Making Faces book review

Making faces, by 8fish

This book is done slightly different to other instruction books I have read because it has been created by and contributed to by an art collective known as 8fish. This means that there are 6 different artists giving their input into one theme which results in many unique techniques and insights into the genre of drawing expressions for comics and cartoons.

It begins as most of these types of books do:- with basic lessons on materials and equipment, drawing and sketching and inking and shading to name a few. It also offers some interesting techniques for drawing mouths, eyes and noses.

Section 2 covers scenarios, (like Billy finds a flower). Each scenario has several demonstrations covering various expressions that may come about for the given scenario. For instance in demo 1 Billy is happy, demo 2 joyful, demo 3 about to sneeze. Each scenario is made up of step by step process along with other variations on the theme created by some of the other 8fish artists.

Altogether there are nine of these scenarios which cover a broad range of situations and emotions, and these make up the majority of the content of the book.

Section 3 is all about storytelling and more importantly how to make your artwork more interesting and exciting. It covers framing your image and body language. This is followed by a series of step by step demos including a zombie fighting a cave girl, noir interrogation, western standoff and a battle scene.

The book concludes with a gallery of work by the 8fish artists which illustrates the quality of their work.

This is the best book I have read when it comes to drawing faces and expressions. Even though it does have a strong comic book slant to it, a lot of the lessons can easily be applied to more realistic work or book illustration. I highly recommend it.

The Dog eater!

This monster doesnt like dogs barking at him, so he eats them

Shojo Fashion Manga Art School Year 2 book review

This is the follow up to the brilliant shojo fashion- manga art school. It focuses on modern looks and has been split into 8 distinct sections based on significant events and social environments.

The first section- Around the home looks at different types of everyday wear and gets quite specific on things like sleeves, collars and feminine necklines. Other interesting aspects of this section include maternity wear, baby shoes and drawing dirt on clothes.

Section 2-Hanging out, sort of expands on the casual wear theme but this time features character reference based on social situations like First date and Going steady.

In section 3 the clothing style becomes more glamorous as we go to the prom. Standout parts of this section are applying different beaded patterns to a dress and layering up a suit. It even gives an illustrated step by step guide to tying a tie.

Section 4 is all about weddings and features different styles of dresses as well as suits for all ages and bridesmaid dresses.

Section 5 focuses on drawing different styles of school uniform as well as clothing for sports and cheer squads.

In section 6 we get to see different types of work clothes relating to many different types of jobs. Unfortunately, as the book progresses the amount of step by step guides seem to reduce and we are just given finished references. This runs through to section 7 which looks at different types of sportswear and the book finishes off with seasonal clothing featuring items of swimwear, sunglasses and padded fabrics.

Although I found this book quite useful it didn’t seem to live up to its predecessor. I feel like it tries to cram too much different content into it covering all possible bases of a particular type of clothing but doesn’t feature enough step by step lessons. The first four sections could have been greatly expanded to fill the book and the final four, done more thoroughly could have another book in their own right. Obviously with the subject matter this book does seem to be aimed at teenagers but is very useful for anybody who wishes to illustrate people of that age bracket.