Manga Need drawing tips

[DotHacker32]

Hey people, I try and draw manga, but I seam to mess up the eyes, nose, and shape of head of the drawing. Do yall got any tips?

[Kei]

[color=darkblue]I've given this piece of advice before, so here goes.

If you're having problems with facial features, just try practicing them separately rather than trying to compile a character. Grab one of your mangas where you find the art something you'd like to replicate and practice with that. Once you get a feel for it, try making your own versions. After that, you should be well on your way to improvement.

A tip for drawing heads, though. Don't try to draw the hair without actually getting the basis of the head. It [i]will[/i] make it appear off-set in one manner or another. Remember that once you get the shape of the head down, hair always starts at either a middle part or a central point near the top of the head or just above the forehead. Took me ages to get that one down, lol.[/color]

[DotHacker32]

Thanks, I'll try out that tip right now.

[eleanor]

[color=firebrick] One main reason may be that you're not using the original lines that most beginning artists use when drawing heads. You know, the oval shape and then the curved line in the middle? You must must [b]must[/b] use that, especially if you want your eyes and face to be propotionate and even. I started out just drawing from scratch, so now I have to work on drawing faces looking directly at you more. Draw direct faces [b]first[/b], and after you perfect that move on to 2/3 faces and 'looking up' faces and all that stuff.

As for hair, I suggest you draw it after you've drawn your eyes/nose/mouth/etc. You should still have the shape of the character's face if you drew the preliminary lines, so draw the hair so that it matches the head's outline. Then erase. Hope that helped.[/color]

[lita]

I too use to have problems with drawing magna,it took me three years of practice to get it to look good! all im saying is it dosent come to you over night, you hav 2 practice [A LOT].............. just work on one peice at a time, i still have a little trouble with hands so dont feel bad not every one is a pro.

your friend LITA :D

[guns_n_candy]

i love to draw manga, but it took me forever to get it to look good (probably cuz im too lazy to make it look good) i tried just drawing the parts that i was bad at on a piece of paper, like hands in different poses until you get it right. there are spome good how todraw manga books out there too that helped me woith the eyes and face shape.

^_^ hope i helped

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

I suggest copying a lot of pictures first. Just grab a comic book, and draw as many picture of people (concentrating on the head) as you can. Do that a lot. Once you draw those enough, you'll be able to draw similar stuff on your own. That's when you should move on to drawing your original characters in the poses you've become familiar with. Once you get that down, move on to more difficult stuff as well as original posing. But really I recommend building a sense of what's "proper" by copying a lot first. There's nothing wrong with that (just don't trace!).

[DotHacker32]

Thanks all to have replied, I greatly appreciate it. I do copy manga out of books. I mainly do it out of the FLCL graphic novels and to the Shonen Jump series. Thanks!

[OtakuSennen]

[font=Verdana][quote name='ScirosDarkblade']I suggest copying a lot of pictures first. Just grab a comic book, and draw as many picture of people (concentrating on the head) as you can. Do that a lot. Once you draw those enough, you'll be able to draw similar stuff on your own. That's when you should move on to drawing your original characters in the poses you've become familiar with. Once you get that down, move on to more difficult stuff as well as original posing. But really I recommend building a sense of what's "proper" by copying a lot first. There's nothing wrong with that (just don't trace!).[/quote][/font]
[font=Verdana][color=navy]It seems that nearly every professional mangaka has said in one interview or another that they spent a lot of their time as a child copying drawings from their favorite anime/manga. However, I disagree with your saying that one should not trace. If somebody is struggling with a certain style of drawing, simply going over a good piece of work from that genre can be a big help. I remember tracing pages of Dragonball and Inuyasha pictures two or three years ago, and that certainly helped me get used to the basics of anime style.[/color]

[font=Verdana][color=navy]But if someone traces a drawing, says they did it freehand, and gets critcally acclaimed by the masses, then tracing is immoral.[/color] [/font][/font]
[font=Verdana][quote=DotHacker32][/font]
Thanks all to have replied, I greatly appreciate it. I do copy manga out of books. I mainly do it out of the FLCL graphic novels and to the Shonen Jump series. Thanks![/quote][color=navy]The FLCL manga.. Is a very stylized series. It's very sketchy and the shapes are simple. Personally, I wouldn't copy FLCL manga pictures and think that it would help me improve. I can't think of any particular images in that series that are really worth drawing, if you want to get really good. Perhaps one should start out on a basic level, but this might be a little too simple. Try copying more from Hikaru no Go and Naruto to get a feel for more generic manga styles, then go into stylized stuff so you can create your own personal look.[/color]

[Anqueetus]

Here's a way to kill eighteen birds with a rifle....

Take your favorite style of Manga, I guess in your case FLCL. Try to find a full body picture that is relatively big, but not to big. Take a peice of graph paper and trace that picture. Take another peice of graph paper and use the previous graph paper to draw the same picture. This way you get the basic mechanics for how it feels like to draw Manga, and you can slightly modify the picture and keep the proportians kind of within bounds. Tracing also helps you concentrate on the image itself and you begin to disect the picture itself...looking for structure. So when you trace the image and redraw it with the other graph paper, loosely draw guide lines to help dicern how the shape of the body is, how the face fits, and so on and so forth. That should speed up your Manga drawing pretty quickly. It did for me. The same can be done with faces. I can't draw a picture without using guidlines at all. But that is probably just me.

Well I hope I did some good today. Take it easy, man.

[eleanor]

[i]The FLCL manga.. Is a very stylized series. It's very sketchy and the shapes are simple. Personally, I wouldn't copy FLCL manga pictures and think that it would help me improve. I can't think of any particular images in that series that are really worth drawing, if you want to get really good. Perhaps one should start out on a basic level, but this might be a little too simple. Try copying more from Hikaru no Go and Naruto to get a feel for more generic manga styles, then go into stylized stuff so you can create your own personal look.[/i]

[color=firebrick] Yeah, listen to Sennen. If you're going to start off learning how to draw by using other pictures as a resource, don't pick a manga/picture that shows an artists' definate style. I don't mean your run-of-the-mill anime stuff, but the really original styles that you've never seen before. FLCL manga books are drawn by someone who has developed a totally different thing...another example is 'World Record' from the Animatrix. [/color]

[Anqueetus]

Okay, so no FLCL.... But I think defing what style you want to do is good also. I do Shonen style. I study Ken Akamatsu's style like a mother. So, I think defining what style you're going to do will help greatly. But that's just my opinion.