Amazing Vector Tutorials

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It doesn’t matter if you have no artistic ability whatsoever, with a little knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, you’ll be able to employ the methods outlined in the tutorials below to create a diverse range of weird and wonderful cartoon characters. From homicidal monkeys and pirates, to anime and manga, we’ve covered the bases. Pick a tutorial and follow the instructions to make your masterpiece.

p/s: The titles will bring you to the full tutorials. Have a nice clicks. Huhuu...enjoy practice!!!^^

1. Vector Pirate

You can create your own pirate in no time with this easy-to-follow tutorial. Begin by sketching your pirate on paper, trace with Adobe Illustrator, edit and add details from the SpoonGraphics Punk Vector Pack.

2. Fluffy Monster

Turn a couple of basic shapes into your own not-so-scary monster, using little more than simple gradients and the Pathfinder palette on Adobe Illustrator.

3. Freddy the Fish

Use similar techniques employed in the Vector Pirate tutorial to create a really cool cartoon fish. Again, the process starts with a hand drawn sketch. Use the sketch provided if your artistic skills are not up to scratch.

4. Twisted Monkey

Use Photoshop and Illustrator to create a knife-wielding monkey, or a similar cartoon character. You’ll need paper, a pencil, a scanner, Silhouette (an Illustrator plugin) and a bit of patience.

5. Anime Colouring

Learn how to layer colours for perfect anime skin and hair tones. Start with the skin base, adding further shading, reds and highlights.

6. Vectorizing Anime

You may, or may not be pleased to hear that this tutorial requires little artistic ability. By following this guide, you’ll be able to turn a great image from an anime comic into a vibrant and defined vector image.

7. Guide to Creating Vector Characters

So much work has gone into creating this in-depth guide, which advises you through every step in the vector cartoon character design process, from choosing your character, to drawing it, working it into a vector image, and adding fine details to bring it to life.

8. Guide to Manga Illustration

This comprehensive guide talks you through drawing manga by hand as well as applying the appropriate colouring techniques and soft shading.

9. Circle Vector Tutorial

Use nothing more than a coloured circle to create a simple, but funky character, that’s bursting with personality in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

10. Vector Eyes

Create beautiful, sparkling eyes with this simple tutorial. Learn how to colour graphics in Photoshop with no outlines.

11. Anime Eyes

Enlarged eyes serve as a focal point in many anime cartoons, so it’s vital that they look perfect. This tutorial teaches a completely different method to the one above, but results are just as stunning.

12. Anime Big Hair

Hair is very easy to draw, but very difficult to draw well. Realistic hair can make or break a vector cartoon. This tutorial shows you how to colour and shade hair in Photoshop. The methods are very different to those used on skin.

13. Create a Character

This 3-part tutorial teaches all you need to know to create a detailed cartoon character. It shows you how to sketch your character, as well as the best layering, shadowing and lighting techniques.

TA Manga-ka Guide

I stumbled upon this when I log in Deviantart.com just now hehehe.....
Hopefully with this guides we can make use of it in order to draw the ultimate super duper manga. Kindly double click in order to enlarge the image >D<

p/s: manga-ka = cartoonist

ref: http://www.tensionacademy.net/

Get to know MANGA

By Jenn and Tiffany Ostrowski

I don't have much time so explain this quickly! What's manga?
Japanese comics.

Okay, that was too quick.
"Manga" roughly means "comics" in Japanese. A single manga volume is around the size of a paperback novel and a couple hundred pages long. A single manga series can have dozens of volumes.

Dozens of volumes?
Manga stories can take many volumes to tell which makes them more like novels. Some common plot themes include giant robots, apocalyptic worlds, vampires, and magical lands. No men in capes and tights here.

What? No tights?
Unlike in American comics, there are no tights, x-ray vision, or beefed-up superheroes (at least not usually) in manga. Instead, a typical manga hero is the skinny young prodigy, especially in shojo and shonen manga.

Shojo and shonen?
"Shojo" means "girl" in Japanese and "shonen" means "boy", so "shojo manga" are manga geared primarily toward girls and "shonen manga" are manga geared toward boys. Although they're aimed at boys and girls up to age 18 they can also appeal towards an older audience.

So what's hentai manga?
Hentai manga contain sexually explicit content aimed at an adult crowd. If you're looking for hentai you'll have to go elsewhere. We stick to shonen and shojo on this site.

Then what are manwha and manhua?
While manga are Japanese comics, "manwha" are Korean comics and "manhua" are Chinese comics, both of which are similar to manga. We have info and reviews on this site covering manwha and manhua but focus mostly to manga because it's more common.

Anything else I should know?
The Japanese read right to left so manga are read right to left. Most companies who translate and publish manga in the US leave the manga in this "authentic" format while other companies will "flip" the manga so that it reads left to right.

You mean a manga is read backwards?
Reading a manga backwards can be strange at first but it gets easier the more you do it.

Are manga rated?
Like with video games, manga are rated for what age audience they're appropriate. The five ratings are All Ages, Youth (age 10+), Teens (age 13+), Older Teens (age 16+), and Mature (age 18+). Different publishers have different ideas of how to rate manga so it's a good idea to check a manga out before buying.

Okay, I know what manga is now, but what's anime?
"Anime" is Japanese animation and manga's animated counterpart. Usually a manga series is made first then an anime series is made off of the original manga series. If you find a manga series you like, check around and see if it's been turned into an anime.

Are you done yet?
Yep, all done. That's the basics of manga. Go get a manga and start reading--you're on your way to manga fandom!

Tutorial Books

Sometimes you can also refer you favorite comic artists. In Malaysia, for my personal drawing references I prefer drawing done by Ben & Kaoru (GEMPAK magazine) these guys have manga-look drawing style and have very simple artworks. Have a read "Fatal Chaos", "Le Gardinie", "Two Pisces" (kawai huh^^) as well as... "143", "Helios Eclipse" (simple and coloring).

If you really wanna start learning the correct way on how to make manga, you can find the tutorial books at MPH bookstore. I found many of them in MPH MidValley (Malaysia). Its costly expensive by the way. Here are lists of books that could proves helpful:

• Plot and Structure, By James Scott Bell--Being able to create a good story to draw is just as important as drawing. Although this book is for writers it's also helpful for anyone who wants to make a story regardless of media.
• Dynamic Characters, By Nancy Kress--Again, this is a book for writer's but it's information can apply to anyone who wants to create characters for a story.
• Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner, By Claire Watson Garcia--If you've never drawn before, this is a good book to get you started. It's not directly related to drawing manga but will teach you the necessary basics of drawing.
• Perspective Drawing Handbook, By Joseph D'Amelio--Before you draw backgrounds you need to understand perspective. This book shows ways to create perspective in a scene without a lot of complicated math.
• How to Draw Anime and Game Characters, By Tadashi Ozawa--After you've got some basic drawing skills, this is a good book to help focus those skills specifically on drawing anime/manga characters. It says "anime" but can be used for learning to draw manga characters.
• Draw Your Own Manga, All the Basics, By Haruno Nagatomo--I like this book because it explains the general manga making process beyond just drawing, such as the inking and screen toning processes. It also gives a lot of helpful tips on traditional manga making methods.
• Comic Artist's Photo Reference: People and Places, By Buddy Scalera - This book gives you reference pictures of actual people in many different poses. It also comes with a CD that has extra reference pictures on it.

Drawing Tips

RULE #1:

DEFINE YOUR SPACE, THEN DIVIDE IT. Let me say that again. DEFINE YOUR SPACE, THEN DIVIDE IT. What this means in practice is that you draw from the outside in. The first lines you sketch should define the outer edges of your subject. Then you delineate the various surfaces and features within this form. For example, never start a drawing of a face by drawing one eye, then the other, then the nose, hairline, mouth ect. (sound familiar to anyone? Textbook margin doodles!) Instead, you draw the basic form of the head, then set the forms and features within that context.

RULE #2:

SKETCH YOUR SUBJECT USING SIMPLE SHAPES. Anything can be drawn using only blocks, cylinders, and spheres. This is particularly true of figure drawing, but it applies no matter what your subject. Whether you're drawing a Ferrari, a face, or a hand wielding a plasma pistol, break it down into parts and sketch them as simple shapes first.

RULE #3:

ALWAYS USE A RUBBER. Eraser, that is. I used to think that erasing lines was like cheating. Ha! That delusion held me back for years. Sketching and erasing guide lines is an integral part of drawing. Even the pros do it. In fact, the pros do it a lot...

Well, I learn one best keyword here "make it simple"...what ever you draw make sure its simple. Simple comes when you finalized your artwork with 'inking'. Keep this in mind!!! I observed many friends' artwork at Deviantart.com, some of them did well the inking part but the messy art line was there. They put unnecessary line on their character...too bad huh (-_-)'''


I tell y'all my understanding about drawing a manga or comic...

1) Sketching
- when u put your imagination of images onto your drawing paper using pencil/carbon

2) Inking
- This part comes when you draw over your sketched artworks with ink

3) Toning
- when you put shading on your artwork either manually or digital..

4) Editing
- Same goes with proofreading but in drawing term we used editing if I'm not mistaken

Manga VS Comic

After this I'll bring you guys a few short introductory tutorial about making manga and will add step-by-step tutorials afterward. Not necessarily going through all the steps, I'll skip the less important part. Before we proceed further...let me explain the different terminology used between "comic" and "manga"...

Manga is usually used to refer to the comics and drawn pictures. These tend to exaggerate reality to a large degree. They often have more detail than Anime, because Anime as a moving picture doesn’t need the detail to demonstrate movement. "Manga" as a term used outside Japan refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan. In other words, manga is the Japanese word for comics and cartoons. There is a big difference in art styles between Manga, which is more stylized (exaggerated) and American comics, which tend to be more "realistic". There are also quite a few serious differences between the two types of comics. Some of the differences, just to mention a few of them are the cost, creation, diverse audience and genres, presentation and even size.

The creation of Manga as well as its presentation is quite different than American Comics. Manga is printed in black-and-white format while American comics are the majority of the time in full color. Also, when you look at a graphic novel or Manga you will notice a difference in the size. Manga is frequently smaller than traditional American comic books, usually digest-size and roughly half to one-third the size of American comics. But where the American comics are generally thin like a small magazine, running about 32 pages, Manga comic books are thick and can be hundreds of pages in length!

In page count, Manga is quite similar to graphic novels, which are often just collections of the ongoing American comics. But unlike American graphic novels, which are usually just a collection of monthly comics in a single unified story or story arc, Manga books are often apart of an even bigger story and a complete Manga storyline can run thousands of pages.

Another difference between traditional American comics is that mainstream American comics are often created in a sort of assembly-line fashion. They have a writer (story), a penciler (initial sketch), inker (uses a pen to ink over the sketch), letterer (adds dialog) and a colorist (colors the inked sketch). Most Manga books are done by a single creator, who combines all those chores (except coloring).

Also Manga story lines usually move at a much quicker pace. Due to the high page count, one reads a Manga book at an accelerated pace. Manga books almost always have fewer panels and less dialogue (rambling) per page than American comic books. The price for Manga is also more than the average comic book and a bit more than a standard paperback novel, the small size of Manga and black-and-white printing rather than full color keeps the cost down. The lack color is made up when you consider the story development that it'll have with the amount of pages it has.

In Japan, Manga is not viewed as just for kids unlike the American stereotype. There pretty much is a Manga for everyone. With that being stated there are three main genres in Japanese Manga: Shonen Manga (boy's comics), Shojo Manga (girl's comics) and Hentai (adult comics).

Shonen Manga is pretty much comics that are primarily action and/or adventure geared. If you'd like to view some examples of that genre, I'd recommend "Bleach" and/or "Full Metal Alchemist". Shojo Manga is for the opposite sex; they are often about relationships and/or love interests. Please note that even though a particular genre is geared towards a certain audience it's not limited to just that audience (unless otherwise stated). Finally Hentai Manga, I won't delve much into this since it is primarily for adults and NOT suitable for children (just to be safe in case a child is reading this). Anyways, Hentai Manga is sometimes sexually explicit and/or adult-themed. In other words, do not purchase this for your child.

Let's get started

Assalamualaikum to muslim and konnichiwa to non muslim. Heehe...Hii there wallaa~ Welcome to Comic Classroom. Click what ever you want^^I’am going to assume that as you’ve found this site, you’re interested to learn drawing. Here is my blog and you will find the drawing tutorials that people of the world have written up.

The reason why I made this blog is because I wanna develop my ultimate drawing skill...improving, then publish my own comic books and become one of successful freelance comic artist in Malaysia. Since I'am a fan of anime and manga, I prefer "manga" drawing style (^_^)'''. This doesn't means that I'am not supporting Malaysian style of drawing, but its not wrong to do something we like is it?

I apologize if I'm not delivering the tutorial I supposed to coz I am not a good searcher and still looking for many drawing tutorials out there. Some we have to pay for the books, videos, or links. But most importantly, I can share with y'all "Manga" drawing techniques that I've found myself. A large part of the hobby is drawing your own. There’s more than enough material out there that you can use for inspiration, including the tutorials itself...Hopefully all the the tutorials I've found could improve my drawing and at the same time proves useful for you guys too...