Sweatdrop Studios - Creating Manga Characters

Corbyn the catboy.

Manga is a medium, and thus covers all genres and audiences, from school kids to housewives. Because it is black and white it is cheap to produce in bulk, which means page count is not such an issue in terms of cost (as opposed to the early Western comics, which opted for coloured pages and therefore tried to squeeze as much story onto each page as possible). This in turn means authors have the space to experiment with page and panel layout and the time to go into emotions and thoughts in a pictorial manner. Manga characters are extremely expressive, with high emphasis placed on facial features and gestures. Sometimes it is sufficient just to draw a characters eye or hand to express their feelings and moods.

The art style itself is hard to define. It is true that many manga characters have big eyes and small mouths, but so does Betty Boop, and many manga characters have much more realistically proportioned faces. However, the emphasis on eyes is something that appears to be based on culture; research has shown that, when looking at pictures of faces, Western viewers tend to focus on the mouth while Japanese viewers focus on the eyes. You can even see this in the emoticons used by each culture; Japanese emoticons put emphasis on the eyes (^_^) while American emoticons emphasize the mouth (:)). It has been suggested that this is because emotional control is valued in Japan, but the eyes are harder to control than the mouth, so Japanese people would concentrate on the eyes to gauge emotion . Whatever the reason, the eyes are a particularly expressive part of the manga style, and it is not surprising that they are the feature most picked out by casual viewers.

Nowadays, manga is no longer an exclusively Japanese art form. Many eastern countries have started and succeeded in producing their own versions of manga-style comics. Styles like manwha (Korean) and manhua (Chinese) have emerged. In the West, many creators have been inspired and influenced by the manga style, just as Tezuka once took inspiration from Disney.

Although a visual medium, there is no doubt that story is an important factor to manga. And what makes a good story exactly ? There are many factors that add up, but one vital factor is most certainly strong characters. Often a story will be of no interest to us if there isnt a great character there to lead us through it.

In Japanese manga, a storys focus on a character is particularly emphasized visually. The popular and distinctive styles we recognize today began with among others the artist who is called the Godfather of manga due to his roaring success; Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka purposefully exaggerated the eyes and mouths of his characters so that they could become more likeable and charm readers into following them through a story.

Other areas of Japanese culture take character creation one step further, inventively using the look, personality and setting of a character to create entire franchises. It is not uncommon to find buildings or institutes in Japan that have cute mascots indeed, Tokyo Tower and Mount Fuji both have cute alter egos! Vocaloid is another great example of this. It is a rather technical computer programme, mainly aimed at professional musicians . But its invention of selling each different voice as an adorable character with a distinct personality has led to a much more charming product. As a result, Vocaloid has reached out to a much wider audience and created everything a great character can offer; from fan-art communities to sell-out concerts.

Whether we find them enchanting, or love to hate them, characters are always what we relate to the most; they are what we remember in a story, manga, comic, video game or franchise. Whole websites are dedicated to single characters from media, wikis are formed to record as much information as possible about beloved characters from blood types or birth dates to favourite foods and animals. While it is always possible to find similar characters, it is near impossible to find two characters completely alike in physical appearance or personality. Japans variety in characters is an inspiration to many manga fans, and we hope in this book we can help you create your own inspiring characters!