Workshops

Artist insight
MANGA TIPS
FOR BEGINNERS
Joanna Zhou reveals 26 gems of wisdom
for creating art that’s unmistakably manga
anga is, without a doubt, 1 LEARNING FIGURATIVE Bright or pastel colours are well suited

Joanna Zhou
M one of the fastest growing
art forms among young
people across the globe.
COUNTRY: UK Most artists discover this hobby in
CLIENTS: Animexx eV,
Raptor Publishing
their teens and face the challenge of
self-directed learning alongside
Joanna is a
student at
school or university. I’ve never seen
Chelsea manga as work, but a fun refuge from
College of Art the actual stresses of daily life.
and Design in
I hope that other aspiring mangakas
London and works
professionally as a will see it in the same light because
manga artist, producing with this attitude, artistic improvement
work for magazines and
will become an enjoyable and effortless
television. She is also a
member of the well- process. Don’t listen to people who say
known UK manga group that manga is a useless hobby. Any
Sweatdrop Studios. form of visual creativity is infinitely
www.chocolatepixels.com
more productive and satisfying than
many other pastimes that spring to
mind. Despite its stylisation, manga
techniques incorporate solid
proportion, perspective and colour
theory which benefit a huge variety of
careers or life situations. Hopefully
these tips will inspire and motivate you
to delve deeper into the fascinating
world of Japanese comic art.
PROPORTIONS
In manga style, the human body is
often used metaphorically to express
for chibis because they enhance the
dynamism and cuteness of
each character.
dramatic or comedic impact. Mastering
each proportion greatly enhances your
flexibility as a visual storyteller. You
may even end up adopting a certain
body type as your signature style.
Take a look at any manga comic and
you’ll find a figurative fluctuation
between body shapes – even of the
same character.
2 SUPER
DEFORMED STYLE
When drawing chibis (in manga, a chibi
is basically a cute, small, child-like
version of an anime or manga
character), you should constantly
remind yourself to keep the torso, arms
and legs as short as possible (erasing
any excess if necessary). Because our
sense of regular anatomy is so deeply
ingrained, it’s all too easy to make the
limbs longer than they need to be,
resulting in a child rather than a chibi!

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3 GUIDELINES
ARE VITAL
Use guidelines wherever
possible! They only take a
second to draw and can
drastically reduce the
amount of unnecessary
mistakes such as eyes not
being level or hair not
following the shape of the
head. ‘Ball joint’ bodies
enables you see at a glance
if certain limbs are the same
length. Guidelines can also
be used to denote the ‘twist’
of a body posture in a
dynamic scene.
4 FROM ROUGH
TO DETAIL
Always work roughly to begin with and
gradually build up the level of detail in
your image (see the three rough
sketches, left). If you start adding
intricate sparkles to an eye before even
completing the face, you may discover
later that the whole eye is in the wrong
location and needs to be erased. Never
leave a mistake if you’ve already
UNI06.tips 83
Artist insight Manga tips
A single line in the right place
can project a sense of beauty and
power, whereas a mass of scratchy
outlines only reflect hesitance
identified it, even if it entails a lot of
redrawing or digital editing! Guidelines
and rough sketches promote maximum
efficiency and accuracy when drawing.
You are also forced to think carefully
about the technical composition.
5 DESIGN MEMORABLE
CHARACTERS
One of the most unnecessary mistakes
in comic drawing is to lose your
reader’s interest because they can’t tell
8 CREATE ORDER
USING CHAOS
Exciting manga hairstyles
have thick and thin
strands arranged in a
seemingly random
manner, yet still form a
pleasant shape as a
whole. The same principle
applies towards clothing
folds. Practice drawing
‘randomly’ but with
enough critical judgement
so it doesn’t become a
mess. Hint: Curved lines
look best when they’re
drawn in one single
sweep. Holding your
breath could make your
hand momentarily
steadier! Try it…
your characters apart. Each character
should have significant differences in
hair, eyes, height and clothing (unless
storyline dictates otherwise). Consider
how colours, hairstyles and accessories
can be used to appropriately represent
certain personality traits. Also, adding
background, props or narrative creates
a stronger context for your character.
6 DIFFERENTIATION
(ISN’T JUST A HORRIBLE
THING IN MATHS)
A more advanced technique of varying
your characters is to draw different eye
shapes and facial outlines for each one.
This requires some practice but if done
correctly and consistently, it becomes
a subtle yet very effective way of
differentiating characters.
7 360 DEGREES
As you p practice, remember
to draw tthe head from
different
en angles. Don’t fall
into
to a rut of always drawing
the
h same tilted head facing
the same direction. A full-
frontal face is actually quite
challenging because you
have to make sure that both
eyes are absolutely identical.
Especially if you hope to take
manga drawing further, one
of the first things publishers
look for is the ability to draw
a face from many
perspectives.
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 Workshops
9 BE CONFIDENT WITH MARK-MAKING 12 QUALITY OVER
A good piece of advice I’ve had is to turn my CONVENIENCE
Experiment
scruffy pencil sketches into ‘a single beautiful Sometimes it’s tempting to sit and to challenge the
line’. A single line in the right place can project a fidget over an image instead getting
stereotype of what
sense of beauty and power whereas a mass of up to look for references. But at the
scratchy outlines only reflect hesitance. With end of the day you’ve wasted more people imagine
rare stylistic exceptions, good manga drawings time trying to fix it yourself and
should always contain crisp, confident contours. chances are it still looks worse off. It manga should be
only takes a second to take a
photograph of your own hand or 16 FEMALE BODIES
yourself wearing a certain garment Manga female body proportions are
with clothing folds. You will learn usually very petite, reflecting the
much more by copying correctly, beauty ideal of Japanese women.
than free-styling incorrectly. Defined muscles or an Amazonian
build is less aesthetic and definitely less
13 THROUGH THE mainstream. It’s common however to
LOOKING GLASS add voluptuous breasts in order to
Holding your drawing up to a mirror is differentiate women from girls.
an effective way of spotting mistakes.
The results are often quite sobering – 17 BUFF BISHONEN!
what looked perfect during sketching Male bodies fluctuate
could have hideously asymmetrical between heavy muscles to
eyes and other anatomical mistakes. an almost androgynous
Keep correcting the image until you beauty. Ironically, the latter
are happy with the reflection. is more popular with female
artists. Bishonen (beautiful
14 IN YOUR FACE! boy) style simplifies the male
The face is where you can make or break an body into a slender form
emotional connection with the viewer. The with graceful indications
face is a good place to express style. Maybe of muscle and a notable lack
you have a certain way of drawing eyes or of nipples or body hair.
mouths that will eventually become your
trademark. Think about how the mouth,
10 THE SECRET
RET TO
T eyes, pupil size and eyebrow position express
ELEGANT T LINE-ART
L T a certain emotion. If in doubt look at yourself
Always vary yourou line-width when in the mirror and notice which areas of your
inkingg to crea
create an appealing, dynamic face move. Practice making as many
image. Use thicker lines to emphasis expressions as you can – just make sure no
contours (such as the face shape) one’s watching…
and thinner lines to suggest distance
(billowing hair strands). Having the
same line-width everywhere creates
a static and slightly sloppy effect.
Manga art is traditionally inked using
a nib pen (as seen on this image
above). Fine-liners and digital inking
are viable alternatives as long as you
take care to alter the line-weight.

11 HOW DO I DRAW
HANDS?
As with the human body, you have to
be thoroughly familiar with their
physical structure before being able to
create poses from scratch. Study and
draw your own hand to understand
digit length, how they bend and which
fingers tend to group together in
certain positions. Manga hands place
emphasis on grace, so detailed nails
and wrinkly knuckles are usually
blended out.
15 THE PROFILE
Manga profiles are usually ‘bottom heavy’
with the nose and mouth jutting further
outwards. Practice drawing an eye from the
side and remember to position it in line with
the ears and the ‘dip’ between nose and
forehead. Males have a more pronounced
and angular jaw line than females. Body
proportion will also affect the profile of face,
hair and eyes. Drawing the bald head first will
ensure a correct placement of hair.

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 Artist insight Manga tips
21 COMIC CONVENTIONS
(NOT THE SMELLY ONES)
There are many rules and icons specific
to manga style when it comes to
expressing certain moods or situations.
For example, speed-lines can be used
literally for movement or figuratively
for emotional shock. Study various
mangas to identify these narrative
devices and try to incorporate them
into your own work. Manga pages are
a lot more dynamic than the ‘box’
panelling of western comics. However
take care not to let a complicated
layout hinder reading flow.

22 THINK BIG, BUT

18 SPEED UP YOUR PROGRESS DRAW SMALL
The fastest road to improvement is to know Thumbnails provide a vital overview of
your own strengths and weaknesses, through your page and enable fast editing of
critical self-analysis and constructive opinions various elements (panel shape, speech 24 WORK IS PLAY
of others. Create a clear mental plan of areas bubbles etc). Not only is this much The only way to improve is to practice,
you need to tackle, as well as areas in which more efficient than making large scale and you can only practice a lot if you
you do well and can develop to your corrections, it also ensures that your enjoy it. Drawing is a therapeutic
advantage. Doing something simple well is final comic sheet is subject to far less hobby and you should do whatever
more morale boosting than always aiming erasing and redrawing which could makes you feel good. If you only draw
(and failing) at unrealistically difficult tasks. affect the final image quality. to ‘beat’ others then you’ll end up
Bright bubbly colours and chibi characters Your thumbnails can be as rough or frustrated if success doesn’t come.
can deftly hide the fact that an image (see as detailed as you feel is appropriate.
the various postcard images above) does not But they must show the panel 25 RULE BREAKING
require advanced knowledge of proportion arrangement, speech bubble location There are rules to manga, but you’re
or perspective. and character shots. not obliged to follow them. In manga
style, creativity is often forgotten in the
drive to draw things realistically or
19 THEE JOY AND
ND AGONY 23 NA
NARRATE, AMUSE AND ENTERTAIN! learning to colour like a certain artist.
OFF CLOTHING
C
CLO FOLDS
LDS Manga
ang style isn’t always about creating a glossy-
Copying
opy from ffashion
hi magazines is a eyed pin-up. Try using character interaction to
eye 26 DO YOUR OWN THING
2 NG
great way of training your eye to distil
gr create a dynamic snapshot with one or many
c Experiment
i t with
ith media
di and technique
qu
the ‘important’ folds from insignificant ‘punch-lines’. This works well with chibi style but to challenge the stereotype of what
crumples. You’ll get an inherent can also be done with regular proportions for a people imagine manga should be. This
understanding of how different darker narrative. Imagine yourself as a manga image is a Photoshop collage of a soft
garments drape over the body, which journalist, and not a fashion photographer. The pastel background and two manga
is a vital foundation for designing your more detail and narration, the longer someone characters. The effect is entirely unlike
own clothes using a variety of fabrics will want to look at your image… and that can the slick CG effect that we usually
and cuts. When in doubt it’s better to only be a good thing! associate with manga illustration.
have a few simplistic lines indicating
folds rather than a jumbled mass of
incorrect zig-zags.

20 DRAWING
OLD PEOPLE
The standard manga face
is poorly suited to adding
wrinkles. In order to create
a realistic older person you
have to alter the entire facial
outline to correspond with
the sagging and wrinkling
that occurs with the ageing
process. The eyes become
smaller and the distance to
the mouth increases.

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