Single manga pages describe an individual by using symbols and different angles.
Manga is a popular genre of comic book started by a Japanese artist, Osamu Tezuka, in the 1940's. His characters had huge eyes inspired by Walt Disney animations. Today, manga is still identified by the disproportionately sized features of its characters. The stories appeal primarily to teens. Typically, even superheroes look like regular teens. When they need to use their superpowers, they can transform in appearance and / or demeanor. In most manga comics, the cover art is in color, while the inside pages are in black and white. Posters and computer wallpapers advertising manga series also utilize color.
Instructions
1. Choose the character's attributes. Is it male or female? What kind of superpowers does she have? Does she use weapons? What kind of personality does she have? These factors determine style and color of clothing and hair. Background symbols also allow better understanding of the superhero's mindset.
2. Layout your illustration. Sketch the body as a stick figure from the front makes it look confrontational. Foreshortening the arm with an extra large hand coming towards the viewer will also give the appearance of attack. Flesh out the sketch with shapes. Draw the head as an upside down egg. Use an upside down triangle for the chest. Use ovals for the upper and lower legs and arms, hands, feet, and hips. Draw neck and waist curves. Leave room for symbols and motion lines.
3. To draw a pointy manga chin, lightly draw a line lengthwise down the center of the face. Place your pencil at the bottom of the center line. Draw a straight line diagonally, which ends a quarter of the way up the right side. Repeat on the left side. Lightly draw a horizontal line joining the top points of those two lines. This is the top of the chin where you will draw a mouth later.
4. Draw facial features starting with eyelashes. Lightly draw a horizontal line about halfway down the face. The eyelashes should go right above that line. Leave space between the eyelashes to indicate the bridge of the nose. The lash line should be thicker towards the outside of the eyes. To make the eyes look aggressive, have the lashes come to a point at the apex of the curve.
5. Superheroes narrow their eyes when they glare at the their enemies. So, the bottom of the eyes should only reach the middle of the nose or higher. The shape of the eyes should be angular. Draw a thick straight line to represent the bottom lashes. The eyebrows should slope at an extreme angle with the low point being towards the center of the face.
6. Fill in the center of the eyes with big irises. Don't leave much white around the sides. They should be oval shaped, but since the eyes are narrowed, the top and bottom curves of the oval shouldn't be visible. The pupils are dark and should be almost as big as the iris. Unlike the iris, you can see the bottom curve of its shape.
7. Finally, there should be large reflections in the eyes. They can be draw as white shapes overlapping the pupil and / or iris. Where they are placed in the eyes, depends on where you imagine the light source to be. Be sure that the placement of the reflections is the same in both eyes.
8. The nose and mouth are barely implied in manga. For a fierce warrior look, the mouth is a short line bowed into a frown. Above the mouth, as a nose, draw a short, vertical line with a slight curve or point in it.
9. Draw clothing, fingers, hair and any other details.
10. Color and ink your drawing. Use black fine point marker to go over your pencil drawing. Erase all the extraneous marks. Color in the shapes with markers, using more than one shade of color per section to represent highlights and shadows.
