A Fun Time with Anime Characters Through Magazines.

By Rick Feathers

All work and no fun lead to boredom. So let us do something to make us laugh and possibly give us a few good ideas from doing it. You can do this by yourself but it is more fun with family and friends, especially your anime friends.

First the preparation, gather some of your manga drawings and pictures of your favorite anime characters and ask your friends to do the same. Get some old magazines from your parents, friends or other places like doctors office and barber shops, make a point of getting magazines that have a lot of pictures of people, animals, insects, weapons, birds, clothing and so forth. Also have a pair of scissors, your sketch pad with pencils, colored markers, plain white paper and transparent tape available.

Now it is time for the fun part, look through the magazines and find pictures you like and start cutting out the pictures. Cut out faces of various celebrities and politicians, dogs, cats and so on. Also look for pictures of scenery like oceans, forest and sunsets.

Then start placing the faces over your own drawing and other anime character to see how certain actors and actresses faces would look like in your characters position. Put animal pictures near your character drawings to get ideas of companions. See what scenery looks best with your manga.

Begin sketching ideas that come up from the collage of pictures. Use this time to brainstorm and gather new insights into color and shading techniques, focus on details and clarity of characters, work on new creature ideas and weapons. Let the pictures motivate you into new drawings or improve previous drawings.

Use tracing paper to help layout and quickly sketch ideas like combining people with bird wings, people faces with animal ears or spiders with a set of insect wings and tail. Be creative, experiment with all the pictures. Have fun by putting peoples head on an insect or bird, the person’s body with a cat or dogs head.

Anime is sometimes a world of fantasy and make believe, so have fun creating new and interesting characters. Make this a motivating time and expand the horizon of your creativity.