Day 95: Doug Hills' "Manga Studio for Dummies"

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner'ish
Pages:	384
Published:	2008
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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I'm not dead, really.  I've been working my way through Manga Studio for Dummies and trying to walk through the menus at the same time.  The short books with chapters dedicated to paper and pencils types were kind of low hanging fruit, so from here on out it's going to be pretty difficult to start and finish a book in the same week.  Scheduling notes aside, on to the review.

I'm actually a fan of the "For Dummies" franchise.  I've used several of their books to pass advanced IT certification exams.  Don't let the title fool you though.  These books often start off really slow and then dump tons of information on you.  This one was no exception to that pattern.  It would have been nice if they skipped over the guide for opening a new file (Click file, click new) or saving a file (click file, click save).

When you get through the really low level introduction the guide provides a number of useful shortcuts and recommendations that I've found extremely useful.  For example, my Wacom tablet doesn't allow me to rotate the screen.  When I use the twist gesture it gives me the rotate icon, but the page stays still.  I found the hot key Shift + Space bar and mouse or stylus to rotate reading through one of the early chapters.

If I had to break it down, I'd say 30% or so common knowledge, 40% I could apply right away, and the remaining material is just out of my league at this point.  So I plan to revisit this book in the future to lock down all the useful tips I can.

Day 41: Tutorials by Mark Crilley

I've gotten a little carried away with doing gesture drawings since I dug up an old charcoal pencil.  The last few days my 20 minute warm up has ended up running for almost the whole hour I set aside for drawing.  Which isn't bad at all, since observation is one of my weak areas.

On the other hand, I still like to soak up some of the expertise that's floating out there and since I looked over one of Mark Crilley's books on Monday, I thought it would be a good time to skim through his YouTube channel again.

If you check out his How to Draw playlist, you'll find 217 tutorials and that doesn't even include the other videos like his realism challenges.  At this point I've literally watched less than 2% of the how to playlist.

One of the things I really appreciate about Mark's tutorial is that he considers the length of the video and uses time lapse editing to skip through the time consuming parts that might not shed much light on the topic at hand.


I followed along on his first ear and hands tutorials for a quick refresher.

How to Draw an Ear [HTD Video #1]

There's something about drawing the ear that's still challenging for me.  Even when it's reduced to cartoon simplicity I struggle with nailing the symmetry between one side of the head and the next.  It's especially difficult when drawing atypical ears like you would find on goblins or aliens since you don't really see those out in the real world.


How to Draw Hands [HTD video #3]

Drawing hands is still hard, but it's starting to come along now that I have basic shapes to build with to establish the general location and motion of the hand and fingers.  I still need a lot of practice to draw them on the fly, but at this point I feel much more confident drawing from reference and that's a good first step.

Day 39: Mark Crilley's "Mastering Manga: How to Draw Manga Faces" [Kindle Edition]

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner
Tone:	Step-by-step
Pages:	135
Published:	2012
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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My Opinion:

I'm going to err on the side of caution here and recommend that you view this two minute video on Mark Crilley's Realism Challenge #3 if this is the first time you're hearing of him.  Mark Crilley is the artist / creator of "Brody's Ghost" and a number of drawing guides, including "Mastering Manga, How to Draw Manga Faces" which I actually knocked out in a single sitting.

I wanted to highlight the realism challenge so that less people will rush to judge the book by it's cover and assume his artistic range is limited to one particular style.  As an added benefit, you can find a ton of tutorials on his YouTube channel at markcrilley.

The book includes 20 hair styles for both girls and guys, 100 manga eyes, 12 common expressions, and front / three quarter / profile head shots for young, old, heavy set, and child type characters.  It's a little on the brief side, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the step-by-step lessons provided if you're leaning towards a manga influenced style.