Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art is a more of a tips and techniques book r

ather than a structured course on drawing manga from start to end. The book cove
rs only characters.
It starts with lessons on features, expressions, anatomy, poses, clothing and ch
aracter designs. The lessons are brief and are covered under 30 pages. For examp
le, for drawing of heads, the front and sides are taught. But for heads at other
angles, while there are illustrated examples with guidelines, there aren't enou
gh in depth explanation to go with it. This section is just an introduction on f
igure drawing.
The second part of the book features tutorials from various artists on designing
characters. There are many useful tips on drawing, what type of materials to us
e and things to look out for. Many artists are using traditional medium but ther
e are a few tutorials on Photoshop.
The third part is on colouring the characters that were drawn in the previous ch
apter. The tutorials cover a variety of tools that are used, such as coloured pe
ncils, markers, watercolour and Photoshop. Again, there are good tips on handlin
g the specific mediums.
The last few pages feature a manga art gallery from various artists.
Overall, this book is more on understanding the style of manga art, and the tuto
rials that show you how to create them.
For beginners, I would also recommend getting dedicated books such as Drawing th
e Head and Hands and Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. With basic figure drawin
g skills, stylizing characters for manga will be much easier.
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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can o
rder the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook or visit their website.