How to Draw a Manga Character Like A Pro

9 Steps: How to Draw a Manga Character Like A Pro

Draw a Manga Character – When it comes to drawing manga, you get the opportunity to take part in a broad style That offers a long tradition and many subgenres to find your expression. There are several influences, sources of inspiration, and possibilities to allow you to customize your character fully.

Just as with any character creation, it’s essential to work from an initial concept when drawing. Finalizing a character concept may take numerous sketches, iterations, or even poses.

Taking time to refine your character will help you strike the right amount of style and story in your drawing. The key to character drawing is using the character’s pose and personal details to tell as much at first glance as possible. (Draw a Manga Character)

manga head poses

So, where do you begin with creating a manga character?

1. Brainstorm Your Character and Build a Concept for Their Pose

Your character brainstorming can take many forms, including finding references, inspiration, and knowing about your character. The more you know the feeling, the better you will represent them visually.

This is why it can be much easier to get started with drawing fan art than drawing original characters. Those you define in fan art already have a story, posture, and style that you can remove. If you intend to make an original character, you’ll have to make choices about all these character traits. (Draw a Manga Character)

What’s your character’s posture like? Fitness level and overall style?

Do they perfectly fix their hair in the morning, or is it slightly messy?

What kind of clothes do they wear?

What are they usually doing? It’s a good idea to portray the character in the act of doing something that most defines them.

2. Sketch a Wireframe

Once you understand your character, you can shift to brainstorming your composition. The best way to start this is by sketching a few different wireframes for your character. This is an excellent time to experiment with poses, movement, and flow. (Draw a Manga Character)

You don’t want to start with details too soon. Make sure your wireframe and silhouette are how you like them. If you begin in good shape, you can start on the right footing.

One common way to make wireframes is to create the pose using circles for significant features, including the head, elbows, hands, feet, and knees. Use a square for the torso and an inverted triangle for the pelvis.

You can and should immediately take your style up a notch by visualizing this wireframe in three dimensions. This means that when you draw circles, make them low-detail spheres. Draw the pelvis as an oblong cone and make the rectangular chest more like a three-dimensional cube.

Try to avoid drawing your character head-on from the front. Instead, start by drawing them in a three-quarter view. This will make it easier to express dimensionality and dynamics. (Draw a Manga Character)

3. Correct Proportions

Pick your favorite of the wireframe sketches and begin correcting the proportions. In this step, you will be tweaking the shape and dimensions of the forms used to represent body parts. If you don’t know what shape certain body parts should be, don’t hesitate to find a photo for reference.

Remember that using specific primitive shapes in this initial sketch symbolically portrays an aspect of your character. For example, a character with a square-shaped head will offer a different tone than a character with a round or triangular head.

Correct your wireframe based on the character. A stronger character will have a bulkier frame, whereas a more fragile nature will have a thinner, smaller, or more elongated structure.

In general, you can also differentiate a male character from a female character in this frame. A female character will tend to have more narrow shoulders and broader hips. The opposite will be valid for a male character, with narrower hips and broader shoulders.

Manga characters tend to blend proportions, depending on the manga style you’re hoping to achieve. For example, many manga styles represent characters with elongated legs compared to human anatomy.

4. Outline the Shapes to Create a Skin Layer

For most manga art, clean outlines are essential. It’s a good idea to create a system that makes your skin layer. This is not your final outline or final detail layer. For reference, it is there to summarize all the work and anatomy you have created so far.

The skin layer will clean up your sketch and give you a basic shape to draw details in the following steps. Try as much as you can to preserve the three-dimensional look you created in the wireframe.

5. Draw Facial Proportions

The bare face is drawn using a sphere attached to a cone in the manga. From the bottom of the globe, one-third draw a line that curves around its front. This will be your eye line.

To indicate where the eyes will go, draw a line of symmetry that curves vertically down the front of the face. Remember that this will not be in the direct center of your face sphere in most cases. This line will be closer to one side if you’re drawing from a three-quarter view. Using the horizontal line, draw a circle on either side of the symmetry line.

Remember that manga eyes tend to be disproportionately large. Lightly detail the eye shape since these are essential for creating your character. Eyes that droop slightly down to the outside will appear kinder, and eyes that pull at the inner corners will appear more aggressive.

Next, draw a small circle at the bottom of the sphere that intersects with the cone. This circle indicates where the bottom of the nose should go. In most manga art, unless the character is designed to have a distinctive nose, the shape of the nose will be minimal, using a single curve or line.

6. Add Clothing, Decoration, and Hair

Using your skin layer outline as a guide, draw in your character’s clothing. Remember that these clothes should move with the character in their pose to create a dynamic image. Try to be inventive with these clothes since these will go a long way toward adding interest and representing your character’s story.

Draw in the shape of the hair. This can be larger than life for manga artists to make your character as dynamic as possible. Remember that the hair shape should move like the rest of the essence. Additionally, you can use the hair to add direction.

7. Tidy Your Outlines and Ink Your Drawing

Create a clean inking layer of your new outlines, the clothes, and the showing skin. Fine line details include significant folds in the clothing, primary facial information, and patterns.

Anything in the foreground should have a slightly thicker outline than those in the background. Similarly, use line width to draw the eye to the most critical parts of the image. While you want to keep this final outline clean, make sure not to exclude any vital details.

8. Refine Shading and Color

You can now paint or shade the image in black and white. As you indicate shading, make a note about where the light source is located. Try to keep the shading realistic so that your drawing becomes more believable. Using a photo reference for shading can be helpful if you have trouble visualizing where the light and

shadows will hit. If you are working in color, avoid using black for shading. Instead, use a deeper version of how the color looks in the light.

9. Now You Can Focus on Specific Details

Manga Art Style contrasts areas of minimalistic detail with areas of great detail. The face and skin will be more minimalistic in most cases, allowing all the details to focus on the eyes.

For your character, pick the areas of concentrated detail that will best represent their story. This will help to make your character as expressive as possible.

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