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I originally drew this on paper, but I imported it into Adobe Illustrator and pen-tooled it so i could post it. I was going to attach the original .tiff scan, but it was too big
Edit by ACWL: yeah, i got tired from the forum constantly re-sizing images so I've attached it. see botom of post
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Ooh, kudos for the thread title! X)
It might be better to learn anatomy and overall observe the way you draw and improve your skill before having a take on as complex thing as realistic-in-a-way humans...
Hum, Oh well, I guess everything you draw teaches you something. So let's observe a bit:
- The positions of the eyes and the mouth are a tad odd, and also change between the different pictures. There're some really good examples out there that easily show you the relations between the parts of the face & head.
- It's good imo that you didn't do those generic huge-eyes, but instead kept the eyes in a reasonable size. The eyebrows are also rather good. I'd suggest you try checking some different examples of the outlook of an eye, perhaps study a real eye or just check some different online "how to draw manga eyes"-tutorials. It's quite important that you don't get stuck with a single eye outlook, but instead combine different ones and decide which fit different persons best. The current eye design is quite blocky, and along with the minimalistic nose they leave the face a bit flat.
- The character looks also overall a bit flat, mostly due to the fact that you've portrayed him from the front, with a very basic pose. Also the blockiness and sharp edges of the hand/overall give a inhuman feeling. You could try to draw different perspectives and poses to learn the basics of how to make things look natural; even if they didn't look exactly right, trying different and harder poses is a very good way to learn anatomy and relations of the body parts (, which currently are quite off).
- It's great that you've tried different angles for the head, too - it's often a sign of a less talented artist to portray the characters straight from the front or straight from the side. The proportions of the head are quite off, especially around the ear - also the position of neck compared to the rest is a bit too low, and the forehead of the character is pretty much nonexistent. Don't worry about these things though, there are several ways to learn them and at first it'd be best to just draw.
- It's great that you've added some different-looking clothes and accessories to the guy; even though later on an artist can show the distinction between characters just by their faces, in the beginning giving different kinds of accessories is a good way to separate characters.
And yet one more thing to come: one of the things most shown other than the faces of the characters are their hands. Many people attempt to hide the hands behind the backs of the characters/out of panels/into the pockets (not implying you'd be doing this, it's just one picture), but really, you'll end up drawing thousands and thousands of hands in different positions and poses, holding some swords or waving to people. It's really not as hard as it looks/sounds to learn the proportions of a hand, but once you've learned it, it's a really helpful thing! Also legs are the same, but not in the same extent as hands.
Overall, it's great that you enjoy drawing and try, but you just need a tad more practicing before handling the thing fully (oh well, no one can handle it fully - so let's say "handle it better"). Even though my comment may sound ranty and over-criticalistic, in my opinion it's no use to say to everything "looks cool" because that doesn't tell the creator where he should improve and what is good. Especially when it's about manga, that is often thought as "easy way to victory" but is actually a pretty tough path. I'm sorry if my comment upsets you, but I suck at writing other than criticism. :(
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C)p
Any thing BUT upset...
I'm reading through a "how to draw Manga" book at the moment, but this is my first real try at drawing manga, so thanks for the advice. The reason I put his hand in his pocket was indeed so that I didn't have to draw it - not because I thought it would be to hard, simply because I find it a good way of showing the proportion of the arms (IOW, it was late and i was being lazy...)
Finally, I purposely went for the angular 'sharp' looking style ... I dunno, I just like it.
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Your attempt is failure. If you would like to learn how to draw real manga then idk... See if you can find a youtube video on how to do it. But you can only learn to draw manga from a real manga artist.
I've seen lots of books on how to draw manga and those books are just pathetic. My littlesister bought one and I read it trough and what they draw was not manga. Who would give out a book on how to draw manga if you can't draw manga yourself. So don't buy any of the books you find in stores, it's a trap!
[mod]Removed unnecessary cursing part.[/mod]
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Your attempt is failure. If you would like to learn how to draw real manga then idk... See if you can find a youtube video on how to do it. But you can only learn to draw manga from a real manga artist.
I've seen lots of books on how to draw manga and those books are just pathetic. My littlesister bought one and I read it trough and what they draw was not manga. Who would give out a bock on how to draw manga if you can't draw manga yourself. So don't buy any of the books you find in stores, it's a trap!
I have actually bought a couple of these books, and they are quite helpful. I don't know what kind of "bock" your little sister got, but it must not have been a manga drawing book. :|
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Indeed, "how to draw manga" -books are often very misleading, because once again, they show the style of one, usually very mainstream manga artist. Learning from one-two such books is practically the same as copying other person's style and then calling it your own (though the mainstream western manga is basically just that). Therefore it's best to try to learn from as many different sources (if you want to draw exactly manga; overall, the best thing would of course be learning real anatomy and realistic style, which you could then use to create your own style of art), that'd teach you different way to approach things, and also give perspective to the style aswell.
My friend who started as a pretty untalented mainstream-"manga"-drawer had a pretty interesting way to learn drawing anatomically perfect people. In addition to just studying anatomy hard and drawing all the time, he started to form sort of a 'skeleton' that he used as a basis for every person he drew. That's quite usual thing to do, but it was very amusing to watch how the base skeleton evolved as he learned more; so he basically changed the outlook of this skeleton every time he noticed there's something anatomically wrong, and little by little he learned the relations and anatomics so well that he didn't need the skeleton anymore. Oh weh, why did I say this?
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This book dosn't say "oh, do this and that etc..." The first entire chapter is explaining the approximate proportions of an atomically correct human body, and it constantly tells you to go out and do some still lifes.... which i have... and failed. It gives advice, but lets you learn your own style. And, yes, It does suggest using a ball-and-rod skeleton drawing for means of drawing poses.
Salmoneous, stop being a spoilsport.
And Isnoct, I have spent the last month or so reading the entire collection of Osamu Tezuka's Manga Novels...
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While I don't think reading mangas would be of great help, I must say that you're on the right track with studying, and the book of yours sounds pretty good.
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Its title is :
Draw Manga:
A Gude to developing your own unique style.
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I think I have the same book.
Edit:
I also forgot to show you my atempt. this is an updated one of my previous drawings.
(http://fc04.deviantart.com/fs24/f/2009/253/2/c/New_Annabell_by_Lizzaroro.jpg)
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Draw Manga:
A Gude to developing your own unique style.
It's like a paradox wrapped in an impossibility wrapped in an oxymoron.
It's contradictorally handsome. But mostly contradictory.
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Don't draw manga, draw strawberry fields and unibuses.
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Don't draw manga, draw strawberry fields and unibuses.
And yellow submarines! :nuts:
Edit: To make this post relevant, this (http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e180/AnimalXingFreak/Drawings/UnnamedOC-3.png?t=1264908098) is my most recent attempt.