The Master Guide To Drawing Anime: How To Draw Original Characters From Simple Templates By Christopher Hart
Manga and anime share an art style and a number of character archetypes. This book details the six most popular manga/anime character types, both human and inhuman.
It also provides step-by-step drawing exercises as well as some inspirational images to help get your creative juices flowing.
Like many of Harts drawing guides, this book is meant for beginners. There is very little breakdown of how certain things work and why.
This is a nice beginners guide, however, and can teach inexperienced artists some basics of the style. Order your copy now!
Manga Crash Course: Drawing Manga Characters And Scenes From Start To Finish By Mina Petrovic
From a popular YouTube artist, this book gives you a guide to creating manga characters, environments, and even scenes.
It provides over 25 step-by-step drawing guides and more than 130 lessons on various parts of drawing manga.
It also contains some fun games to play with yourself in order to challenge your creativity and artistic skill. This a good book for beginners and experienced artists alike.
Introduction To Manga And Anime
Manga is a comic art developed in Japan and that it has become the most popular reading in these time. Anime popularized by Japanese people have already reached the end of the world. Anime in Japan is very famous all through out the country and almost all people in Japan read Manga. Reading and watching manga is very interesting since it comes from different genres. You can just choose what kind of genre you will read. This time there are lots of stories in fantasy, fairy tale, comedy category. Manga and Anime is the best artworks in Japan being developed to this very day.
To understand, Anime is Japanese genre of drawing that is locally named by the Japanese Animators. Anime is an animation that characterized the style of a Japanese drawing. There is somewhat use of cubism in their drawing unlike Western animation style. This is why Anime refers to a Japanese animation. There are numerous type of artworks in the field of Anime such as Manga. It is such a great mistake to think that Manga differs from Anime. In other words, Anime is the style of drawing and Manga is the product of this anime. Under anime is what we see in the television such as Naruto, Flames of Recca, and many more. Manga is a comic book where you can also make a presumption that stories are also based from the western stories. Of course, not all because Manga has its sole identity that bears the culture and tradition of the Japanese.
Read Also: Anime Bingo Maker
How To Draw Anime Neck & Shoulders
Skipping out on the shoulder muscles is one of the biggest beginner mistakes you can make.
These frame the torso and make a big impact on the final design.
This tutorial teaches you all about the muscles in the neck and how they connect to the shoulders. Once finished, youll understand how to connect the head to the body in any pose or angle you desire.
How To Draw Arms For Anime
Did you know that the arm is the same length as the torso?
What about other tidbits of advice like the forearm is the same length as the upper arm and the elbow is always at the belly button?
This tutorial is packed full of memorable information teaching you how to draw the armmuscles and allin many different poses while sticking to the anime style.
You May Like: Anime Couple Hugging Drawings In Pencil
Beginner Guide To Drawing Anime & Manga
This guide is an introduction to the basics of drawing with a focus on the anime and manga style. It provides tips on approaching the drawing process in the right way and suggests some beginner friendly exercises to help you get started.
For a list of other things you can learn that will help you draw anime and manga you can check:
This guide covers the first part of that list .
Tidy Your Outlines And Ink Your Drawing
Create a very clean inking layer of your new outlines, the clothes, and the showing skin. Fine line details, such as major folds in the clothing, major facial details, and patterns. Anything in the foreground of the image should have a slightly thicker outline than those in the background. Similarly, use line width to draw the eye to the most important parts of the image. While you want to keep this final outline clean, make sure not to exclude any of the important details.
Don’t Miss: How To Color Anime Hair Digitally
Keep Different Parts Of Your Drawing In The Same Stages Of Completion
Try and keep the various objects in your drawing in roughly the same state of completion. If for example you are drawing eyes than draw the outer shape of each eye and then draw the shape of each iris. By doing so you will be more likely to notice if the first one is out of place and you will only need to do a little back tracking if you make a mistake .
For more on drawing anime eyes see:
Draw Things That Are Hidden
Its sometimes a good idea to draw things that are hidden by something else.
In the above example some parts of the head and face will be hidden by the hair in the final drawing but you may still want to draw their basic shapes and erase them later. The reason for this is to insure the correct placement of the parts that are visible. For example by doing a light drawing of the second eye you will be able to check the spacing between the eyes which will help you insure that the visible eye is correctly placed. You can also draw the outer shape of the ears to estimate the volume the hair needs in order cover them.
For drawing anime style faces see:
You May Like: Speed Training Areas In Anime Fighting Simulator
Add Clothing Decoration And Hair
Using your skin layer outline as a guide, draw in your character’s clothing. Remember that these clothes should move with the character in their pose to create a dynamic image. Try to be inventive with these clothes since these will go a long way toward adding interest and representing your character’s story.
Draw in the shape of the hair. For manga art this can be larger than life, to make your character as dynamic as possible. Remember that the hair shape should appear to have movement like the rest of the character. Additionally, you can use the hair to add direction.
Manga Crash Course By Mina Petrovic
Subtitled: Drawing Manga Characters And Scenes From Start To Finish, you get a good idea of what to expect between the covers of this book. The author provides unique tips and guidance on taking your characters and doing some amazing things with them.
There are 25 step-by-step demonstrations, over 130 lessons that cover anatomy, fashion, hairstyles, and poses plus, a fun character invention game that will assist you in creating new and different characters.
Also Check: Anime Guys With Scars
Anime Male Character Face Proportions
These are the default proportions that the characters in this tutorial will refer to. So when you read something like draw the eyebrows lower down or make the eyes narrower it will usually mean in relation to this example.
Please keep in mind that they are just a guideline for getting male anime style looking characters. As already mentioned there is a lot of variation in the anime/manga style so this drawing template may not always apply.
For a detailed guide on drawing a male anime face see:
If you just want a quick breakdown of the placement of the facial features and drawing steps you can read below:
- Eyes make a horizontal line through the middle of the head and draw the eyes below that
- Ears make another horizontal line between the first line and the bottom of the chin and draw the ears between these two lines
- Nose position the nose with its bottom at the line used for the bottom of the ears
- Mouth draw the mouth with the bottom lip between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin and the mouth itself slightly above it
Draw the eyebrows slightly above the eyes.
Corel Painter Paint Like Anime Tutorial Part 2
REIQ is among the top anime artists out there. So no figure, that a full character tutorial can be found from REIQs Youtube account. This two-part tutorial shows you a step-by-step process for drawing your very own anime character. One of the best qualities in REIQ is that he draws quality looking original characters. Something that not too many can draw so easily as he can.
Also, one thing to point out is that he also draws the background for his characters and that is something many character designers seem to leave out. If you are looking for a complete tutorial on character drawing and background drawing. REIQ can lead the way here.
Don’t Miss: Anime Fighting Simulator Speed Training Areas
Make Light Line Drawings First
Draw using light lines first and then trace over them with darker lines once you are sure that everything is in the right place. This be especially helpful for large or more complex drawings.
Light lines are easier to erase if you make a mistake and easier to make .
Even if drawing digitally its still a good idea to first make a sketch and go over it with cleaner lines afterwards.
Tracing your own lines will also work as another exercise to help steady your hand.
Try and draw with as few lines as possible. If you make a mistake with your first line its fine to add more lines until you land the correct one but dont scribble or draw extra lines just for the sake of it. If you make too many mistakes erase that part of your drawing start over.
How To Draw Anime And Manga Eyes
If theres something special in anime, its the eyes. You could argue that cartoon and western comic style also has and uses big eyes. However, the difference lies in that anime and manga eyes present the iris usually as an oval in shape, or the iris is enormous compared to the rest of the eye.
Anime eyes have a lot of personality in them and are the thing people search for first. First, its the head, then its the eyes. And especially the expression those eyes have.
One thing anime eyes do give you is a lot of creative freedom. You can draw eyes in various ways and still make them look believable.
So what defines, manga and anime eyes? They are large, shiny, the iris can be oval in shape. The eyes can be close to reality but either the eyelashes, eye-socket or other part is anime or manga like and thus creates this unreal looking eye but still so beautiful to watch. The eyes shape would break the human skull if it were real. Then again, manga and anime do not know reality in that sense.
So there are two types of eyes, one being continuous. Where the eyelids do connect. The other style being non-continuous, meaning that the eyelids are disconnected and thus break human eye anatomy completely. The continuous-style is trying to hold on the human anatomy, though only barely.
Size really matters with these styles and can be said that where continuous style is no longer looking aesthetically pleasing, it is time to make it non-continuous.
Read Also: How To Watch Dubbed Anime On Anime-planet
How To Draw Anime Characters
Many beginners choose anime/manga as their first drawing style, because it looks very simple and appealing. However, if you want to draw a manga character from scratch, you need to understand the proportions and structure of the body. And if you want to draw anime bodies from imagination, you even need to know human anatomy. So while drawing anime characters is easier than drawing realistically, it’s still not easy!
In this tutorial, I will show you the basics of drawing the bodies of anime characters. I’ll show you how to start a manga drawinghow to define a pose for your character and how to make sure the proportions are correct. Then I’ll show you how to turn this “skeleton” into a 3D structure and how to add muscles to it.
You’ll learn everything you need to know to draw an anime character from scratchthe gesture, proportions, forms, and anatomy. It’s all explained on a beginner level!
Drawing A Content Friendly Male Anime Character
A content smile is something that a friendly character is likely to have, often after they help someone.
For a content/happy look draw the friendly guy with the eyebrows raised and the eye closed. Draw the closed eyes as pretty much just a hair of dark curves similar to the eyebrows.
Draw the mouth in a wider smile than the previous example.
For drawing anime eyes in different states see:
You May Like: How To Draw Anime Hand
Brainstorm Your Character And Build A Concept For Their Pose
You character brainstorming can take many forms, including finding references, inspiration, and getting to know about your character. The more you know the character the better you will be able to represent them visually. This is one reason that it can be much easier to get started with drawing fan art than drawing original characters. Those that you represent in fan art already have a story, posture, and style that you can draw from. If you intend to make an original character, you’ll have to make choices about all these character traits.
- What’s your character’s posture like? Fitness level, and overall style?
- Do they perfectly fix their hair in the morning or is it slightly messy?
- What kind of clothes do they wear?
- What are they normally doing? It’s a good idea to portray the character in the act of doing something that most defines them.
Coloring An Anime Character
Manga are often black and white but color is still used in some places .
For a tutorial on coloring an anime character you can see:
While you may have certain colors in mind for your character there is a very important aspect of coloring to be aware of.
Certain colors go better together than others. These are usually complimentary colors or colors across from one another on the color wheel . You can often see the use of complimentary colors if you look at the color schemes of popular anime characters. The colors dont need to exactly match those on the color wheel they can be a variation of a given color.
You should also pick colors that are appropriate for the type of character you are trying to create. Colors can give off certain moods. For example blue is considered a cool color while red is considered warm. So if lets say you want to design a fantasy character that uses ice magic you probably dont want to use a lot of reds in their design.
For a more detailed explanation of various color combinations see:
Don’t Miss: Male Anime Body Sketch
Learn The Basics Of Drawing
Drawing anime characters is great. But if you are a total beginner to drawing in general you should start by learning the basics. Practice drawing simple things like straight lines and basic shapes like circles and squares. This can be boring at times but will help you improve.
Continue drawing anime or anything else you might like. Practice drawing basic lines and shapes a few minutes a day and then draw anything you find fun or interesting after that.
For a detailed guide on the basics of drawing as well as tips on approaching the drawing process in the correct way see:
Manga For The Beginner: Everything You Need To Start Drawing Right Away By Christopher Hart
This book is a step-by-step guide for drawing manga. It details how to draw almost everything you can think of, including the head, eyes, body, clothing, and more.
It also helps you to draw dynamic poses, as well as lighting and shading, two aspects often overlooked by beginning artists.
This book does not go into philosophy behind manga design and mostly consists of simple how-to drawing guides. However, this makes it a great choice for someone who wants to learn the basics of the style. Buy it here.
Recommended Reading: Convert To Anime
Drawing A Scared Henchman Male Anime Character
The scared face is one the henchman can get following the previous alarmed face after they see that whoever/whatever broke in is too much for them to handle.
For the scared face draw the henchman with their eyes wide open and the eyebrows raised. Draw the irises smaller than normal with some white space between the them and the top and bottom eyelids.
Draw the mouth similar to an 8 flipped on its side with the teeth showing and the bottom lip in an upside down curve.
How To Start In Manga With Cheap Tools
Prepare to be taught by a real manga artist with professional experience in drawing and selling manga.
He shares all his tips and tricks on a wide array of topics, from which ink you might use to how to avoid crinkled pages.
Short and to the point, this video is loaded with useful information thatll hook you up with the right supplies to create your own original manga pages.
We covered some recommended supplies before but I think this video does a better job explaining how they work in the anime style.
Read Also: How To Draw An Anime Girl Mouth