Drawing Fantastic Female Fighters - Annotated by Kagawa & Yoshihiko Umakoshi (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Two superstars of anime and manga open their studio doors and spill their secrets in this private master class.

Join Hisashi Kagawa, an animation director for Sailor Moon, and Yoshihiko Umakoshi, a character developer for My Hero Academia, as they show you how to bring your battle heroines boldly to life.

Helpful sidebars and tips appear in dialogue bubbles throughout this book, as the artists guide aspiring illustrators from initial idea to finished artworks, pointing out common missteps and pitfalls that can easily frustrate beginning artists along the way.

The essential techniques and design elements needed to create engaging female-led battle scenes are first reviewed in detail. Then each author walks the reader through their entire creative process of developing an original story from beginning to end.

Along the way the authors give you hundreds of helpful tips on how to create compelling characters and render realistic expressions and poses, showing you how practiced professionals work. Starting from a storyboard sequence of simple sketches you'll progress to a polished finished drawing.

By learning from two artists with different styles at the same time, readers get twice the advice and emerge doubly prepared to create scenes, stories and battle heroines of their own.

Review Quotes

"...richly designed books that SHOW you how to refine and perfect your drawings so you actually improve...if you're (or someone you know is) looking to up your game and improve your art, they've made it super easy to assemble a super helpful library." --The Roarbots

"Drawing Fantastic Female Fighters lives up to its title as an art guide to bringing female characters in the style of Japanese anime and manga to life on the page. The text offers in-depth instructions and advice on everything from expressions and poses to issues specific to women's clothing...[It] is a treasure for anyone interested in creating manga-style art or comics. Highly recommended!" -- Midwest Book Review

About the Author

After graduating from Osaka Art College, Hisashi Kagawa joined the Studio Cockpit, where he worked on Sailor Moon and The Girl Revolution Utena. He is currently the drawing director and in charge of character design and development for Fresh Pretty Cure! and Soul Eater and in recent years has contributed to the character design of Tiger Mask W. This is his first publication in English.

Yoshihiko Umakoshi is the animation director and a character developer for My Hero Academia. He was one of the developing animators of Super Bikkuriman and oversaw character design for Grappler Baki. He received the 10th Tokyo Anime Award Individual Category Character Design Award for Heart Catch Precure!