After deciding how many heads tall you want your character to be (see the ‘How many heads tall should my manga character be’ tutorial), it’s time to start drawing!
You may recognise this character below as the baby on the far right (apologies if the images show up as portrait and not landscape, this seems to be an Internet explorer only thing. If any of the more tech savvy out there know how to fix this please leave a comment). After being de-aged for my purposes he is now back to his usual self for the step by step construction tutorial (looking a little wonky but hey, quick sketches in the evening and all that…). Feel free to follow these steps with your own characters in your own pose, experiment! Practice makes perfect. If you don’t believe me you should see my drawings from 5 years ago...
Just a note, draw softly in pencil at first. You can always ink later. I just had to ink mine or the scanner would not have picked up the lines…
The first step is to construct the body. I prefer to start with the head, first drawing a circle (about three quarters of intended head height) and then adding the jaw. From there I draw the skeleton as above, starting with a central line for the spine (straight here but it will be curved when seen from the side in later tutorials), and adding a line at the level of the shoulders and a triangle for the hips. Follow this up with the limbs with circles for hands (a bit too small in this image really) and joints (triangles for the feet at the moment). I also personally like to place a line to indicate the bottom of the pectoral muscles just below the nipple line but that is optional at this stage. The end result should look like the first image above.
Satisfied with your skeleton? Flesh it out. I start with the pectoral muscles then move to the shoulders, connecting up the top half. From there the two lines below the pecs that make an upside down V represent the bottom of the ribs. Draw them in and then follow the curves (outwards slightly to begin with then inwards for the soft tissue of the abdomen until it swings back out again for the hips. Finish of with the limbs. The curves may be difficult at first, but find reference images (ones of real people are best, after all that is what the manga style is based on) and keep on going until it looks right.
Finally add the detail (and clothing. This is a family friendly blog so no full frontal nudity here XD), paying attention to things like muscle lines and collar bones etc. This fellow isn’t particularly muscle bound so lines will be restricted to collar bone, pecs, rib line and he line down the centre of his toned stomach. Once you are done, ink the lines you want and erase the rest. Simple!
‘But wait!’ you say. How do I know where the waist line/nipple line/everything goes? Take a look at the below image (you may recognise it from the ‘how many heads tall’ tutorial).
As a general rule, for most heights the nipple line lies somewhere roughly one head length down from the head, creeping up a tiny bit in the immature where it is the pec line (just below nipples) that is on the one head below chin marker. The only major difference is the baby, where the pec line is half a head below the chin (when head is held neutrally). Shoulders similarly are roughly a quarter of a head below the chin.
The elbows are always in line with the waist and the tips of the fingers fall to mid thigh except in the very young where limbs are shorter. The bottom of the knee is halfway down the leg.
The waist varies but is roughly halfway between the bottom of the body and the pec line, perhaps a shade below. The bottom of the body is at the halfway point for height in 8 heads and 7, and just below in 7.5 and 6 (the dotted lines equal exactly half a head for a guide). Again, baby is an exception as the bottom of the body is two heads below chin.
Study the guide above and take note of the general rules and you will be sketching in no time. Remember three simple steps. Simple framework, flesh it out, add the detail and done! This is it for this Wednesday. See you next week when we look at the head in detail. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any specific tutorials you want me to do or if you are getting stuck. I am not the best at explanations so I will try to clear up any difficulty as soon as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment