Book Review: How to Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style: Volume 4 All About Perspective

Submitted by  Teoh Yi Chie on  April 27, 2011 - 11:37 am

How to Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style: Volume 4 All About Perspective - 01

Volume 4 of How to Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style covers perspective drawing, from the basics to the advanced. The book's 200 pages. It teaches one, two and three point perspective as in use for drawing buildings, streets and interiors. There are lots of tips on dealing with tricky situations, like sloping roads, streets that curve away. Sometimes it can get very detailed and go into tiling, window frames and stairs.

You'll also learn how to place characters in their environment, be it standing, sitting, doing stuff or interacting with other characters. The book also deals with choosing the angle of view, depending on what is required in the story.

Right at the end is a good tutorial on creating background drawings with the use of photo reference. It's actually about tracing but it also shows how to correct the perspective if the traced image looks strange.

The downside of the book is perhaps how the information is arranged, the sequence can be hard to follow. It's like a sketchbook with drawings and sketches all over the place. It's not too much of a big deal. If you want a more structural book, you can check out Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up.

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This book is available at all Page One bookstores, and should be stocked by Basheer Graphic Books also.

If you know German, they have the whole series in German and available on Amazon.de

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It seems that the series was originally published by Graphic-Sha Publishing but now out of print and selling at crazy prices on Amazon. Page One is now publishing the books now.

This book is available at all Page One bookstores, and should be stocked by Basheer Graphic Books also.

There's a German edition on Amazon.de

Tags
manga
perspective drawing
page one publishing
how to draw manga series
manga drawing
hikaru hayashi

Comments

fredb (not verified) Thu, 28 Apr 2011 - 08:39

I emailed Basheer Graphic Books and they say they are out of print. I assume they are not aware of the Page One editions? These books are damn hard to source outside of Asia. Managed to get book 1 at least so should be content with that! ;-)

Page One Publishing (not verified) Thu, 28 Apr 2011 - 14:59

Hello!
If you live in Singapore you can get the books from Page One Vivo City. All the books from the series are available at all the Page One Bookstores in Asia.

Series 4 is the latest and is just out in March 2011.

fredb (not verified) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 - 07:37

Well I also emailed Page One last week and they said they don't sell outside of Asia.

Anyone in Asia willing to do a group buy for the rest of us?

camino1961 (not verified) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 - 07:52

A group buy sounds great!
I got so desperate I just purchased a German version.
I may not be able to read deutsche, but the images are self explanatory.
If a group buy is done, I'm willing to purchase it again in English.

camino1961 (not verified) Sun, 08 May 2011 - 03:06

Just purchased my copy of :How to Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style: Volume 4 All About Perspective". It is awesome! This book and Jason Cheeseman-Meyer's "Vanishing Point" cover almost everything a person needs to know about perspective. The only other thing I can recommend is Scott Robertson's 1st DVD: Volume 1, basic perspective form drawing. I highly recommend these three items.

All the best,
camino1961

Wenny (not verified) Mon, 16 May 2011 - 10:13

I've been searching for this book for ages!! Where did you manage to buy it? I just checked Page One and Basheer Graphics, but no luck. =(

camino1961 (not verified) Mon, 16 May 2011 - 10:37

I remembered that a local comic book shop stocked the "How to Draw Manga" series. On a hunch I decided to visit the store. When I looked on the shelf, along with other books in the series I saw one copy left. I got lucky. It "is" a great book.

George (not verified) Sun, 17 Jul 2011 - 14:15

This series looks great, but not sure if they're worth going through the trouble of tracking them down. Hopefully I'll run into the books at comic con. We shall see :)

Joanna (not verified) Sat, 05 Nov 2011 - 20:08

Hi, is this still being published? I asked our local bookstore to order this for me but they said the book is already out of print. :(

Jared (not verified) Sat, 26 Nov 2011 - 14:26

I was charged $60 in shipping the 4 books together. Although, in the email they sent me it sounded as though there were other options should I not be satisfied. I swallowed, because the 4 books plus shipping was still cheaper than 1 of the books on Amazon, ha. It took roughly 1 week to arrive.

Alexa (not verified) Sat, 30 Jun 2012 - 04:49

I like this books! I want to get them but I do live in South America and those books are not sold here, I tried to contact the page one editorial to order them but they give me the price in Singapoure Dollars and I don't know how many it will cost, I searchead for them in amazon but them are so expensive! even the used ones sometimes cost much more than the new ones and I do not have experience in buying online, I wonder how many USD is 38.20 singapour dollars-

camino1961 (not verified) Sat, 30 Jun 2012 - 09:51

38.20 Singapore dollars is $30.132 American Dollars. Also, I asked them to send me instructions on how to pay through paypal. It took a couple of tries so don't give up. Eventually they will give you the instructions you need.

Book27 (not verified) Wed, 01 May 2013 - 17:26

I have never seen such expensive book. $1,074.09

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