book worm

my tutors said my work wasnt informed enough at a crit but i think thats all wrong, i just couldnt remember the names of peoples and things that i've read (i have a terrible memory) so i thought i'd post up a small list of books i own every so often to let you guys know that i am reading around my subject and i know a bit... i'm not an idiot, i just have bad memory recall.

anyways, mangaka is a collection of manga and anime style works from american comic book artists and its all about the growing popularity of that kind of eastern imagery in the states.its got a great selection of artists all of whom you can google or something after reading this if your'e curious but best of all its got work and interviews with Corey lewis whose heavily stylised work is like a master class in decorative characters, energy, weight and group and dynamic poses. also a lot of his work uses varying line weight too to make it jump right out of the page and really pop! as well in mangaka there is an article by filipe smith called 'an expressive tutorial' that is simply amazing, it teaches not only cartoon expressions and getting characters to really emote but it also teaches comic layout and its delivered in a very interesting way, its hardly like a tutorial at all.

artists featured in mangaka are
svetlana chmakova
ms, shatia hamiltion
jesse philips
christy lijewski (also works on next exit, a great book!)
amy kim ganter
filipe smith
lindsay cibos and jared hodges (as a team)
corey lewis
tania del rio
rivkah
and m. alice legrow

and every artists does a little tutorial section as well as answering questions so you get to know a little about what they think of 'american manga' a little about them and a bit about their working practices.


comic artists asia is very much in the same vein as mangaka only all the artists featured are japanese, korean or from hong kong again artists give tutorials on their working practices as well as talking a little about themselves too. artists of note are kumiko who works in traditional paints and watercolours and opon whos expressive character work is amazing to see. and again its cool to see how the pro's get work done

artists in comic artists asia are
kumiko
joshclub
imperial boy
ryusuke hamamoto
maxx
opon
craig au yueng
nyoro
kon-shu
d.k
ayara
shigeru katoh

robot is a very different book to the other two, its is a collection of comics in manga/ anime style collected together (and featuring) range murata. each artist was asked to contribute and leaves a little thankyou inside the book but there is no artist comments or tutorials to learn from. that being said the art inside is still fantastic and much can be learned from the work, i've had this book since i was 2005 and its been a pretty big influence on my own style of drawing, especially works by suzuhito yasuda, shin nagasawa and hiroyuki asada.

artists in robot are
range murata
hiroyuki asada
yoshitoshi abe
mami itou
okama
yu kinutani
makoto kobayashi
sabe
kei sanbe
sho-u tajima
shin nagasawa
hanaharu naruco
mie nekoi
haccan
ugetsu hakua
shigeki maeshima
yasuto miura
miggy
suzuhito yasuda
and yug

anyway just google some of the names listed and i'm sure you'll find some cool stuff, i'll try and get some scans of my fave artists work and talk about it a bit more in detail later.