How to draw and make Manga

In manga, there is something called SD, which stands for Super Deformed. SD is a way of drawing that- as the names implies- deforming the character. It can be any character you like, super heroes, mecha, warriors, or even ghosts and animals. By making it into an SD characters, these normal characters became funny looking characters. Almost baby- like. These SD drawing style has inspired many US comic/ cartoon artist into making similiar characters. For example, baby Looney Toons, Baby Disney characters, and such.

As you can see, here I used the 3 apples size technique to draw an SD Superman. Just like drawing a normal character, first you begin with the size guidelines. Use the head size to determine the size of the rest of the body. Sketch the basic shape of the body. After it's done, proceed into the character's detail. Note that in an SD character, some body parts such as heads, eyes, (and in some, arms and feet) are getting exaggerated. They're gotten extremely huge. This is the main reason why SD characters have that funny looking, baby- like feels on them. Have fun experimenting on SD characters. Try drawing different characters in SD, and you WILL be getting better at this.

Just for fun, I have colored the SD Superman using Photoshop. Hope you like it. Oh by the way, Superman and Superman logo, are owned by DC Comics. All right belongs to DC Comics.

One night, Ichigo encounters a spirit girl named Kuchiki Rukia, a Shinigami or an angel of death. She tells Ichigo that because of his high spiritual concentration, he will be targeted by evil spirits called Hollows who would very much like to devour his soul. The only way for Ichigo to protect himself and his family is to become a Shinigami himself. So Rukia decides she will help him out by giving him half of her own powers to him, but in the process, for some unknown reason, Ichigo absorbs not only half of some of Rukia's power, but up to the very last drop of her energy. This transfer has rendered Rukia powerless.

This energy transfer makes him a far more potent Shinigami than she ever was. Now a Shinigami, Ichigo quickly learns that the world he inhabits is one full of dangerous spirits and, along with Rukia, who is slowly regaining her powers in her back up body, it's Ichigo's job to protect the innocent from Hollows and help the spirits themselves find peace. In his journey, Ichigo will encounters school friends that has the same ability with him, and others Hollows to fight together. And to makes things even interesting, Rukia's energy transfer is turned out to be forbidden by the Soul Society (the official name of the spirit world), and when their agents come to Earth to dish out the consequences, Ichigo finds that he might have to challenge the entire world of the dead to save her.

Now as the story, the setting and companion progresses. Ichigo finds himself in different situations including underworlds, and unique new allies to fight with. A very good manga and anime you can't missed.

Manga begins dominating the Japanese entertainment industry since 1950s. Manga is the Japanese name for Comics. In Japan, Manga is originally printed in Manga Magazines, a magazine that consists of compilations of mangas from different manga artist or mangaka. This magazine has hundreds of pages and about the size of a telephone book. The mangas in the magazines are all serials that will be continued in the next issue. Manga has a very wide genre, including action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce, and a lot more. If a series in the magazine is successful, collected chapters may be republished in paperback books called Tankobon. It will be published under it's own title. These days, when a manga is considered a favorite, it will be made into Anime after, or even during it's run immediately.

The first man or mangaka that was held responsible for the identity and character of today's Manga is Osamu Tezuka. Osamu Tezuka created the distinctive large eyes in manga, which will forever be manga's unique visualization style, inspired by cartoons of the time, like Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse and Bambi. Tezuka- sensei's most success manga is Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom in Japan). Astro Boy is the basic of all manga and become the inspiration of other mangaka after that. The storytelling, the flow, the big eyes- long leg characters, is all Osamu Tezuka's doing. Since it was Tezuka- sensei that first created this style, therefore it was appropriate that the Japan's entertainment industry called Osamu Tezuka as the God of Manga.

Today, manga is not only a comic book for the Japanese, but it's a powerful entertainment media for the world. Manga generates Anime (Japanese animation) and has become one of the commodities of Japan. Manga is a living proof that, art and comic books CAN feed a country.

Now let's see the basic principle of drawing body figures proportion. There are many ways to do this, but here's one way that I think pretty easy to do. First, you have to understand that people, mangaka and comic artist alike, likes to measure body size with 'heads'. The U.S comic artist normally makes an adult super heroes characters with 8 heads figures, while asian and Japanese manga loves to make it in 7 heads figures. If the character is a child, it would sized about 5 to 6 heads, depends on his/ her age. Here's how it looks.

Here's an 8 heads (or rather 7,5 heads) figures. First thing you need to do is draw the head. Then, using the size of the head, draw the rest of the body. As you can see, the lines goes through the characters' chin, the second line cross the nipple. The third line cross the bellybutton, then the crotch, middle of the thighs, under your kneecaps, the next line crosses right above the ankle. Use a basic geometrical shapes to make it easy to draw the shape of the body. After it's done, wrap it up with muscle and skin, following the basic shape you drew (ribs, shoulder shapes, etc). There's a slight different when you drawing woman figures.
Use the same basic principle, just make some variations and adjustments. As you know, and can see here, two most significant differences between men and women figures (aside from the obvious muscle size, skin tone and, err.. breast type) is the size of the shoulder and hips. Men got wider shoulder and smaller hips, while women has the exact opposite. Wider hips and smaller shoulder.

Note that this is just a very basic way of drawing body figures and proportion. Experiment all you want and enjoy the drawing process.

Naruto is one of the best worldwide selling Manga and Anime today.The author, Masashi Kishimoto is a huge manga fan since he was a kid. Naruto is based on his old manga concept called Hiatari- Kun, a story about a shadow ninja boy.

Naruto's story begins twelve years before the events of the series, when a powerful nine tailed demon fox (Kyuubi in Japan) attacks the village of Konoha (Konohagakure). It was a powerful demon indeed; a single swing of one of its nine tails would raise tsunamis and flatten mountains. It raised chaos and slaughtered many people, until the leader of the Leaf Village - the Fourth Hokage - defeated it by sacrificing his own life to seal the demon inside a newly-born child, whose origins are as yet unknown. That child's name was Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto Uzumaki grown to be a very lonely child. Since everyone in the village knows about the demon sealed in his body, no one want to be his friend. This lonely feeling makes him a somewhat rebel and naughty kid. He leaves a 'destruction' path wherever he goes. He actually lonely and crave for some attention. The first attention comes from his sensei Iiruka, who cares for Naruto and even saves his life once. After he passed his first Ninjutsu exam and become a Genin, Naruto teamed up with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura. The three young ninjas are put under the wings of a new teacher, a slack, mysterious, but powerful Kakashi. These three young ninjas, along with their master, are the main characters of the manga.

The story goes with these three young genin and their progress into a mature and powerful ninjas. Especially Naruto, who has a very big dream, to one day become Hokage of Konoha. This is a classic story of a dream believer pursuing his dream, and maybe it's safe to guess, one day, achieve it. As he goes from a 'loser' ninja into a pretty powerful one, Naruto make a lot more friends, each with his unique ninjutsu abilities. Naruto will also meet some powerful ninja masters, The Three Legendary Sannin. Jiraiya, Tsunade, and the evil Orochimaru. Later in the story, the three young Genin is in the way to become the next generation legendary ninja, since Naruto has become the disciple of Jiraiya, Sakura become the disciple of Tsunade, and Sasuke with Orochimaru.

After drawing the oval shape, the horizontal and vertical lines (in lesson Head 1). You are now ready to draw faces in those empty head figures. First thing you need to do to help you put some facial in the heads is adding more helping lines. After you divide the oval figures in the middle using the horizontal line number 1 , now let's add two other horizontal lines, exactly in the middle of both sides.

The line number 2 will be the position of the base of the hair, while the line number 3 will be the position of the mouth. As you can see, there's also a circle overlapped in the upper side of the oval. That circle will help you determine the position of the character's cheek bone.

After you set those lines up, just like in lesson Head 1, let's practice the technique by drawing some heads (with faces this time) in some other angles and positions.
Here's our hero. With the help of the oval, lines, and circle guides, our manga character is ready to put on some attitude and kick some bad guys' asses. Remember, with the same basic principle, and slight variations, you can create different looking characters with different body types and genders.
Be creative and have fun in drawing!

Now, let's start drawing! First of all, let's learn how to draw the head figure. To draw the head, first draw an oval shape, almost like an egg with a slight variation. This shape will determine the shape of the character's head. Mind that not every person has the same basic shape for their heads. Some might have circular shape, pointy shape or almost square shape. Be creative. Then, draw a straight horizontal line right in the middle of the head. This will become the eye position. And a vertical line, to divide left and right side of the head.

These shape examples shows a man, a big muscled man (with a strong jaw) and a woman.

Now, by using the vertical and horizontal lines as guide, let's try drawing heads in different angles and positions.
As you can see, by drawing the basic oval shapes, aided by vertical and horizontal lines, you have a very informative head figures. You can understand what each figures doing and where their face heads to. When you draw a head from the side (figure 2), just remember to draw two oval shapes crossing each other, vertical and horizontal, to shape a skeleton's shape. That will give you a right depth of the head.

This basic technique will help you begin sketching your drawings. Just by using the oval and two lines like the one in these examples, you will be able to make very good and informative basic head sketches.

Dragon Ball Z's story has a much more depth and action filled in it than Dragon Ball's. Akira Toriyama turns Goku's enemies form being 'funny and entertaining' to a truly evil, strong, and even sadistic characters. The main theme of the Dragon Ball saga is slightly turned, from searching the dragon balls theme, to somekind of quest for power and saving the universe theme. Although the Dragon Balls are still become an important part of the story, but the story mostly circle around Son Goku's journey to become the strongest man in the Universe.

The story picks up where Dragon Ball has left off. As the next chapter of Dragon Ball saga, Dragon Ball Z begins years after the last scene of Dragon Ball, where Goku left his friends to go with Chi Chi. This time, Goku return and appear in front of his friends with a boy, who is in fact his son, Son Gohan. At the same time, a strange alien from other planet arrived, and looking for our hero. As it turns out, this alien is called Raditz, Son Goku's brother. This is the moment of truth, where Akira Toriyama introduced us to a fact that Goku is actually an alien race called Saiyans from the planet Vegeta. This is the begining of Son Goku's quest to become the strongest man on the universe, since Saiyans are a warrior race, which born and live for fights, and will grew stronger and stronger everytime they survive an almost death situation.

This chapter of the story are then called Saiyan Saga. In this saga, Goku fights three strongest Saiyans that survived the planet's destruction, Vegeta, Nappa and the weak Raditz. This chapter/ saga introduced Vegeta to the fans, who will not only became a famous character on his own in manga/ anime world, but also build a foundation for a all cold, silent- strong type, a bit evil, hero's rival characters in manga and anime nowadays. By knowing his origins and meeting stronger enemies, Goku grows even stronger. To defeat these aliens who threatened to destroy the earth, Goku had to team up with Piccolo and all his friends, including Krilin and his son Gohan. Vegeta is finally defeated, but Goku let him escapes the earth.

The aftermath of his battle with Vegeta leaves Goku paralyzed for some time. So in order to help their friends that was killed in the battle, Krilin, Son Gohan and Bulma have to go to Planet Namec, to find and use the dragon balls there. But what they didn't know, is that a universe tyrant is also in that planet, looking too for the dragon balls. His name is Frieza, the strongest enemy Goku will have to face this far. This chapter, will then be called the Frieza Saga. Vegeta who escapes the earth after the events in Saiyan Saga also arrived in namec to find the mystical orbs. This is when things got complicated, where three different teams are looking for the same dragon balls. Our heroes on one side, Vegeta on the other, and Frieza and his cronies on the other. To defeat Frieza, Goku has to transform into a legendary warrior, Super Saiyan. As a super saiyan, Goku experience quite a change. His muscle is bigger, his eyes are sharper with even some evilish looks in it, he became quite temperamental, and especially his hair turned yellow and even pointier. This is the Super Saiyan traits every fan will love even until now.

After Frieza Saga, Dragon Ball Z went through two more major sagas, the Cell Saga and the Maajin Buu Saga. The Cell Saga brings our heroes face to face againts a very powerful humanoid called Cell. This saga introduced to the reader a character called Trunks, who in facts Vegeta and Bulma's son from the future. This saga is said to be the inspiration for the TV New Hit series Heroes, the first season. Uncanny similiarity is seen between the two stories, such as:

1. A mysterious killer who killed people by absorbing their power/ essences - Cell in DBZ, Sylar in Heroes.
2. A hero from the future who came back to warn of the danger, this hero brings a sword on his back - Future Trunks form DBZ and Future Hiro from Heroes.
3. The view used to show Trunks looking at the destroyed city in DBZ's scene (Trunks' Story) is very similiar to the scene where Hiro Nakamura went to the future and see the destroyed New York.
4. In the end of the story, someone blows up, and another one saves the city by taking the man who is going to blew up someplace else - Cell blows up, and Goku take him to Kaii World in DBZ, and Peter Petrelli blows up, and Nathan Petrelli take him up to high altitude in Heroes.

This saga also introduced Super Saiyan 2 phase, the second transformation after the normal Super Saiyan. It leaves Son Gohan as the hero of the story.

The final chapter of Dragon Ball Z Maajin Buu Saga, gives the fans Maajin Buu. A very powerful demon with a bit mystical power. Maajin Buu's character is funny in it's own way. This final chapter gives alot of new characters, facts and powers, like Super Saiyan 3, Fusion and Pottara. Goku's second son, Son Goten is introduced in this saga. Super Saiyan 3 is very different than Super Saiyan 1 and 2. In the third transformation, Goku's hair become long and yellow. He got electricity all over his body like the one in the Super Saiyan 2, and his eyes got even sinister. His eyebrows disappears and 2 layer of pupil is seen. To defeat Maajin Buu, Goku use the help of everyone in the earth and universe including the people in Hell to build a Genki Dama (Spirit Bomb in English) and ends Maajin Buu's life forever.

Thus ends the Dragon Ball Z saga. The story actually ends at the Tenka Ichi Budokai, when Goku finds his wish granted, and leaves the arena with the reincarnation of Maajin Buu, a boy that called Uub. He leaves his friends and families again, to train Uub how to fight, so he can fight him properly one day. After all, Son Goku loves a good fight.

Today, 20 years after it's first release, Dragon Ball Z is still as huge as ever, with loyal fans all over the world. Dragon Ball Z becoming more then a saga, but almost a legend. New Dragon Ball's stuff are still made every month, from video games, accesories, toys, action figures, even the manga got re- released, to a big budget movie DBZ, by Twentieth Century Fox set to release in 2009.

Akira Toriyama's world famous manga Dragon Ball Z begins with Dragon Ball at 1989. It tells a story about a monkey- tailed young boy, Son Goku, whose only desire is to get stronger and to fight people who are stronger than him. Son Goku lives on a mountain somewhere, far from the city and lived a simple life, filled only with martial arts training and food hunting. Goku had a Dragon Ball, a magical orb which the legend said, that if you succeed in collecting 7 of them, a dragon will appear and grant whatever wish you desire. One day, a girl named Bulma came along looking for the Dragon Ball, and thus begin Goku's journey.

Dragon Ball is a comedic, fun, and very loose translation from chinese legend Journey to the west. The story is very 'light', and fun to read. Goku's first enemies, are funny enemies, that reader can find them 'quite entertaining' than dangerous. Goku's journey then bring him to meet Kamesennin or Mutenroshi (Master Roshi in English version) and his best friend ever, Kuririn (Krilin in English). Dragon Ball's story got a bit serious when Goku fight his first dangerous and real evil enemy, Piccolo. Piccolo is a demon of the past, that got resurected when Goku is fighting in the middle of a World Fighting Tournament (Tenka Ichi Budokai). When Krilin got killed by Piccolo's henchman, Goku decided to fight and defeat the demon once and for all. After a long, hard, journey and with help from his new acquired allies, Goku managed to defeat Piccolo. But at the second before his death, Piccolo lays an egg, and a new young Piccolo is reborn from the egg.

Goku then go with Kami Sama (Kami in English version) and Mr. Popo to train until the next World Tournament, where he will be fighting the new reborned Piccolo. Returned to the next tournament as a young man, he surprises his friends by his new attitude and calmer appearance. In this tournament Goku reunited with Chi Chi, a girl from his past that will be his wife. After a heavy fight that involves destroying all the arena and the arena buildings, Son Goku finally defeated Piccolo. But as Kami moves to kill him, Goku stop Kami, and saves Piccolo's life. He knows, that Piccolo is actually shares Kami's soul. If Piccolo dies, Kami will dies too. He assures Kami, that if Piccolo will attack again, he will stop him again. After Goku gives Piccolo a Magic Bean to save his life, Piccolo immediately flew away and swear that he will kill Goku someday.

With this said and done, Goku take Chi Chi away, hop on his Kintoun Cloud, and flew away, leaving his friends behind. This is the end of the Dragon Ball title.

Mangas are Japanese comic books. These days manga has become a huge commodity in sequential art and entertainment industry in the world. Manga is famous for it's unique storytelling, panelling, and especially, unique drawing style. Manga characters had large eyes, uniquely drawn - pointy hairs, long legs (especially for female characters) and mostly, non- realistic body proportion.

These are some of the factors that attract comic book readers worldwide to manga. Mangas' stories also has more variations and different themes in it compares to other style/countries' sequential arts. If most comic books' stories are about action, drama, daily lives, sci- fi, heroes, or superheroes, manga's theme are much more differs. Manga got stories about history, soccer, golf, musician, writer, students, weird elementary teachers, ninjas, fantasy, fiction ninjas - warriors, even about dogs, cats, and dinosaur cub!

Mangas started became a worldwide pursuit since Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball Z anime (Japanese animation based on the manga) hits international TV at 1996. Dragon Ball Z has started what will become a Manga Fever. Since then, these Japanese comic books are started to become a part of global entertainment. It got even bigger when some of America's greatest Comic Artist such as Joe Madureira and Ed McGuiness had some Manga influence in their drawing style.

Today, mangas are no longer belong only to the Japanese. They belong to the world.