13 Best How To Create Comics & Manga

Bestselling How To Create Comics & Manga in 2023

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How to Draw Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for comics. Manga is one of the most popular styles of drawing. Here is a guide to drawing Manga comics and some links to help you better your own personal technique.

Needed Items:

1.) A stack of regular copy paper and/or a drawing pad of regular sized paper
2.) A pencil, sharpened
3.) An eraser
4.) Imagination, which is most important of all
5.) A sturdy table or desk that you can draw on
6.) An action figure or a small doll for an easier time coming up with angles

The first thing you must understand about manga is the characteristics that come into play when drawing your characters. First off, most manga characters have exaggerated facial features. I'm talking big, wide eyes, exaggerated smiles, and very extreme poses. This is usually manga for a younger audience. Manga can range from a young boy and girl audience to a grown man's audience. Once you decide what age group you would like to draw for, then you can pick what characteristics you want in your pictures. More adult manga has more curves in the body and more subtle posing. I'm going to show you how to do more of a cartoon kind of style.

First off, take your sheet of paper and place it directly in front of the hand you draw with. Then place the action figure that you have picked in front of you right at the top of the paper. You will now do what artists call a light sketch. What you are going to do is lightly create an oval on your paper. This oval will form to be you head. You want to light circle you hand around in an oval shape with you pencil barely touching the paper. You should make it big enough to be able to go in later and put in big eyes and exaggerated facial features. Once you have made your oval, you then draw a line representing an imaginary line from the middle of the top of your head to the middle of the bottom of your chin. You also make this line according to which way you want you character to be looking. So for example, if he is looking to your left when you look directly at it, then you would put the line more to the right side of the oval. You are then going to draw a second line across the face as if from ear to ear. You should make this line a little lower then the half way point of the oval. This is where you will start the bottom of your eyes at.

Once you have these two lines and the head, you will then start drawing the body. In Manga, the body is typically puny and skinny. So position your action figure in a particular motion that you want to draw. You then will start with you character's neck by lightly drawing two lines looking stretched C's facing in the opposite direction. You also want to make the top of the lines to be closer and the bottoms of the lines to be farther apart by a little. The reason you are doing all this lightly is so if you mess up, you can erase it and not mess up your paper or drawing. You then will draw a long, skinny rectangle that is big enough to fit detail into. It does not have to be perfect because drawing is an interpretation of whatever you see and feel. Picasso has some drawings that I still don't get but he is famous so stick to your vision. You then will attach the arms and legs as it looks on your action figure. You will want to do all this very lightly and then once we have detail, go back through and apply a hard line. Once you get that done, you will want to work on your fingers and shoes. With fingers you will want to first decide if you want a closed fist which is the easiest or an open hand which is hard. I'll show you the open hand. First draw the bottom of the hand as a small square attached to the bottom of the forearm. Once you have that then you want to first make four skinny rectangles representing each of the four fingers. You then will add a fifth rectangle as the thumb but notice that the thumb will positioned on the side of the rectangle facing up. You will know repeat those steps on the other side to complete the hands for now. For the feet, draw a half circle right on the bottom of your character's legs. The circle should be open facing down. You will then draw a line across from one leg to the next closing the circle. This will represent the ground. You are now believe it or not almost done.

Now you will go back to the body. You will start to see how the body is shaping. You will want to pick an outfit for your character. Most manga that I know of has a lot of school girls and boys so we will use that. You will first draw a light outline of school uniform shorts on your character. You can make them tight or loose depending on your taste. Once you find the right look for you character, you will draw the outline of a suit jacket or a sweater with a tie to complete the look. Go to your closet, and look at how the clothes look together. You must draw your inspiration from whatever you have available. As you start to see his wardrobe take place, you will then start to add little details like the tie or the ribbed cuff of the sweater right at the wrist. Once you have completed that you will need to finish your head.

You first must decide what facial expressions you want. Look in the mirror. What is your facial expression when you are mad? Does your face scrunch up and are your nostrils flared? You must include emotion in your characters face. I'm going to show you a happy character. You first must draw your eyes. You should make two big ovals on each side of the vertical line. It should also be above the horizontal line. These will be your eyes. Your ovals should be open at the bottom and stop where the horizontal line is. You will then make a smaller set of ovals connecting the same way at the horizontal line. These will be your pupils. You then want to draw lightly a little curled v side ways just below the eyes in the center of the vertical line. This will be your nose. You then will draw another stretched C facing upward and this will be your mouth. You then will draw your hair which is simple. You will draw basically an outline of the hairline contouring it to the head and a little bit above the head to show thickness and growth. You then will start to shade the hair in to make it dark.

Once you are at this point, you will go back through your drawing starting with the face and start drawing bolder lines on the ones you already created. As long as you are drawing lightly you can go back through and change whatever you need to. You will darken your mouth line, your nose line, and your eyes. You will want to darken the space between the inner ovals and the horizontal line. You then will make a two stretched C's over the outer ovals of the eyes to make eyebrows for the expressions. You will then darken your neck lines, and the outline of your outfit. You then will darken the lines in your outfit. You will then darken the line in the arms and the arms of the outfit. You will then darken the fingers and the details in the hand. You will then darken the lines in the legs and shorts. To finish, you will darken the ovals for the shoes. If done correctly, you should have something that resembles a manga figure. As with anything practice makes perfect. If it is not what you expected, you have to continue to work at it. I've been drawing for 13 years and sometimes I don't get things on the first try. To help you in this endeavor, here are is a list of websites that you can use to help you draw more characters.

1.) www.howtodrawmanga.com

2.) www.mangatutorials.com

3.) www.animecubed.com/howtodraw

This is a tutorial in helping you draw manga characters.