Comics, Manga & More
Anime / Manga Tutorials
By Cynthia Kirkeby
Dec 5, 2004, 3:08am

If you are into drawing Anime, this is the coolest stuff you could wish for.

My daughter, Nora brought this site to my attention, and what a find it is. Polykarbon is all about Anime. It is the creation of Patrick Shettlesworth, an XBox concept artist from Seattle.

The best part of the PolyKarbon is the tutorial section. Don’t be fooled by the index page, take a look at the lessons for the cool stuff. In this section you can learn the basics, work on expressions, study the forms and proportions of females, males, and mechs, create backgrounds, and work in Photoshop. These are awesome tutorials! Even I learned a trick or two.

Next, take a look at his gallery to get inspired. You won’t be able to help yourself. He also has some great images that you can download as backgrounds for your computer screen.

How to Draw Manga is another site with excellent tutorials. From hair and hairstyles to clothing drapes and folds, and characters. This is the next set of tutorials you should explore.

Blambot, is all about lettering and fonts for comics. Check out his tutorial on comic creation: Comics 101. After you read a bit on the art of comics, download one of his fonts of symbol packs to add to your work. A wonderful resource to make your comic lettering look as good as your drawings.

ArtBabe has an excellent step-by step presentation of what it takes to create comic strip. Be a little patient as you click through her tutorial. The pages come up rather slow, but once they are loaded in you can roll over the page number to review other pages.