Manga Mania Shoujo: How to Draw the Charming and Romantic Characters of Japanese Comics

Bindings fell apart and only had it for a day looked at it once and the pages were falling out bindings ruined. It was not new more like good not even acceptable to be considered good. Would like my money back but I don't think they do returns or exchanges.

While this book was quite helpful in my case, I suspect that it would not be suitable for the absolute beginner. A bit of expierence is probably needed to glean the full benefits of this work. Now that being said, I feel there is a great amount that can be learned from this books. As with all of Christopher Hart's book, it is quite detailed and their is an abundance of text to go along with the actual drawing and coloring. The techniques Hart illustrates actually work. I like to work on individual aspects of figures, isolating different areas such as eyes, mouth, nose, etc. This works well for me and with this work, the author has given us plenty of information. No one book can do it all and the serious student of this art form will want many. This is just another valuable work to add to your collection. I find that young folk, in particular, like this one and actually do quite well with it. I do highly recommend this one.

IT SHOULD BE THREE INSTEAD OF FIVE STARS, MY MISTAKE. With everything there are always pros and cons this book is no exception. The pros is that it goes through about every little thing that you can thing of. From facial angles to foreshortening (which I had no idea how to do before I purchased this book. It also helped with shadows and clothing folds. It contains a section on the beloved chibis and it covers male characters. It even had Bishies(beautifully drawn male characters) Some of the art work is great! The cons are that it doesn't go into great detail and a few of the pictures look like they were done by a first grader. All in all I like this book very much and for a 144 pages it's a steal.

Christopher Hart has written an excellent book. He captured the essence of Shoujo, its beauty, grace, and subtlety. This book contains a great deal of information that will help the beginning and advanced artist. It is also beautiful to look at. I personally loved the Magical Girl section as well as the Chibi section. His treatment of colors is top notch.

This book gos over everything you need to know when drawing manga. It goes over hands, facial features, female AND male characters, diffrent hair types, bodys, Chibi, design detail, and a whole lot more. If you dont want to get a million books going into great detail with just one subject, then i suggest you get this book. It really helps with trying to create your own unique manga characters as well. I suggest you go out and get this book as soon as possible.