Cartoon and manga
Cartooning and manga simplify reality and exaggerate what matters — emotion, action and character. Strong fundamentals make stylisation more convincing, not less.
Step by step
- Design characters from simple shapes with clear silhouettes — you should be able to recognise them filled in solid black.
- Choose head-to-body proportions for the tone: about 2–3 heads for cute or 'chibi' styles, 5–7 for typical shonen or shojo figures, more for elegant or heroic characters.
- Build an expression sheet: happy, sad, angry, surprised, worried. Eyebrows and mouth do most of the work.
- Draw a turnaround (front, three-quarter, side, back) to keep the design consistent.
- For comics, read panels left to right in Western comics; traditional Japanese manga reads right to left. Vary panel size to control pace.
- Ink with confident lines, varying weight; use screentone, hatching or flat greys for value.
Common mistakes
- Designs too complex to draw consistently across many panels.
- Expressions that are too subtle at small size.
- Every panel drawn at the same distance and angle.
Practice exercise
Design one character: silhouette, turnaround, six expressions, and a four-panel strip.