Customer Reviews

Techniques for Drawing Female Manga Characters (v. 20)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book is intended for those who want to refine their manga skills, specially those making a transition from a more realistic anatomy to a cartoony style. Even if it has some little translation problems, it gives very good reference and pointers for depicting a simplified female form in an alluring way, with lots of subtle little tricks to convey character (limb positioning, body types, facial expressions, proportions, etc). As far as the manga style fundamentals, you may want to consider getting "How to Draw Manga", from the same publisher... let's just hope they translate the other books in the series.

I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for beginners, though. This book would be very inspirational to a beginner, but it doesn't give a very good foundation on how they make the lovely pictures in the book.

To those of us who've been at it for a while, though, it's a wonderful book, full of insight, and funny Japanese quirks, like 7 pages on how to draw panties... Prudish parents, beware, it does get pretty involved on drawing the "girly" parts of the girls...

This is a great book, looks like they don't keep it in good enough circulation, though!

This book is excellent for learning to draw to female figures for manga that isn't highly stylistic. It does assume that the reader knows basic rules for drawing faces and other parts, what equipment is used, and has access to tools commonly found only in Japan (like screentones). There were a few publishing errors made when flipping the book over to read left to right, but they are minor and easily caught. Overall, this is a great book for the developing manga artist who already has some practice. I hope the book on drawing young boys is as helpful (if I can ever find it).

This book was basically about drawing the female's face, body, and clothing, there are some nudes in this book:

Chapter 1-Bishoujo Character Drawing Theory
The topics are: Grasping the key traits of bishoujo characters, Drawing faces, Jawbones-outlines and facial direction, Eyes and irises, Eye types, Eyelashes and eyebrows/how to draw eyes, Managing various pupils/shutting the eyes, Bishoujo eye types, standard eyed girls/droopy eyed girls/up-turned eyed girls, Changing the shape of the eyes with angles, Ears, nose and mouths, Heads and hair, Head depths/hairlines and foreheads/tying the hair back, Drawing cute characters making faces.

Chapter 2-Bishoujo Bodies
The topics: Balancing heads and bodies, Drawing waists/drawing slender bodies/shoulder breadth and figures, Flowing bodylines, Bodyline-front view/back lines/side lines-from the armpits to the side, Bending bodies-visually directing cuteness, Drawing breasts, Continuous movement and girls, High and low angles.

Chapter 3-Situations and Techniques of Expression
The topics: Changing clothes, Taking off jackets, blouses and skirts/putting on t-shirts and jeans, Yukata: japanese dressing gowns, Visual direction with dressing gowns-showing some skin, Taking off clothing before a bath, Bathtub and shower scenes, Soaking in bathtubs/visually directing foam and steam, taking showers/water flowing down the body, Wrapping towels, Around the head/around the body, Working with lingerie, Simple Lingerie/extravagent lingerie, Dressing for bed, Pajamas and negligee/t-shirts, Visual direction effects using sheets, Wrapping characters in sheets/sheets and sleeping poses, Using tones to express suntans.

Chapter 4-Everyday Life Bishoujo
The Topics:Girls with glasses, Girls with their hair in a plait, Hairbands, tiaras and ribbons, Hairbands and tiaras/ribbon principles, Hats and caps, Various Caps/sun shielding hats/ten gallon hats, Girls in school uniforms, Maids, Bunny girls, Nurses, Maidens in the service of shinto shrines, Young misses-drawing gorgeous curly hair.

Chapter 5-Out-of-This-World Bishoujo
The Topics: Cat eared lasses, Girls in fur, Drawing ears and tails, Girls with wings, Bird wing principles/wings-front and back/folding the wings, Mermaids, Fairies, Pointed ears/pointed ears and thier appearance/fairy wings, Hoods and Cloaks, Powered suits, Bionic cybog girls, Drawing tiny tot characters,Various tiny tot characters.

Chapter 6-Learn from the Masters
This shows professional artist drawings, they are:
BISHOUJO by Eimu Mizuki
ICE FAIRY by Tomoko Taniguchi
CONTRAST by Kaoru Kawakata
DOUBLE WAITRESS by Kouichi Kusano
ELF MOMENT (ERUFU NO TOKI) by Mako Sakura
FEMALE STUDENT (JOGAKUSEI) by Ganmma Suzuki

This is good for advanced beginner to intermediate and a good reference for professionals too. I recommend this book and guarentee that you will LOVE it! ^.^
~kay~

This book is very well done and is mostly example drawings and diagrams; however, it assumes you already know about rudimentary drawing techniques and things like screen tones. Therefore, the best place to start for manga drawing would be with How To Draw Manga vol. 1 and get this book later on (indeed, if the order of books shown on the sleeve is correct, this book would be vol. 4).

Like other reviews say, this is an intermediate or advanced book and not for a beginner. But if you can draw what you see fairly well, your skill for drawing manga girls will greatly increase after parsing through this great material. I broke out the "newsprint" pad, pencil set and sharpener, and drew along with every picture in this book over a 15 or so day period. And my skills went way up - I'm now very comfortable creating a manga girl from scratch. Highly recommended, although not the best book to carry around because of the mature theme.

I picked up this book at a comic shop and haven't been disappointed. This book is not for those just getting into drawing manga however. I've read there are earlier volumes in this series that cover the basics so I recommend getting those first. One should also be warned that there is a fair amount of nudity and the female body parts are covered in detail, though nothing that would warrant an adults only rating. If you've read the earlier books in the How to Draw Manga series or have decent experience drawing in general this book will make a good addition to any interested in manga art.

This book is wonderful for learning the anatomical side of females and briefly shows some daily actions. More specifically, it covers typical shapes of breasts, how they move when the body is at rest, laying, standing, or hunched over; the butt, crotch, legs, neck, nails, eyes, mouth, ears, hair, and different body types. Hayashi also has a section of clothing for women covering underwear, bra, regulation swimsuit, gym attire, and the like.

Like any good book in anatomy, there is nudity present in this book. Some may be offended by the areas it covers such as the breast and how they move at different positions or views of the butt and crotch areas but you can't draw a realistic image if you are not made aware of information such as these. Personally, I'd rather look at a line drawing than view the real thing at one of the figure drawing classes with real-live models.

I would recommend you pick this up if you want to know the in's and out's of the female anatomy and once you've mastered it, this book will serve as an excellent reference.

This book is helpful if you want to improve your manga-style female figures, but is not a good place to start to learn basics about drawing or manga-style techniques. As another reviewer suggested, the first book in this series is the best to start with. Also, although this book spends a great deal of time on in-depth coverage of drawing the body, it doesn't cover drawing faces, eyes, and hair nearly enough. Even with this problems, I still recommend this book as a great help to improve and refine manga-style figure proportions.

I don't care what other people are saying about this book. I think this book is great for those who are struggling with the female body. This book gives you detail on how to draw a woman's figure correctly, their breats, their lips, and eyes. Hikaru Hayashi also put in a small section of how to draw the hair with pony tail holders, and a small section of girls in their sailor uniforms, P.E. uniforms, and how to put on/ get out of clothing. I think this is a great book for enhancing your characters presence. I would definately recommend this book for those trying to start out with improving their skills. I do not recommend this book for kids, or for those who are offended by nudity. This book is Not kiddy porn at all. I saw someone put that on their description about this book, and they are so very wrong. Nothing in this book has anything of the sort, so please don't listen to people like that. They will give you the wrong impression about a good helpful book like this one.