How to Draw Manga Volume 21: Bishouju - Pretty Gals

This book is very thick and content-rich, especially for the price. However, I do not think this is a beginner's book by any means. If you are looking for a book to break down the form into simple shapes, this isn't it. However, as someone who is familiar with illustration, the book is very inspiring, especially the sections on hair and eyes, which provide you with a way to customize your own characters. Although other reviewers seemed to take issue with the fact that there was nudity in the book, it isn't tasteless. As someone who has studied art at the university level, it's not exactly a shock to find nudity in a book which teaches people how to illustrate the female form. In fact, I found the figures and poses extremely helpful for fashion illustrations of lingerie and form-fitting clothing. If cartoon nipples offend you, this might not be a good book for you. I think the book is a great deal for the price, and has a lot of inspirational imagery and ideas for people who enjoy drawing manga, or even fashion illustrators looking to add something different to their work.

This book is very very helpful indeed. I have improved a whole lot with it! It teaches you how to draw faces,eyes, hair, bodies, movement, chaging clothes, Japanese dressing, dressing for bed, girls with glasses, hats, school uniforms, maids, bunny girls, nurses, robotic girls, animal girls, girls with wings and tails, mermaids, fairies, hoods and cloaks, power suits, chibi and many others(all explaining how to make a girl look BISHOUJO(Pretty)). It is an exelent book and you get a lot of pointers to do things. I think that everytime I look and read over this book I get better and better at drawing pretty girls, but of course looking over the book only is not going to make one an artist over night, so make sure you get some practice too. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT,books help, but what really counts is if you practice or not. This is definetly a must have book; it is awsome, helpful, and defitnetly helps you make girls look pretty.Yes, there IS nudity, but nothing too serious. It is just artistic nudity. If the book didn't have any how could you really learn. This book is a great choice! keep it in mind!

I found this book clear and useful and well organized. I come from a more classical figure-drawing background, and was very impressed with how this book shows levels of realism -- a development from a simplification of line thru to a full-blown manga style -- from the shapes and line weights of a slightly "cartoony" eye to examples of actual line forms used by manga artists to show the eye. So many books of this kind become mere galleries where the author shows off completed works. This one does not make that mistake. It has samples, lots of them, organized by age, realism, angle; a regular grid of noses and chins and eye forms and levels of hair detail. I believe this is a useful book for almost anyone trying to develop a manga "style" to their drawing. I think this would be useful for someone with limited drawing experience (the eye forms in particular, are quite reproducible). But there is my caveat. The book gives the concept of contraposta a glancing blow; it uses perspective and foreshortening without mentioning them explicitly -- indeed, shows the strong figure-drawing skills of the author without mentioning that to get his results you will also need some understanding of skeletal structure, muscle forms, anatomic proportions, drapery folds, shadowing, etc. Final word...this book belongs on the short shelve. It is not a stand-alone.

This book will have you drawing sumptuous female Manga characters within very reasonable practice effort. The emphasis of this book is to draw the characters the way that Mamga artists stylize their characters to bring out their cuter points. This book goes well with the How to Draw Manga: Bishoujo Pretty Girls volume. The techniques in both books work together to produce good results when drawing female characters. If you always wanted to know the "tricks of the trade" this book is a good book for your How-to-Draw library.

This is EXACTLY what I have been searching for in a "How To" Manga book since I first started watching anime. What people must realize is that the book won't make you a better artist. It's the practice and the TECHNIQUES from the book that you can use to become a better manga artist. With this book, and a little practice, you'll be right up there with Hayao Miyazaki (director of Princess Mononoke). All in all, a worthwhile purchase for anyone yearning to become an artist in the Japanese Manga style.