If you grew up with mangas like Naruto, Dragon Ball or One Piece and the drawings fascinate you, then you may have already thought about, your own manga to create?
If it were easy, I think everyone would do it: You have to Basics of drawing master, but a mangaka is not comparable to french or american comic artists. From manga face to human body to coloring, drawing manga is an art in itself.
Superprof introduces you here the most important methods of manga drawing – this doesn’t replace a drawing course, but at least it gives you a Overview of the basics for a smooth start.
We reveal the secrets of mangakas like Kishimoto, Toriyama or Matsumoto!
You should bring a portion of patience if you want to become good! | Source: Pixabay
Of course there are many different drawing styles. That’s why Superprof offers you an overview of the different drawing styles and gives you some basics to start with a simple method!
The characteristics of Japanese manga
First of all, you need to understand what a manga is and what it is in Japanese culture means. If you couldn’t stop reading manga when you were a teenager, then you already know that these Japanese comics great success worldwide have.
Every issue is eagerly awaited by fans and new releases are very regular in Japan as in Germany. The stories can be different styles have, depending on the audience. The target groups are either shounen (boys), shoujo (girls), seinen (young men), josei (young women), and kodomo (children).
The Drawing Style however, also varies quite a bit between the different mangas. The drawing techniques of Eiichiro Oda are very different from those of Jiro Taniguchi, although some characteristics of course common are, like big eyes, certain facial expressions and expressions for emotions or general references to the asian culture.
The Anatomy of the Body can be very different from manga to manga, depending on the body part and the target audience. In a manga shoujo, boys and girls are often very petite and slender, while female characters in shounen often have large breasts .
By the way, the first manga were created in the period before the Second World War, based on the traditional art of color woodblock prints and influenced by English and French political cartoons.
Before you start drawing your first manga, you should first think about exactly what you want to draw what kind of manga you want to draw.
But now we’ll tell you the tricks of the best manga artists – Grab your pencils and head for the Japanese drawing workshop!
Or you can attend a painting course in Berlin and learn this profession with the help of professional guidance!
You would like to become a cartoonist? With us you will find some tips to create your own comic strip! We will also show you how to draw a good portrait in another article.
Draw faces and bodies
A Final Fantasy-hero or one of the great villains of City Hunter Drawing a character is not an easy task, but you have to start somewhere. So let’s start with a face. You should know that Head very large must be and that the eyes should occupy about 50% of the face area, especially if you are drawing female characters.
The eyes of manga characters are always huge. | Source: Pixabay
Here are the individual steps, to draw a manga face:
- Draw the outline of the face with the ears,
- Draw the top line of the hair and then the hairline on the forehead (unless you draw Saitama),
- Then draw the eyes, larger or smaller depending on the genre and personality of the character.
- Don’t forget the pupil, otherwise your character will look dead,
- Choose a facial expression, an emotion,
- Draw nose and mouth, thinking about the emotion of the character,
- Finally you draw the characteristic features (scars, accessories, wrinkles, emotions).
No matter if it’s a manga girl or a boy character, you always have to start Draw the face or the body from a sketch to draw, which then gradually becomes your figure. To do this, you draw a circle for the head, strokes for the arms and legs, and triangles for the hands and feet. This technique will give you an overview in the beginning.
It is better to draw Details of the face to draw, after you have Shape of the body so that the proportions are maintained and you don’t have to start from scratch. First draw the outline of the arms and legs, then the clothes.
Finally, you can add color to your figure: With colored pencils, fine brushes, pastels, felt-tip pens. It depends on your taste – you can also just leave your drawing black and white!
Finally, you will need to learn to draw your character in different postures to bring them to life. Before you can do this really well, you will have to do a lot of test drawings – don’t lose hope, keep at it!
In our article on caricatures we explain you the secrets of a good caricature?
background and accessories
If you succeed in creating a character, of course, it can’t walk through an empty room.
Regardless of whether your story needs to be urban or rural setting If you are playing in an urban environment, you will have to learn some techniques to draw buildings, trees, the sea, etc. to draw.
The natural environment is basically grass, more or less leafy trees and stones. The most important point to give life to your environment is the shadow! Play with the light, to show elements like trunks or stones in detail.
The sea consists of a more or less flat surface in different shades of gray, which give an impression of depth. Waves are easier to draw in profile, so that they are easily distinguished from each other; those that crash on rocks look like small explosions.
Light and shadow play an important role in drawing landscapes. | source: wallhere
In urban environments the most important technique is the Perspective: "Perspective" is the property of objects to become smaller with increasing distance. If you want to draw houses or a city, you will need two vanishing points and a horizon line. You can get almost all perspectives right.
Start with the horizon line – that’s where the sky meets the ground, or the wall meets the ground. Now mark two points on your horizon line. These points are called vanishing points. Now you draw a vertical line somewhere through the horizon line. You can place them about in the middle. the upper end of the line represents the end of an outer wall above, the lower end represents the end of the wall below. Now connect the Upper end point the vertical line and the right vanishing point by a line. From lower endpoint you now also draw a line in the direction of the right vanishing point. Do the same with left vanishing point.
Now you decide where the walls of the building will end, so how long and wide it will be. Now draw a vertical line on the right and on the left between the previously drawn vanishing lines. Look at the four corners of the wall on the left side. Draw straight lines from corner to corner and draw a cross on the wall.
There will be a point where the lines intersect. Draw a vertical line up through this point to where you want the top of your roof to be. Now you can sketch your finished building with doors, windows, etc. detail.
Here you can see the principle of vanishing points very clearly. | Source: Pixabay
To give your decor a perspective, you can also use the Multiplan technique to improve the depth of field. Draw the different elements of the scenery (from the furthest to the nearest) on several pages and then join your sheets into a unified landscape.
sketch everyday objects or means of transportation at first. Start with the raw form without details, before you improve step by step, just like with the faces of the characters. Take your time and be patient – then you will reach your goal in time!
Some tips to make fast progress
Becoming a mangaka is no walk in the park: it’s usually not enough to pick up your pencils and improvise a storyboard on the fly. However, it is not impossible if you certain basic rules keep.
For starters, an easy way to draw something you don’t have right in front of you is to look it up on the internet or a paper version to create a Template to have. Whether it’s poses, objects, environments, or visual effects, you’re sure to find your happiness in existing works and can customize these elements.
However, never go so far as to copy an original, regardless of the type of manga: you have to Find your own style, even if you will surely have problems at the beginning with the upper eyelid or the modeling of a chin.
Always keep an open mind for criticism: you definitely need to external opinion, to make progress. In this point, family and friends can help, but will often be too lenient with you, you should keep that in mind!
When the going gets tough, take comfort in the fact that manga characters don’t have complicated noses! | Source: Pixabay
When you draw, you should do not cheat, to avoid putting difficult things like hands and feet on paper. It is better to draw horrible feet at the beginning than to avoid it!
You will get even better if you regularly draw different manga styles try. It can be tempting to draw just one type of manga character, but if you vary, you’ll learn more. For example, in the Evangelion manga, the author sometimes draws children, adults, giant robots, and aliens.
The best advice we can give you is not to get discouraged too quickly. The most important thing is to have fun and take your time. Of course you can also work on Manga drawing course participate to speed up the pace!
Now that you’re familiar with basic manga drawing techniques, it’s time to get your pencil and drawing supplies ready to compete with Titan Attack, Fairy Tail, or Super Dragon Ball.