Paperback: 152 pages
Publisher: Graphic-Sha (July 5, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 4766111206
ISBN-13: 978-4766111200
Far and away the best of the English "How to Draw Manga" books. The art style is clean and the layout is well-done, with no issues of whether you should be reading left-to-right or right-to-left (a definite problem in some Japanese conversions).Best of all, Ozawa starts from the very basics, and urges you to do the exercises from the beginning. Sure, drawing cubes isn't exciting, but even for a non-beginners, it's a useful warm-up that improves technique. With the reassuring statement "if you can hold a pencil and draw straight lines, you can draw, " he skillfully leads the reader to develop or improve drawing skills.
He also includes something I've never seen in a comics manual before: Drawings from different ability levels. He shows stuff by absolute beginers, intermediate, advanced and professional and critiques the problems and positives. Personally, I found this extremely helpful and reassuring. He also marks the time it took to create some of the professional drawings: Again, very reassuring that these things took time and weren't dashed off in minutes.
Finally, Ozawa covers a broad range of character styles, from generally realistic to the SD (simple deformed) type. For each, he includes plenty of detail on what makes such characters work and why.
These books can be hard to find, so if you're interested in this subject, don't w`it. Get your copy now.
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