More How To Draw Manga Volume 4: Mastering Bishoujo Characters Paperback – November 23, 2004

I checked out all the how to draw female character books in the How to Draw Manga series and liked this one the best. Like all of the books in the series, the cover has almost nothing to do with the content and it is not really a "how to" book. But despite this I think anyone looking to draw female characters will love this book.I started with How to Draw Manga: Bodies and Anatomy (see that book for my review and how I used it). I then moved to Chapter 2 of this book, which has a lot of illustrations of final characters along with some developmental sketches showing how to arrive at the final result. I found that the developmental sketches built on the skills I acquired from the Bodies and Anatomy book, then I was able to move to working on final characters. I spent a lot of time in Chapter 2 before using Chapter 1, which is more about different character types and their posture, hair, clothing, and other individualized aspects. I don't expect to get a ton of use out of Chapter 1, but anyone looking to create a bunch of female manga characters will really get a lot of useful information out of it.Now that I'm able to really "build" female characters that fit my design purposes, I am moving on to How to Draw Manga Costume Encyclopedia 3: Sexy Sports Wear where I have found a wide range of information on moving from naked to clothed figures. I have the other Costume Encyclopedias as well and will use them in due time, but right now I'm working through one book at a time.In all I loved this book and I really like the series. You have to be creative about how you use them, as they don't hold your hand through the drawing process. Essentially I look at these books as references that explain via visuals and not always in a consistent manner. For instance, I had to scan this book from start to finish to find that Chapter 2 was my starting point, and I had to bounce around within Chapter 2 as there wasn't a good course to follow.A lot of people seem unhappy about the amount of nudity that a lot of these books contain (this one has no nudity, but extremely modest people may find some content questionable nonetheless), but I would never expect figure drawing books to be totally "for kids" as that would limit how much I can learn from them. This book in particular is a very important resource for me and if I would have based its usefulness on its title or cover I would have never even tried it. So if you don't need kid-friendly content and are willing to use your imagination to find ways to apply these resources, you'll love this series.

OVERVIEW: Learn how to create the 12 characters, learn their distinctions, and key techniques to their creation. In addition, your new knowledge of characters is applied in various movements of characters.After your done reading the book, look at various Manga and analyze characters to see what their type is. Then look on what the mangaka did to make that successful. (EX: In Fruits Basket, Kisa Shoma is the vulnerable girl)Chapter One:Learn the 12 character types. You'll learn how to create their face, hair, body shape, standard fashion, and basic key points. The 12 types are:-The Kid-The Imp-The Cutie-The Bully-The Bad Girl-The Shy Girl-The Princess-The Older Girl-The Strong Girl-The Vulnerable Girl-The Compassionate Girl-The Straight-laced GirlThen it covers height distinctions, selecting costumes, uniform portrayal, and tricks to uniforms.Chapter Two:The Fundamentals of Character Movement, walking scenes, drawing characters entering through doors, conversational poses, hand gestures in conversation scenes, running, leaping, falling.The bonus is of figures and cars.-DISCLAIMER:This is the final volume in the series: More How to Draw Manga-

The "Learn how to draw manga" titles areWorth the time and money to invest in easy to learn and apply lessons for any budding artist. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

I bought the book some time ago, and it's nice for when you want to draw a particular type of girl (ex. the cute type of girl or older type of girl). It also talks about Japanese uniform styles briefly, goes into different types of poses and little things like that. I was very happy with the purchase. :D

I really like this book. If covers so much including 12 different character types as well as small sections on eyes, hair, hands. I own several "How to draw manga" books and this is one of favorites.

Great book for the series. Surprisingly strong focus on facial composition

Good book

Some things were inappropriate for people of my age (10-12) because it contained minor nudity but other than that it was great! I loved how it captured details of how girls of different personalitys should do and look like