Welcome to the second tutorial on drawing manga. As you know this is the second lesson in a series of manga tutorials.

In this lesson, we will cover the step step of drawing manga and that is to create the basic frame work of your manga character.

The First Step Of Drawing Manga

Our first step to drawing manga is rather simple but very important. We are going to draw super-simplified stick figures to represent your manga character.

To do this, use only circles and lines to form your figure. Use the circles to represent the joints at the elbows, ankles, knees, hips, wrists, and shoulders. And use the straight lines for the torso, neck, arms, and legs.

Stick Figures For Drawing Manga Examples

You figure should look something like this:

Now, once you got that down, it’s time to spice it up a little. Draw the stick figure in a variety of poses. Here’s some ideas: standing, kicking, sitting, or anything you’d like.

This might be hard at first so feel free to copy the drawings below and use them as practice. Draw them over and over again until you get comfortable and are ready to come up with your own.

Draw as many of these as you can.

By practicing this manga drawing exercise, you not only train yourself to become good at dynamic figure drawing but you’ll also get good at keeping your figures in proportion and realistically positioned.

You are also training yourself to use depth and perspective to make your poses more dynamic. (Depth and perspective will be cover in another drawing manga lesson latter on in the series.)

The Proportions Of Your Stick Figures

The size of the head of your figures are very important here as it will act as a measuring tool for the rest of the body. The length of the arms, legs, and torso will be based on the size of the head.

As a general rule, the average mange person will be 7 heads tall. Where as a noble and more graceful character would be 7 and a half heads tall. Taller still are the heroic characters, who will stand at 8 heads tall.

In manga a character’s physical attribute can vary greatly from super tall and slender to really short and stumpy. The diagram below will give you a feel of the different body types.

These manga tutorials are brought to you by Malcolm Matherson from MadAboutManga.com

If you like these free lessons and would like to learn more about drawing manga, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Malcolm’s “Mad About Manga” drawing e-course.

It is a surprisingly detail course that covers pretty much anything you’d need to know about how to draw manga.

(I was actually surprise to see how great it looks and how much it covers considering that it only cost a mere $37)

Click here to learn more about the “Mad About Manga” drawing e-course.

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