How to Draw Anime

There seems to be a lot of confusion between anime and manga. Anime is the Japanese word which means animation, which can be any short or long animated movie. Do not confuse it with manga, which means Japanese comic book. So, when people say how to draw manga, or how to draw anime, they mean the same thing. When it comes to drawing anime and manga, still there are some technical differences. But, the basic idea is the same. Manga is generally more detailed, but anime or Japanese animated film characters are kept a little bit simpler.

Learn to Draw Anime Characters?

• Alright, the first thing you need to do to learn drawing anime is observe. If you are a total beginner to sketching, then you will have to observe even more. The best way to do this is, to get some Manga comic books and look at them. You can also play some anime on computer, and play and pause it in different close up scenes. This will give you a pretty good idea of how the face and other body parts look. With these steps you can also learn how to create your own anime character, for this you will need to place your facial features in anime style.
• You will observe the manga characters have a head where the chin is pointed, lot of stylish haircuts, extreme expressions at sometimes, and neutral expressions at most times. They also have big eyes, with pupils showing off, and tiny noses.
• Now, it is time to take the observations to the paper. Grab a sketching plain paper, some pencils, eraser and sharpener. Then start drawing an oval for the face, and join the lower half of jaw and chin to this oval. This is the basic guideline for the face. If you want to draw a female, then the face will be more slender. For male character, the jaw will be shown.
• After you are done with this, draw horizontal outlines where you will be placing the eyes, nose and mouth. Place the eyes, draw them big with pupils showing off. You can look at a manga comic book, to see how the eyes look. Then draw a simple small line for the nose, and shade it at the inside angle a little. For the mouth, just draw a simple horizontal line, below the nose, and above the chin. There you are done with most of the face. Now, on the oval top outline, start drawing the hair, with sharp edges, and then draw lot of bangs on the forehead. Don't go overboard with the hair, let some eyes be visible. The hair will be different for girl and guy character, so make sure you pick the appropriate hairstyle according to the gender.
• Once you are done with the face, start drawing the body. It will be good to take some drawing lessons, to learn about the human anatomy. Work in forms, as this will make it easier to draw. For example, use rectangles for male torso, use cylinders for arms, ovals for palms, triangles for feet, etc. You will need to study anatomy while drawing the torso of male and female. As males have triangle shaped torso, while female's have an hourglass shape.
• Once you are done drawing the body forms, start adding details. But, don't add too much details too, keep the drawing simple. Then add the appropriate clothes according to the gender. You can also sketch a simple prop, for example a backpack for a school girl, and a katana for a Samurai.
• After you are done drawing, you can consider using pencil colors for coloring the anime character.

Do not be discouraged, if you didn't get the anime character drawing in the first go. Keep on practicing and surfing the internet for more tutorials. Video tutorials are the best, as they are easiest to understand. If you wish to take learning anime further then I would suggest you use Christopher Hart's book 'Manga for the Beginner'. So, good luck!