How To Draw Manga Style
How To Draw Series
Ilya-San and Yahya El-Droubie

Search Press
October 2010 / ISBN 1844486281
How-To Books/Art
Amazon US || UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

You no longer have to be Japanese or live in Japan to enjoy manga; it is spreading everywhere and becoming more and more popular. If you want to join in the fun and become a mangaka yourself, here is a whole book dedicated to showing you how to do it.

I do like books that obligingly open flat like this one; they are so much easier to use than conventional paper or hardcover books. This book starts with an overview of the style and what the terms mean, how the various styles differ and even how to read it. Manga is such a huge topic it is rather akin to compressing something like all cartoons, or even all art into one book, but for beginners this book does this difficult task rather well. It shows you the most typical and widely-used styles and character types and shows you how to draw them. Get those big eyes right, discover what mecha manga looks like and work through a few staged examples to get into the right frame of mind; I found these exercises very helpful. Other chapters deal with storytelling, how to get to grips with the layout, render special effects and create your own worlds.

I’ve got a lot of books on how to draw manga as I am such a fan of it but this has to be one of the best, as it does more than just show you how to draw some figures and sketch in backgrounds. I can’t think of anything that is left out that I would expect to find in a book this size, so if you are looking for a book on drawing manga then I can recommend this one.

Reviewer's Note: