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So you have been watching anime as generation Z and you now want draw anime because it looks so cool. Well, get in line because there are thousands, if not millions who are just like you. Anime is super popular now more than ever and thanks to video streaming and the internet, it has gone mainstream to the point where even regular people who are not geeks or nerds are watching it.
Many people choose to draw the anime and manga style for the simple fact that it is more beautiful and luring. The aesthetics of anime and manga are breath taking and many times more than western artist. That is not to say that western artist are not good but since western animation has been on the decline since the start of the 2010s, anime has grown in popularity as the preferred style of animation.
The following is a simple guide for you to get started drawing anime and manga. Like anything else in the world, you will need practice to get good at it. You have to draw daily or a least a few times a week with the right focus to get good at drawing anime and manga. So here we go.
There are two ways to draw now a days. Drawing with pen and paper and digitally drawing with a tablet that you can connect to your computer. Both ways will work for this tutorial. However, keep in mind that one is more expensive than the other. Not everyone can buy a digital drawing tablet worth $400 or more (there are also cheaper options).
So if you don’t have the right digital equipment then using printing paper and a mechanical pencil will work just fine.
As far as coloring, there really is no one way of coloring anime. Whether if its color pencils or or markers, you can use whatever you want. However there are color pencils and markers built for coloring anime and manga. There are two brands out there that are the absolute best.
Prismacolor and Copic markers.
Copic markers are made in Japan and are the industry leading marker brands that many manga artist use. Masashi Kishimoto uses copics for coloring many of the Naruto pages that you see online.
You don’t need to start by drawing an entire body. Start out with something simple. The easiest way to start is to draw a face. An anime face. It can either be one of your favorite anime characters or one from the top of your head. Make one up.
Many people draw a face by creating the outside shape first. However, to get the right measurements for the head of a person, we need to use some geometry. The shape of your head is mathematical. Lets start with a circle.
Once you draw your circle you can then divide the circle and the jaw should half a measurement equal to half of the circle. if you look at the image above, your drawing should look like the one on the right side.
In the image above, the bottom half of the circle was divided again for the are of the eyes and nose. The bottom of the circle is where the nose goes and the two lines that great a rectangle is where the eyes go. Afterwards, you can draw the chin to create the full shape of a head.
Take a look at the drawing on the left. You can see how everything is coming together. One you start to erased the geometrical lines that created the face, you can start adding the anime eye style, lips, nose and ears.
The lines that you drew on the circle were guide lines to form the nose and eyes. Depending on what anime style you are trying to draw, the lines could change or you will need less lines if, lets say, you are drawing chibi style characters.
This is the first step on how to draw anime. Trust me it will get easier and more enjoyable once you start to see the end result.
There are so many different kinds of anime eyes that you can draw. Where if its large cat eyes or sharper eyes like Yugioh or more realistic eyes like Naruto or really proportionate anime eyes like Berserk. One thing is true amongst all the types of anime eyes out there.
The size of the eyes says so much about the character you are drawing.
The eyes are the windows to the soul.
The larger the eyes, the more emotional the character is and the more child like they are.
The smaller the eyes are, the more serious and mysterious the character is.
Think about that when you are drawing your character. The big cat eyes are easier to draw and its and easy way to get started.
Take a look at the drawing on the left. These are standard anime eyes of a female. Anime eyes always start with a shape. Either a square, rectangle. Depending on the nature of the genre of the anime, the style of the eyes will change. If its a serious anime like Berserk, then the eyes will be more realistic and smaller,
You will also see a lot of light in the eyes. The more light reflects on the eyes the more you can see into the emotions of the character. These eyes are more on female anime characters.
Take a look at the anime eyes above. The type of anime determines the style of the eyes. Its funny how we can detect if a show is anime or not but each anime has its own unique art style. If you take a look at an anime like Baki, of course its anime but the art style is rougher than others.
Look at the Inuyasha eyes. Those are old school, from the 1980s and 1990s. We don’t see that art style as much anymore. However you can see the similarities in the eyes.
The smaller eyes look more serious and somewhat mysteries and the bigger eyes look more feminine. Of course the one with longer eye lashes are female eyes. You can almost feel them staring at you and if you look into each eye you can tell how they are feeling.
Pick and choose which ever style you like. Remember the rules of bigger eyes and smaller eyes. The type of eyes you draw on your character will say a lot about their personality.
Children’s eyes will be more round and adult eyes will be more rectangular. The bottom left eye on the image above shows the Naruto style of drawing eyes. Naruto uses a more realistic style of anime and manga.
One of the easiest things to draw in anime and manga is the nose and mouth. As for the hair, it can be complicated depending on the character and there are many ways to go about it. If you want to go the Death Note way, you can add more detail to the hair to make it look for realistic or if you want to go the Naruto route, you can outline the hair and leave out negative space and just add shadows to the hair.
One of the most annoying ways to draw anime that I have found is in Yugioh. I swear is like everything is just spikes in that anime. Every Yugioh character is design with spikes, its a bit of a turn off.
You don’t always have to draw characters with spikey hair. Try doing something different like curls. If your character is of a darker complexity like African, Latino or South East Asian then the character will need more curly hair.
When ever you draw hair, make sure to always have the hair line in mind. It makes a difference when you draw the hairline. It helps you determine in which way the hair will fall. Always keep in mind that if the hair is long it should also be seen falling on the back of the neck.
Japanese anime tends to be minimalist but provides enough detail to make the art so beautiful. You have seen anime noses that either look real or just have a dot or a line for the nose. Sometimes characters wont even have a nose like Krillin.
The more realistic the art style is the more detail the nose will need but not too music. The problem with adding too much detail to the nose especially lines around the nose is that it makes the characters look older.
As you can see in the image above, this is female character and only has a line for the nose. This is very common in characters that are younger. The eyes are very expressive.
When drawing the mouth for anime characters, you don’t necessarily have to draw teeth all the time. Again, it depends what anime style you are going for. If its something like Pokemon, its no necessary. The more childish the anime, the less detail it needs. However, in shows like Naruto, there is a lot of expression shown with the mouth. From the grit of their teeth to their gasp.
This is where it gets hard. Drawing anime faces can be easy however, when it comes to drawing the human body, the drawing lessons goes beyond anime and onto the structure of men. The human body is a beautiful thing, especially the female body. The greeks showed their fascination of the body with their god like statues.
If there is anything that western cartoons and Japanese anime have in common, it is how the body is drawn. You have to have an understanding of height, length, shape and depth to draw the human body. Although it might sound like so much right now, it will get easier.
If you take a college class on figure drawing, they will get a naked person for you to draw in class. Although it is great to draw from life, if you want to draw anime and especially if you want to draw comic books and manga, you need to remember certain rules.
Usually if you are drawing the human body, the figure will be made of eight heads in height.
Take a look at the drawing above. A chibi character will be made of up to three heads but then the teenagers and adults will be drawn using six to eight heads. Take a look at the one in the far right. It uses nine heads, just like Bayonetta (video game).
These are measurements to help you draw and locate the area of the rib cage, hips, crotch, length of legs, knees and feet. From the chin to the sternum its one head, from the sternum to the waist is another another head. Look how the legs take up to five heads on the figure of the far right. This helps you draw a character proportions depending on the age and height. Teenagers will be about seven heads and adults will be about eight to nine heads.
Once you get the height of the character and know how many heads to use then its time to connect the joints. Take a look at the drawing above. The rib cage takes up to two heads, as well as the arms and forearms. This figure is made up of eight heads so its legs are shorter. The geometry and math are all coming together. Some people might be turned off at the fact that we are using math to draw but math is all around us, whether we like it or not. Our bodies are mathematical.
The drawing above shows a girl drawn with six heads. From neck to the rib cage, its all one head and her waist and pelvic area is all one head as well. It would have been much different if it was an adult.
The most important parts to get right its the area of the head, the rib cage, the pelvis and the legs. If know where those parts are located, it will be way easier to draw. It will help create the entire frame of the anime character.
Drawing clothes on characters is a little tricky. What most people do is draw the clothes right over the figure and forget to add dimension to the clothes. Clothes folds and cascades over the body. In many American superhero comics, super hero suits are drawn as if they were tight on the body. Anime does not do that unless is necessary. The clothing has to make sense.
Its all about knowing the elements that you are drawing. If you are drawing fire then you don’t give it the same texture as stones. If you are drawing tight clothes on a character then it does not have to look like its hanging on from the body. Take a look at the drawing above. The one on the left side is wearing a skirt and if you look closer, the skirts looks like it is wrapping around the hip. On the far right, we see how the skirt hangs on to the hip of the character and is tied around the hip. The skirt cascades of the body and folds.
A good idea to help you draw clothes on a character is to first draw the character with a light pencil. Then once you have the entire figure of the character, use a darker pencil like a mechanical pencil to draw the clothes around the character.
In the drawing above, it shows you how you have to imagine the collar of the shirt around the neck. Take a look at the tie of the shirt and how the clothes wrinkles around the body. There is a sense of dimension and gravity. Clothes cascades on the body and it folds according to the shape of your body. The tie curves over the chest.
This takes a lot of practice to get the wrinkles of the clothes just right. You just need to have a good sense and understanding of dimension and gravity.
inking is fun. When you are inking you drawing there is this satisfaction of the work you have done. A certain pleasure that you get from seeing your work come to life.
One of the best tools for inking anime drawing are copics. I like to use the Copic Markers 9 Piece Multiliners click here to get them.
Anime and manga are inked with thin lines. If you watch some American cartoons, for some reason they like to use thick strokes around the characters, cartoons such as The Fairy Odd Parent or Invader Zim.
Anime and manga are very elegant in their style. The lines are thin and the shadowing is done afterwards with shades of grey. Copics are the leading brand to color and ink manga and anime.
There are two popular ways to color in your anime. There is the prismacolor brand and then there is the Copic brand. Which one will you choose. Here is the difference between the two.
Prismacolor Brand
Prismacolor has both markers and color pencils. Prismacolors have a rich saturation about them. There are over 300 markers and hues and yes, some manga artist use them however, Prismacolor Markers are more popular in the west then they are in Japan.
Prismacolor markers and colored pencils are fun to use to give your anime drawings a vibrant look. The colors tend to be more brighter and thicker as oppose to Copics.
Copics
These are the markers that manga artist such as Masashi Kishimoto use(mangaka of Naruto). The great thing about copic markers is that they give your drawings this beautiful watercolor look. The colors are soft yet bright.
The great thing about Copic markers is that they colors blend. While Prismacolors are a really cool brand, blending colors can be a pain in the behind. This is the problem that Copics solves. The ink from Copic markers actually blends together. Prismacolor requires a separate blender marker to make this happen.
So to get more bang for your buck, I highly recommend that you get the copic markers set to color anime and manga.
If you are just getting start please remember you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on drawing supplies. Start with what you have. Also, don’t try to jump directly to digital drawing tablets like the Wacoms. Learn to draw by hand first and then use the digital drawing tablets.
What did you think about this article? Did you find these tips helpful? Comment below and share the article.
