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Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Mastering Manga


Mastering Manga 2 by Mark Crilley
        First, draw a round circle, with straight vertical line dividing it in half and a horizontal line in the middle.  At the bottom half, draw three more horizontal lines and a triangle pointy shape for the jaw in light pencil (Crilley, 12).  This sets up the whole female manga profile to be exact and provides guidelines for the rest of the face.  I have tendency to draw the face features out of proportions so drawing lines in advance helps me measure where to place certain parts such as the eyes, nose, and mouth.  This step is the beginning step and therefore the most important as the rest of the drawing depends on how well rounded the face shape is and keeps the whole profile intact.  This base increases the precision of the whole picture itself and is the beginning foundation of the manga.
       “There are hundreds of ways to draw manga hair.  The upper line of the hair is drawn a fair distance above the circle.  This contributes to the youthful look of the character" (Crilley, 13).

It has very detailed instructions how to shape the face and how to match it to the character itself.  If your character has to have a certain personality, their face should reflect that and good explanation to why something was drawn that way, builds on reason.  This quote gives me a way to gauge how I want to shape my character’s personality through the face.  As I aimed for a younger girl, I needed to be careful how the hair swayed and hanged on her head in order for her to look her age.  This step definitely tested my patience, as I had a strong will to make my character perfect. The hair was definitely the hardest part for me, so this helped me focus with the visual and description of the position of the hair.  This was the step I took the most time on, as the little hooks and crannies of the hair completed my picture and was the limit of my patience.

Is the beginning part of drawing manga more important or are the details more significant?
Crilley, Mark. Mastering Manga 2: Level up with Mark Crilley. Cincinnati, OH: Impact, 2013. Print.


2 comments:

  1. Bri, you did such a great job on your piece! :) What made you chose to draw Manga?

    I especially really liked the way that you drew your hair for your character here, it looks really cute. Hair is something that has always been so hard for me, but you made it look effortless! I am just starting to learn about how to draw, so, in my experience, when I draw hair, I usually just improvise strokes and make it look as similar to hair as possible. This technique sometimes works, but other times can often make my people look messy and unrealistic. Overall, it isn’t something that I want to continue using in my pieces. However, your blog post is a great demonstration of how even hair requires technique and attention to every detail. I will be sure to try techniques similar to how you executed your hair in the future instead of the technique I was using before. Also, even though this is a topic that I personally don't know much about, I love your choice of Manga for your blog post! I did some personal research online and learned that this was actually a style of Japanese comic books that is typically aimed at adults, so I was quite wrong on what Manga was. I thought that it was an art style!

    Lastly, to answer your question, I think that the beginning part of Manga is most critical. If you do not start with a good foundation, it is likely that you will not be able to end with a good piece. However, with detail, I think this is minor compared to how a piece looks like as a whole at the end, which begins first with a good beginning.

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  2. I am glad that you liked my picture! I spent a lot of time in particularly the hair because I wasn't sure on how to make it look natural and my best tip is to use light strokes. That way, it doesn't look like a robot and is easy to erase when you make mistakes. Manga is from Japan and is fairly different from regular drawing as the facial expressions and hairstyles are quite unique which is partly why I chose manga as my topic.

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