by request > babars manga tutorial >

ive had a couple of requests by fellow artists and subscribers to this post to start a how-to thread. while there are many books on this subject, i was asked, and so i will try my best to explain how i approuch creating manga. i dont think i have to tell anyone here that manga is a difficult artform to master.
illustration is its key form, but without a story, all you have are some drawings.

when it comes to manga, i like to work alone, meaning i write,draw, ink, and tone everything myself. its a longer process, but unless your drawing pop manga for someone else's script, you are more likely to be pleased with the over all look of your vision. so lets start from the beggining.

step 1. story
you must develop your characters around your story and not the other way around. this gives you a firm grasp on the character, and will give you new ideas as the story progresses to keep that character interesting. this gives you more creative vision when it comes to drawing.

step 2. character development
drawing is obviously one of the most important aspects of manga, mastering your style. heres how i did it. lets start with the basics. even though you should be able to draw all kinds of things, animals, buildings, plants, etc, you should always follow the fundamental rules of PROPORTION. so, you break everything you draw down into primitive shapes first. lets say i need to create 2 main characters for a story. a male and a female.

the male character is a demonic fighter-mage, so he should have a decent build and a, well, mean look on his face.
i start by drawing his primitive > http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/amatsushriA1.jpg
his body is broken down into the simplest of parts, ovals, circles, and cylinders, to represent the body parts and their proportion. this gives me a complete template for adding in the detail later. for the detail, trace your primitive on a lightboard, so you have a smooth, clean outline of your character, so you can start adding detail. i now have a detailed template for my first character. this is what he looks like with a simple, one layer tone.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/amatsushiri2.jpg

and for my female character, i start the same way. here is her primitive >
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/kenoichi1.jpg
after tracing and detail >
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/kenoichi.jpg

see how the primitives allowed me to draw the chacter? i knew exactley where everything should be simply because i thought of their bodies as simple shapes first.

there are many more steps of course. this is the most basic of examples, you should be able to draw facial expressions, weird and action oriented camera angles, motion lines, continuity, but i will get to that later, so stay tuned, and i hope you enjoyed lesson number one.

u...are amasing !!! Man I wish I could draw like that /(> x <)\ (bunny makes funny face )

thanks for the feedback Rock! always appreciated, i will be posting more very soon!

I should get a notebook and start drawing myself...

ok, now that weve seen what primitives can do for your drawing, and conceptualizing, lets look at how primitives are used in difficult or advanced posturing. i will walk you through this drawing from beggining to end.

this drawing is of my female main character, the kenoichi (female ninja) and her name is izu tanamura. i have drawn her in a complex body posture, to show you again how using primitives can advance your art dramatically. one thing publishers take into consideration is whether or not you can draw exagerated or action-oriented poses, postures. in this drawing, izu has her back to us, but is looking over her shoulder at us, with her arms thrown back brandishing her favorite weapon, the shirasaya, whitch is basically a daisho hidden inside a natural looking wood scabbard that when sheathed, does not look like a sword, and can be easily concealed. lets take a look.

this time i will show you all three steps of the drawing process.

the primitive > http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/izu1.jpg

after ive traced and cleaned up the primitive (i would recomend a light board)
> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/babar104/izu2.jpg

and finally, the finished version with a simple tone job >




i will get into advanced toning, scene elements backgrounds, motion lines an all that later, including storyboarding, etc. hope you enjoy

Dearest Babar san, you are so cool for starting this thread and teaching us how to draw. That's very kind of you.
If we really become success in the future, you will be one of the main people that we will add in the thank-you list.

Domo arigato!!!

anytime Slayer4U we artists have to stick together
helping another artist is like helping a brother, so im glad you like the post so far, and i hope it helps you develop your style. have no fear though, im not stopping here, there are many more lessons, as always yoro konde!

wow....i'm speehless

hahaha nice: babar-san's becoming an art teacher now, good thing.
However I feel like you're one of the rare ones still active when it comes about drawings

thanks for the nice words dreamer i take manga very seriously, and i was frustrated for years trying to develop what i know now, so i thought id share the knowledge that actually answered some of my questions and really helped me, not just vague advice that a lot of advanced artists would give ppl. know what i mean? ever met a really arrogant artist? i hate them, in fact > i shall pass gass in their general direction, muhahaha!!!!


next lesson > facial expressions!!!!

glad you take it seriously cuz for me it's just a side side activity ;D (I give it about 1/90 of my free time). Personally I prefer reading mangas ^^
However it is a lil bit sad that no one's posting his/her arts anymore(beside you) and that no one's giving any comment in the dedicated section :/

yea, depressing, youd think there would be more artists here than just fans, but if it helps just a couple of ppl, then that will make me happy
eventually, i will have my degree in film/video animation, and will persue theatrical animation, that is why its so important to me and takes about 50/90
of my time i want to see an animation revolution here in the states with theatrical animation. right now the general public still feels that animation is still a "kids" thing, being that pixar and disney are the only companies that release animation in the theatres. i think i speak for a decent amount of adults that feel differently. animation can be used to portray a multitude of adult oriented material. everything from war, sex, drugs, music, etc, and these things are what i like to focus on in animation. the reality of the human nature to do questionable things, no matter the setting. whether its 40,000 yrs into the futur, or the evolution of the new psychedelic movement today. peace to all.

animation has a sureality that live action film cant achieve, so to me its an incredible medium, with endless possibilities.

ah? You got me interrested in there
I've never been able to get any information regarding how pictures were animated ^^

oooh, where do i start, animation, hmmmm.....

well, lets start with the basics, the traditional animation process. before we started using computers to compensate for the time consuming process of making pictures move, you basically had to do everything by hand. here is the process.

in animation, everything is measured in frames. frames per second. to achieve life like movement in animation you have to have at least 24 frames/sec. like the old disney fims. this is fluid, lifelike motion. for some sequences, like action, 30 frames/sec is needed. 30 frames/sec is the maximum amount of frames that can be used in 1 second.

so, for every second, there is between 1 and 30 frames. by hand, animators had to draw every frame in a huge volume of semi-transparent paper, moving the characters slowly by tracing, and modifying the character slightly each page so that when the volume is flipped rapidly, the character appears to move. (im sure youve seen examples of that)
then, each page is removed from the volume and traced onto clear acetate (a transparent film like material) using a lightboard.
after the images are traced, they are then painted on seperate layers of acetate with special inks. there is usually a layer for the base color, another for shadows, and another for highlights, making the lighting easy to change from frame to frame. with the outlines being on their own layer.
after a frame is drawn and painted, it is placed on top of a background image.
this may be painted on another piece of acetate, or a traditional board mounted canvas, or even glass. (disney is famous for that). when backgrounds are painted on acetate or glass, they can be moved frame for frame, unlike a canvas. canvas is generally only used for matte paintings that dont move, or the camera just pans accross them.
once the frame is complete, it is placed inside a light box, whitch has a special camera in it. the camera then takes a photograph and places the images in the order they are taken onto a "real" of film. when a projector plays the film at the appropriate speed, the images "move".
so, basically lots and lots and lots of drawing.
take an hour long movie, if there are 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute, 24 frames/sec, then multiply 60x60, that gives us 3,600 seconds, then multiply that number by 24, whitch gives us 86,400.
that means there is 86,400 frames in that movie. given that you use 24 frames/sec. thats a lot of drawing. many images arent drawn again, they are used over and over, like background images. and most animation is not 24 frames/sec, its time consuming. your average saturday morning cartoon uses between 12 and 18 frames/sec. cutting down the time involved dramatically, but sacrificing quality. so you see, before computers animation was a very tedious and daunting process.

as for computers, they alow us to use "keyframes" whitch mark a spot on the timeline every 15 frames or so, and all the artist has to do is draw the keyframe, the computer compensates the movement in-between automatically. also, there is no need for "film" anymore. many studios do everything digitally, where a character is scanned from a drawing, and then the line art is converted into a "vector" illustration, allowing the computer to move it around in a very speedy process. there is still a good amount of hand drawing done, but it is drastically less then traditional animation process.
a good way to tell is to look at the line art in an animation. if you can see break ups, gaps or distortion in the line, it was probably hand drawn. if it is completely smooth and does not break up from frame to frame, then it was probably animated digitally. the digital animation process is still fundamentally the same as the original method, the only things that have been replaced are the old cameras, and a lot of time.

Wew...I'd never be able to draw 86 400 drawings XD
From what you're saying nowaday they're using computers to animate vectorized pictures, so the amount of drawing needed is prolly reduced a lot. However is that the same process with colors, shadows, highlights and so or everything is calculated by the software?
In addition, what kind of softwares are used to animate a keyframe? I mean to vectorize, add colors and animate?

no one would be able to draw that many frames dreamer! least not w/o going completely insane. besides, animation is generally handled be a team of artist, broken down into catagories. like the line artists, the colorers, and background artists. so the workload is devided among them.
yes, computers are now using vectored versions of the original illustration for time/speed purposes. the vector illustration is just math to the computer, all the lines are 1's and 0's, not color information like a bitmap or other image file, so the computer can animate very swiftly, freeing up a lot of time. some colors are vectorized, but not all. like a backgrounf painting, cant vector that , but alot of basic colors are vectored instead of painted, like characters. all a character is, is an outline filled with multiple layers of color. so aside from effects, yes, alot of coloring is actually vectored as well.
as far as software, ctp pro is a good one, disney has off shoots of its own software,
and soem companies have software written for them .

reminds me...have you seen hoshi no koe? (translated as something like voice of a distant star). It is said that one person did the whole anime...

damm babar, nice work, espeically the lady ninja

Duo said:

damm babar, nice work, espeically the lady ninja

Click to expand...

thanks duo, you are an artist to arent you?

no, unfortunately, i have somewhat of a talent in writing, but that's it

hmmmmmmmm..... ah yes, ive taken up writing to, well, i was forced to really, and it helped my artwork tremendously. i had to write scripts for my manga, and when i did that, everything became very clear and easy to interpret visually, i stopped having artist block, and the characters became infinately more interesting, as their personalities took shape in the writing process
hats off to you Duo, writing is an eceptional skill, i hope i get better at it as time goes by.....

:win:

dreamer said:

reminds me...have you seen hoshi no koe? (translated as something like voice of a distant star). It is said that one person did the whole anime...

Click to expand...

I watched "HOSHINO KOE".
I have DVD.
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~ccs50140/stars/
A person of making is "SHINKAI MAKOTO".
The latest work is "KUMONOMUKOU YAKUSOKUNOCHI".

Hiroyuki Nagashima said:

:win:

I watched "HOSHINO KOE".
I have DVD.
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~ccs50140/stars/
A person of making is "SHINKAI MAKOTO".
The latest work is "KUMONOMUKOU YAKUSOKUNOCHI".

Click to expand...

mee too i own the dvd, and yes, it was done entirely by 1 person! i was sceptical because of the mecha aspect (so many mecha anime) butit was actually a very interesting and compelling story

Hmm.. i was wondering about this for a long time...What do most animators use to colour the drawings? How is the process...??

most animators use a specialized ink made for acetate (the material actually drawn on for each frame) or color digitally. if traditional, like the inking process, each layer is inked saperately for base color, highlights and shadows. the inks are used because when used on acetate, they do not leave any brush strokes, and are completely opaque