Ben Krefta - The Artist S Guide to Drawing Manga

Ben Krefta is a UK-based freelance illustrator and graphic designer whose unique and unconventional designs are primarily targeted at edgy, tech-savvy, video game-playing, manga-reading teens and young adults. He has worked on a number of art and design projects for websites, game developers and magazines and has delivered digital art demonstrations for clients such as Hitachi and Wacom. He is also the author of a number of bestselling how-to-draw manga books. For more information, visit his personal homepage, www.benkrefta.com

M anga its just a fad, isnt it? said one of my art tutors at university back in 2006. When I was growing up in the 1990s, anime was starting to gain popularity among Western teenagers and young adults thanks to companies such as Manga Entertainment in the UK and U.S. Manga Corps in the USA, which imported many of the popular animated series from Japan. Soon after, comic and book stores began stocking the manga comics from which many of these animations originated. In the next decade the internet became a staple part of peoples lives and fans could easily connect with each other across the globe, sharing their enthusiasm for these modern Japanese themes, art styles and stories.

Manga and anime artwork is becoming increasingly assimilated into mainstream books, TV, games, movies, fashion, design and advertising. Unlike my tutor, I cant see the art form disappearing any time soon in fact it continues to increase in popularity, with a new generation of fans discovering its exciting stylistic qualities for the first time in the 21st century.

Exciting, mesmerizing, simple yet complex, manga and anime are forms of visual storytelling for all ages. Manga is a term that describes comics produced by Japanese mangaka(manga artists), primarily for a Japanese audience. The style was developed in Japan through the mid to late 19th century with heavy influence from Western and American comics combined with the long and complex history of Japanese art and wood-block prints. In the Western world, the term is often used more broadly to mean a style of drawing originating in Japan and many Western artists who have adopted the style refer to themselves as manga artists. Anime correctly refers to animation created in Japan, though in the West, it is again used more loosely to mean a style and genre of animation that is derived from Japan. It often features detailed, colorful imagery, in-depth characters and action-orientated plot lines set in the past, present or future or frequently within a fantasy setting. The meaning of the term anime can vary depending on the context its used in.

So, to summarize, the terms manga and anime both mean artwork in a typical Japanese cartoon style; the difference is the format. Also, manga tends to be monochrome, while anime is often in full color.

The manga style has been gradually evolving over the last century, but in the 1960s1980s it really seemed to commit to the visuals which many fans are familiar with to this day. These often include the following characteristics:

Large eyes (especially female and younger characters)

Small noses, usually simplified as a dot or an L-shaped line

Flat-looking faces and angular chins

A wide range of hair and eye colors

Overstated hairstyles

Lean body types

Exaggerated breast size

Emotion indicators such as an oversized sweat drop or cruciform vein on the head

Simplified linework

Background effects such as speed lines or patterned tones

Gray tones in manga

Solid two- or three-tone cartoon coloring styles in anime.

Ill be using a range of different styles and themes to illustrate how to draw various manga creations. Over years of practice, I have developed my own way of doing things and this will undoubtedly be evident in the artworks here. If you want to experiment with adapting any of the characters to be, for example, even more cute and chibi, go for it!