How to Draw Anime/Manga Tutorial: Drawing the Body (Male)

This is an hand drawn tutorial that is also written by me. For more tutorials visit http://alvinsart.wordpress.com. Finally, we'e come to the tutorial you've been waiting for. How to draw the body! The body has a very complex structure, but in drawing, we must remember that everything can be broken down into geometric shapes. A mug becomes a cylinder, an apple a sphere and a laptop turns into two adjacent rectangular prisms.

The human body can also be broken down. The human body turns into a series of joined spheres, cylinders and triangles. When drawing anything, turning them into symbol geometric shapes before adding detail will help your drawings appear more realistic and believable.

Anyway lets get going!

Step one: Shape

If all you can draw is stick figures, then you're on your way to drawing a human body. Starting off with a stick figure will help you get the right pose and proportions that you want.

When drawing a stick figure, you must remember the proportions. Check the Body Proportions tutorial for more information. Also because we are drawing a male, remember to make the shoulders roughly two heads wide.

There is not really much to explain for step one. Just draw a stick figure in the pose and proportions that you desire.

Step two: Volume

This is also a very basic step. If you were reading before, the human body is made up of cylinders, spheres etc. This is where all those geometric shapes come in. If you want a fat person, you will draw larger shapes than if you were to draw a thin person.

One thing to remember is to try and avoid drawing straight lines. There are no straight lines in the human body. Everything is curved.

Also, because we are drawing the male body, make sure that the waist is almost as wide as the shoulders.

So that's all to this step. Just add volume to your stick figure.

Step three: Anatomy

Here's where things start to get more complicated. We are going to turn our simple geometrical shapes into the human body.

First off, never draw a character too muscular. If you ever read Superman or Batman or any other western comic, you will notice that the superheroes have huge, ridiculous muscles that are carefully defined and detailed.

But if you drew Superman in anime/manga form, his muscles would be seriously toned down. Also he wouldn't have a square jaw, his hair and eyes would be different and he wouldn't have as much shadow.

This is one of the major differences between manga and western comics.

The second things, is that have you ever noticed that almost every single male in anime has a six pack? So have I. If only it was true in reality.

When drawing a character, you don�â'¬™t have to draw every single muscle in the body, but you have to at least define some of the major muscles.

Some of the major muscles include:

-Biceps

-Calves

-Abdominal muscles (Six Pack)

-Pecs (Chest muscles)

Because this step is labelled anatomy, you will have to draw the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hair on the head, as well as draw the hands and feet properly. (which will all be in following tutorials, except for eyes, because we already have done a tutorial on eyes).

I highly advise you to get a book on the body, which will help you draw humans a lot better. Of course, you can go to the gym for a year, then just look in the mirror when you draw but you'll have to be naked, and if someone walks in on you, you''l have difficulties explaining. :)

Step Four: Clothes

Ummm, how to explain this... just draw clothes. Hats, shirts, jackets, shoes, basically anything you want. A good idea is to look at costumes on tv, or look at fashion magazines, or even watch anime to generate some ideas on how you can dress your characters.

Also, remember to add accessories to help make you're character special. You can see I've added a necklace and a couple of bracelets on my guy.

This is also the step where I finish all the detail, such as the shopping bags.

Note that I tried to draw the left shopping bag behind the guy's leg, and the right shopping bag in front of the guy's other leg. This is to add depth. You can see it more clearly in the next step.

Step Five: Shadows

This is where you can put your toning skills and techniques into use. But before you do that, you have the option of putting some shadows in black. This gives your drawing a lot of strength.

When drawing shadows, always choose a direction where the light will come from. This is called the Source of Light. For this picture, the source of light comes from near the top right.

After you have chosen the position for our source of light, you will need to use judgement to decide which areas will be shadowed and which areas will be highlighted.

Step Six: Final

This is where you clean up your lines, add a background if you want to, and colour it in if you want to.

This is the first time I've tried to colour something in and do a background using Photoshop, so please be a little forgiving. I'm did it on a laptop, with a touchpad (which is terrible for using in Photoshop).

There you are, you have now drawn a male human body. Congratulations.

I am not going to lie to you. Drawing humans takes a lot of practise and experimentation. But over time it will become more familiar to you and you will be able to draw humans a lot better and a lot faster.

So practise, practise and practise (like what I do doing Math's lessons)! Try drawing short people, tall people, fat people and thin people. Also try many different poses.

I hope you have learnt something reading this tutorial Bye for now!