How To Draw Manga Step By Step

Hi, I'm Kyle. I'm an illustrator and I'm going to take you through some tips on drawing manga and chibi. Right, I'm going to take you through how to draw manga, step-by-step, just giving you the very bare bones basics here.

We're going to start off with a male character. Start off with an oval sort of shape here. Now, the average human body is about seven to eight heads tall.

But with manga, depending on the artist, it tends to be between six and seven. So just mark how-just very lightly-start off with one, two, three, four, five, six. The less heads to the body, the younger the character will look.

So, obviously, that'll be a bit shorter. Okay, so just got to mark out where the neck comes to: just keep it as quite a straight neck for a male character. Shoulders come off to the side, there.

Drawing the edge of the shoulders there. Just got to mark out just the basic shapes now: ribcage is about a head big. Just down from that, going to mark out just the block shape of the hips.

Hips should not be larger, wider rather than the shoulders, for a male character. Just got to mark out where the legs come down to: just about keeping in proportion. Okay, now we're going to start really motoring on this, bringing in a little bit at the waist or what will be the waist of the character.

Mark out, it's almost like marking out where the underwear line. Just think about where the hip is. Start thinking about where the legs are going to go.

Now, the upper leg, the thigh, there's a curve on the front of and the lower leg on the calf muscle, there's a curve on the back. If seeing the character in the front, you know you see that vaguely, but it's still worth noting. Now the femur, the thigh bone, is the longest one in the body, so it's a good thing to remember there.

Just bring this down: the knee should be about halfway down. Just bring this down to the feet. Now remember, looking at it head on, think about where things fall in your vision, and the feet, you just see the top half because of where he's standing.

And the feet, think about it as a block, so shaped like that. That's the basics of it. So thinking about looking at this sort of shape, that sort of shape, and that sort of shape, and that sort of shape.

And, in the male characters, it's a lot more straight lines; female characters are a lot more curvy, flowing sort of lines. But, very straight blocky sort of lines for male characters. Coming over here, just coming in from the shoulder, we have the pecs muscles, pectorals.

The collarbone comes in here. Just round off the shoulders a little bit. Think about where the waist comes in.

Now, take down the arms. Think about where the muscles fall. Now, the elbow comes to just about the edge of the ribs.

And, the male torso is a little longer than the female torso. We'll go into that another time. The arm extends to just about, just before halfway down the thigh, including the hand.

Just going to draw a basic shape with the hand, showing you the underside. There's the thumb coming off that way. The male hands are much more rugged, blocky.

Think about the fact that the fingers of the hand of the hand actually goes, if I'm drawing the back of the hand here, it's that sort of shape that the knuckles like that, the thumb there, more than that sort of shape with everything the same level. Okay, coming up to the head, taking this dividing line here, doing another line across there, marking out where the eyes will be. That's your eye line there.

Also, the middle of the ear. Hairline, just about there. Nose line, mouth line just an eye's distance between the eyes.

Bear in mind, I'm just going to mark this in very peripheral lines, because I'm just showing you the very basics here. Just very simple check shape for the nose. Simple shape for the mouth.

A slightly curved line, just to show the shape of the lips. Just sort out the shape of that jaw there, the brow line. And just thin