aweful lot it doesn't cover. If you can afford it, it might be good to get this book along with other "how to draw manga" (or even "how to draw") books, but if you can't, you might want to look for a more thorough book.

Christopher Hart has written an excellent book. He captured the essence of Shoujo, its beauty, grace, and subtlety. This book contains a great deal of information that will help the beginning and advanced artist. It is also beautiful to look at. I personally loved the Magical Girl section as well as the Chibi section. His treatment of colors is top notch.

This book gos over everything you need to know when drawing manga. It goes over hands, facial features, female AND male characters, diffrent hair types, bodys, Chibi, design detail, and a whole lot more. If you dont want to get a million books going into great detail with just one subject, then i suggest you get this book. It really helps with trying to create your own unique manga characters as well. I suggest you go out and get this book as soon as possible.

All art books are faced with striking a balance between how much space to devote to 'the basics' ( figure ,perspective, shading, color theory ,etc) and the specific aspects of a narrowly focused subject. (what are the proportions of a typical manga 'bisho' boy? What is a good creative process for designing a tranforming mecha?).
This title winds up with four stars because of what it DOESN'T try to do. It doesn't try to take you from stick figures to Masamune Shirow in one book like his first two titles. And yes this IS a lousy book for beginners, because beginners need a focus on 'the basics' and 'the basics' are worth a lot more than one book.
This book is for intermediate+ amatuer artist who want a solid sourcebook for the design elements of the shoujo manga genre. Even a professional aritst who wanted a 'instant expert' guide would find it useful.
As for the quality of the art in the book, yeah, they don't do it like Clamp, but that may be to the good. If they did, the relative beginners might be a bit intimidated! I find the style of the books art give the whole thing an air of 'Hey I can do that', which makes you want to wade right in. Especially since they show a lont of the art with the multi-stage construction drawings with it.
So I would say the book is well worth it. As long as you know what it's trying to do.

We bought this book for our 9 year old daughter a year ago and she attacked it studiously. It was an *excellent* instructional manual for her. I was amazed at the improvement in her art almost immediately.

One year later, her artwork is really fantastic and she does wonderful art in the Shoujo style. She has a thorough grasp of things like perspective, shading, and motion, all of which she learned through the instruction in this particular book.

This book would be a great place to start for anyone [high school reading level and up] who wants to learn this lovely style of art. It is very thorough and complete and produces *real* results very quickly.

IT SHOULD BE THREE INSTEAD OF FIVE STARS, MY MISTAKE.

With everything there are always pros and cons this book is no exception.

The pros is that it goes through about every little thing that you can thing of. From facial angles to foreshortening (which I had no idea how to do before I purchased this book. It also helped with shadows and clothing folds.

It contains a section on the beloved chibis and it covers male characters. It even had Bishies(beautifully drawn male characters)

Some of the art work is great!


The cons are that it doesn't go into great detail and a few of the pictures look like they were done by a first grader.


All in all I like this book very much and for a 144 pages it's a steal.

While this book was quite helpful in my case, I suspect that it would not be suitable for the absolute beginner. A bit of expierence is probably needed to glean the full benefits of this work. Now that being said, I feel there is a great amount that can be learned from this books. As with all of Christopher Hart's book, it is quite detailed and their is an abundance of text to go along with the actual drawing and coloring. The techniques Hart illustrates actually work. I like to work on individual aspects of figures, isolating different areas such as eyes, mouth, nose, etc. This works well for me and with this work, the author has given us plenty of information. No one book can do it all and the serious student of this art form will want many. This is just another valuable work to add to your collection. I find that young folk, in particular, like this one and actually do quite well with it. I do highly recommend this one.

Manga Mania Shoujo is a wonderful book that can really help you, it helped me.The book has tutorials on head shapes,eyes,a bit on hair, and a nice section on on shoujo genre types.Parents who are worried about getting "how to draw hentai(manga porn)" for their kids need not worry,there is no nudity present.The book could be better though.The lessons seem a little rushed since theyre so short,just filling 1 or 2 pages.Iwould have liked some of the art to have been more detailed too. The art isnt bad, but it sometimes looks a bit plain or americanized or ametureish.The rest of the art is simply astounding(especially the chapter intro pics).Many(if not all) of the artpics incorporate just about all the techniques and info you will find in the book, from the lace and ruffles to the roses and and ribbons.Enjoy!

I recently purchased this book, and have been quite pleased with it! As Chrisopher Hart says in his dedication, he hopes we will be inspired to create - I am! I can understand what "Cheese" is refering to when he says that the "pictures look like they've been drawn by a 13-year-old" but not all of them do. Yes, okay, Christopher Hart's PERSONALLY done pictures do look that way. Yes. But the rest are manigique, and any 13-year-old who could draw like the other 10 or so artists has got to be Hermione Granger brilliant! 5 stars. A definate addition to your collection.

This book is by-far one of the greatest shoujo books I've EVER seen! ^_^ If you love shoujo, you'll love this book. It's got it all. Character poses, magical weapons and of course, some of the most BEAUTIFUL costumes I've ever laid-eyes upon! Even if your not a big fan of girly books, there's also some WAY AWESOME battle scenes! So whether you're a long-time shoujo fan, or your just looking for some great fantasy ideas, these books are for you! I STRONGLY recommentd ANY and ALL books written by Christopher Hart. *_* You'll be star struck by this breathtaking book!