Overall Rating: DSynopsis:
A manga drawing instructional book. A terrible one. Like many manga drawing references, what it lacks in instruction, it makes up for in panty shots. It has dozens of images and characters, but overall, it has no reference value for an artist unless you are just planning to copy their characters and poses directly. Even the twelve pages of Photoshop coloring advice in the back aren't very good compared to the free tutorials found online.
The Monster Book of Manga makes the classic drawing book mistake - it makes artistic leaps from skeletal armature to fully-formed drawing, lacking instructional detail. Example: Little Girl with Cyberpet- the entirety of the instructions for drawing the little girl are "Give her a thin body, big feet and hands" and shows a completed girl drawing. An improvement would be details about drawing hands and feet, handshapes, placements, and relating those to the intended character's expression. Really, anything other than how to re-create the exact image on the page would be nice.
The "Little Girl" is accompanied in the book by several others, including Scantily Clad Cybergirl, Scantily Clad Ninja, and Scantily Clad Volleyball Player. These girls all share the same wide-eyed expression that is supposed to be vapid seduction. Mostly, they look sad. Sad that their book is not useful.
1 comment:
I disagree. This book is definitely not for your average beginning manga artist, but it has quality instructions. If you read the beginning of the book it explains everything that the tutorial says. overall it is about an 8 out of 10
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