Before you start drawing here are some must know things:
Chibi[chee-bee] – An overly expressed character in a more cartoony form; their heads are huge and have stubby bodies and great big dramatic expressions.
Manga[mon-ga] – Means “comic book” in Japanese; people tend to think that anime and manga mean the same thing but they don’t.
Anime[anee-mea] – The cartoons that show on TV; anime only refers to the motion pictures NOT the comic books.
Realistic manga – The more real-looking manga with realistic-looking characters; they usually have longer faces and a whole lot more detail; their bodies are close to real proportion rather than the cartoony figures.
Cartoony figures – These are the figures that are really well…. cartoony. They don’t follow proportions as much as the other characters do but they are probably the easiest ones to draw due to their lack of detailing. Plus there is soooooo many characters that can fit the description of cartoony unlike the realistic manga characters in which not many fit in.
TOOLS
I understand that sometimes you can’t acquire all the basic tools for drawing manga but these are very low priced items of good quality!!!
Pencils…
Mechanical – These pencils are great for drawing and finalizing your art work of any category but you should not use it for sketching out your first guide lines because of its thin lead. It tends to be hard to erase. I am not saying that you absolutely should not use this but wait till you are finalizing details that way you don’t have a whole lot of eraser marks.
Regular – These would be your best bet. They are cheap and great for doing guide lines they erase well the only problem is the sharpening it is a pain in the butt, but they are worth it.
Erasers…
Kneading Eraser – Everyone loves these but I prefer pink eraser or some other eraser. This all depends what you’re erasing and how big of a mess you want to erase but all in all kneading erasers are great for cleaning up unwanted smudges.
Paint Brush – I know this sounds funny but its great if you use pink erasers like me. I use a crayola paint brush because its loose and wont smudge my art work like my hand would.
Inking Pens – I love final pencil drawings but lets face it it will smudge and all that hard work won’t pay off so that’s why I use inking pens. They come in different sizes and in different shades.
Color Tone Marker – I don’t know what it’s actually called but any grey will work as long as it won’t bleed through your paper. I have multiple shades of grey but you need a light grey, grey, dark grey, and a black. Those are the basic shades.
Paper – I use my sketch book to doodle and practice my weak spots. DON’T EVER DRAW FINALIZED DRAWINGS IN A SKETCH BOOK!!! The reason is because your finalized drawings should be in loose paper like copy paper its cheap and great for it.
I hope I helped you get some ideas on what you will need to make your art professional. Good luck!
