The Worst How-to-Draw-Manga Book Ever (yes, worse than that one)

     Apologies for starting off the blog with something rather clickbait-y. Most of my posts will be more informative, but I thought it'd be fun to lead with something lighthearted. Besides, this is a book I've wanted to share with the world for over a year now, and it's just on-topic enough to do so. So let's pop the tab and get into it, shall we?

Hey Kid, Wanna Draw Some Manga?

    If you were (or are) a creative child with an interest in Japanese media, chances are you've tried your hand at mimicking the typical "anime" art style at least once. But it's a confusing world out there for a clumsy-handed kid, with so many stylistic strata to draw inspiration from. Who will help steady that pencil and give you the guidance you need to start off strong?

    The correct answer is YouTube, but the answer many internet-deprived children received instead was the assortment of how-to-draw books published alongside the rise of Western weeb fandoms. These books varied wildly in the quality of both their instruction and the art itself. We've all seen the images by now...

    Don't let the easily memeable books warp your perception too much; there are a lot of quality anime and manga tutorial books out there. Most have much better art, and some manage to overcome the limits of their medium and impart that artistic knowledge onto the reader. But that's probably not too surprising, is it? Of course art books can get better than these.

    But is it possible for them to get worse?

    What if instead of poor art, the book contains next to none? What if instead of an amateur artist, it appears to have been authored by a total non-artist? What if instead of a charmingly ugly cover image, it has a completely stolen one?

    I can tell you, because I bought it. Let's take a look inside and learn to draw!

    (Oh and in case you're wondering, this has nothing to do with AI. Just wanted to get that out of the way so we can have fun here.)

First Impressions

    "How to Draw Manga: Improve at Manga Drawings in 60 Minutes - A Step-by-Step Manga Drawing Tutorial" (huff... puff...) was published as an eBook in 2017 by author Grace Clark. The first thing that sticks out about it, at least to me, is the cover. It's a striking illustration, which through attention to detail gives an impressive amount of depth to an otherwise dull expression.

    It's also completely stolen.

    If you're a Vocaloid fan like me, you probably recognized this as the illustration for noripy's song "Butterfly on My Right Shoulder," at least, a lineart-only version of it. But hold up, the artist for that piece's name is Akiakane, not Grace Clark. So what’s that all about? I couldn’t find any mention of a Grace Clark manga artist online besides this book, and Akiakane doesn’t list anything about it on her website (at least, she didn't last year when her website was still accessible).

    Two possibilities came to mind when I was first confronted with this conundrum of a cover: either the illustration was stolen and used without the artist's permission, or it was simply licensed in order to pass it off as this mysterious Ms. Clark's own work. That or Akiakane was moonlighting as an obscure white lady on the Barnes and Noble website. The speculation proved too much for my fragile frame to bear and I gave in, forking over $4.95 to see what lay beyond the surface.

    The answer was... not much.

    My first impression upon opening "How to Draw Manga: Improve whatever whatever" by Grace Clark was holy crap this thing is short. I can scroll through the whole thing with just a slide of my trackpad. Counting the covers, there’s only twenty-four pages to sift through. For comparison, the other drawing books on my shelf all have between sixty and two-hundred pages. And this is a big font too, we’re talking like two to three paragraphs per page. In terms of word count, this book has as much content as your average finals paper.

    But that’s not a huge deal for a drawing book, right? Obviously, the main attraction here is the visuals. Some really quality diagrams or demonstrations could easily compensate for the lack of verbal content. So how are those looking?

    In short- they're not. Not counting the cover illustration, there are nine visuals in this entire book. And when I say visuals, I don’t mean the full-page spreads you’ll see in other art books. I mean small little squares lazily plopped onto a Google Doc. These visuals include and are limited to:

A photo of a manga panel

Two photos of different artists

Three visuals from mangatutorials.com

A diagram from www.drawpaint.com

A diagram from howtodrawanim.blogspot.com [sic]

And a diagram from crunchyroll.com

(PS - if the images are hard to read, give 'em a click/download)

    You may notice that out of these nine, none of them are credited to Grace Clark. It’s no wonder I couldn’t find any manga artists by that name, because it doesn’t seem like she’s even an artist! At least she credits those image sources while using their work in her for-profit book. There’s no mention of Akiakane anywhere, confirming my suspicion that this cover art was stolen for the purposes of passing it off as the sort of instruction you’ll get from Ms. Clark herself. The failure to demonstrate any of her own artistic skill doesn't give much reason to trust the already paltry written content, does it?

    The author seemed to have anticipated this incredulity and came ready with an inspiring introduction. I recommend you read the following in your therapist's voice for an ideal experience:

    The ending of this introduction promises that "you're going to learn so much and gain so much valuable knowledge!" Well, good enough for me. I'm not getting that $4.95 back anyway.

10 Easy Tips To Make Your Rival Mangaka Hate You!!

    Chapter one is titled "Ten Quick and Easy Tips for Improving your Manga Drawing Skills," and consists of just that. They're weirdly lumped into arbitrary paragraphs, but I'm going to go ahead and put them in bulleted list form:

    1.) Study anatomy and how to draw the basic human body. 

    Starting off with the hard-hitting, mercilessly insightful advice. Learning to draw is, in fact, an important part of learning to draw. Jokes aside, this is a common thing I see in art tutorials and tip compilations: just telling people to learn anatomy. Like, yeah, that's obviously a useful thing to do, but I wouldn't call it a useful piece of advice. Obviously learning will help me improve, aren't you supposed to be helping me do that? Whatever.

    2.) Use lots of references.

    3.) Don't be afraid to use guidelines.

    4.) Take inspiration from many different artists.

    5.) Be open to criticism.

    6.) Don't listen to your friends and family.

    Wait, what? Okay, I get what she means to say here, but that phrasing is so funny. It's true that your loved ones probably won't be as brutally honest about your work as strangers might, but straight up don't listen to them? Seems like a slight overreaction. Sometimes my mom or my friends telling me my work is beautiful gives me the motivation I need to keep trying, even if I know it isn't as good as they say. The world of strangers is a cold and uncaring one, man...

    8.) Avoid taking shortcuts and skipping things you don't like to draw.

    Hold up- eight? I thought we were on seven. I guess we're just... skipping that one. Alright.

    10.) Don't draw the same things over and over.

    Number TEN? I thought we were on nine- or, eight rather. How did we skip TWO NUMBERS? There are EIGHT tips in the chapter titled "Ten Quick and Easy Tips for Improving your Manga Drawing Skills." I don't understand why this is. Just say eight, I'm not gonna get mad if you only advertise eight. I guess that explains the weird paragraph structure; it's probably meant to obscure the two phantom numbers in the shuffle.

    The advice itself is fine. Some of it won't apply to certain artists depending on their goals, but it's all fairly solid advice most online artists have heard dozens of times before. Except maybe the "ignore your family" one, that one's new to me.

Make it Make Sense

    If the first chapter is straightforward, mundane yet perfectly intelligible advice, the following few are anything but. Devoid of visuals, they take the doomed route of trying to teach you to draw entirely through text. And rather confused text at that. Take this anatomy tutorial, delivered in that same paragraphs-as-list format we grew to love last chapter:

    Not only do these instructions rely 0n you guessing the exact placement of body parts, it complicates the matter further by defining those parts in completely different ways. At first the waist is "where you would usually find the belly button," i.e. the stomach. Then two sentences later it's "where the legs and hips of a person come together," more like the hips. Why call those the same thing at all; just say "stomach" and "hips!"

    It doesn't help that this overview jumps around the body in a seemingly random order. First the belly button, then the elbow down to the arms, then the legs, then the "already finished head." It almost feels like it expects you to have a fully-drawn body which you are now making anatomical adjustments to. Tip one, I'm sorry I mocked you before. I would like to study anatomy. Anywhere else.

    The other walkthroughs aren't much easier to follow. Grab a pen and see if you can puzzle out how this mouth is supposed to look:

   

    If your eyes started drooping like our friend Ariel's up there, I don't blame you. It feels like trying to chart a parabola without graph paper. And hey, maybe you're good at geometry and these instructions worked out for you. You have my eternal admiration. I still think we can agree some step-by-step visual aids would be appropriate here.

Conclusion

    The book concludes by telling us all the things we've surely learned at this point. "Chances are, right now, you're feeling accomplished, relieved and very informed!" it says.

    Well, it isn't totally wrong. I feel slightly accomplished nearing the end of my first real blog post, and relieved I don't have to read this book anymore. But I feel informed too. I've been informed that just because the West's familiarity with and skill at replicating manga has increased doesn't mean there aren't those who will try and take advantage of those new to the hobby. I don't know if Grace Clark is an artist, or if she even actually exists, but I hope if she ever tries publishing again she'll be brave enough to use her own work. And maybe give my $4.95 to Akiakane.

    In conclusion, I rate this book 10/8 stars. Thanks for reading. 💜

Shoutout to Nocti, whose music I listened to while writing this! Check out her stellar Touhou albums here~