How To Draw Manga Creatively Off-And-Online?

Let me ask you this. Do you have the passion for drawing manga? If so, are you willing to invest your time and money on the tools and resources that will help you be a manga pro even without experience or formal qualications? If your answers are yes, then read on as I am going to show you how to draw manga creativity off-and-online. Firstly of all, you must have read and watched a lot of manga comics and animation. If you really liked manga, you should have formed a mental mindmap subsciously on how most manga characters look like, their common characteristics, typical behaviour and the settings around them. Not just humans but animals, aliens and even robots. You should have a rough story in place which is often the case if you have critics regarding the story and ending you have just seen. At first glance, you might not understand what I am talking about but that is what I have been doing for the first 15 years of my life before I really started sketching my first manga at 16. That was in 1990. I bought a few Robotech comics and one mega graphic book featuring all the 200 characters, robots and vehicles at a bookstore recommended by cousin. But because I have greater passion than my cousin in not just watching but developing my story and own characters. My point here if you have similiar passion, you will certainly feel and think exactly the same. The next thing I do is buy an A4 size drawing block. Then I started drawing. But because my foundation is not strong, I copied some of the characters from the graphic book. The first character I have drawn is Lynn Minmei - the young girl who brought the downfall of the alien Zentraedi race with her enchanted songs in Macross. Then I draw Rick Hunter, his sworn big brother Roy Fokker, Lisa Hayes and other characters. My objective here is to get a feel of what it is like to draw manga characters. Subsequently I developed my own style after having seen other animation series like Akira, Gundam, Patlabor and Silent Mobius. Those artistes such as Haruhiko Mikimoto of Macross, Yoshiyuki Tomino of Gundam and Kia Asamiya of Silent Mobius all have their distinctive styles and trademarks. But in contrast to most manga drawing books, I did not start out with circles, squares, rectangles and triangles. I used my memory and impression to draw those characters. The result was they looked too simple and not as sophisticated as what I saw in comic books. It was then that I bought books that taught me how to draw manga. Using the techniques and strategies they taught together with what I saw, liked and remembered those particular characters, I found myself progressing much quickier and faster since I did this every single day regardless of how busy and tired I am during work lunch hours and after work. Then from characters, I switched to drawing machines like robots, vehicles and animals. It was from then something hit me. During primary three at nine, I knew a friend who was extremely good at drawing robots. But he did not want to share his secret with me nor with anyone else. Yet seeing him draw then and myself drawing now, I kind of felt a deja vu and an ah ha moment. It was from that moment I started creating my first comic story based on what I drew. With that said, here are my 9 basic steps on how to draw manga creativity offline. 1. Read plenty of manga books and observe the characters styles by different artistes. 2. Bought them as references as well as materials and tools you needed like merchanical pencils, markers, rulers, compasses, projectors and plain A4 drawing block of paper. 3. Copied from manga books your favourite characters to get a first hand feel of drawing manga. 4. Draw your own characters on fresh set of blank A4 paper without copying but just using what you remembered in Step 3. 5. Improvise your characters with references from books that teach you how to draw manga. 6. Scan and made multiple copies of your drawings in case your original drawngs get lost or spoilt 7. Get poster and colour pencils and books that teach you how to colour. 8. Add colour to what you draw. 9. Rinse and repeat the whole process to machines, animals and environmental settings. 10. Create a story and comic based on everything you drew. This is offline methods. Online wise, there are plenty of video tutorials that you can find in sites like Youtube. But if you are really serious about making this not just your passion but your career, you might want to invest in manga courses and software to automate if you do not like to draw manually or find it too tedious. But in terms of having a strong foundation, it is still the same. You need to have a passion for reading manga comics, graphic books, watching animation series, learning and drawing. This is what I experienced and how I mastered my artwork. I hope you can do the same and achieve similiar results.