Q&A for How to Make Your Own Anime or Manga Character

Perfect is different for everybody. As long as you like it and feel as though you cannot improve it anymore, it will be considered perfect!

There isn't really a way to draw or improve your skills faster. You can take classes online or in person, but that's all you can do. Drawing manga and anime takes a lot of time and effort. Practicing constantly is the only way to get better.

Go to Google Images and type in the search box, "anime characters". From there, click on subcategories, like "female", "red hair", "shy", or "child", to name but a few. Or, you could search up a certain anime character from a show that you like the art style from. You could even go to the bookstore, library, or Amazon to purchase or check out a book on how to draw anime, or even just a manga book to get a good idea for character design.

There are many different aspects to work on, from hips and shoulders to completely outrageous anatomy like winged humans or human-hybrids. DeviantArt is a very good place to study anatomy. Many people there will post tutorials on how to draw characters, both manga and realistic. Some people will also post character base poses for you to use as a reference. Though when using other peoples reference work you must be careful and read the conditions of their art before using it.

A traditional manga starts in the English style, but backward. The "back cover" for an English book is actually the front, and the front is the back. From there, you read right to left.

Yes, just remember to change their names and identifying features.

There are just certain common ones that everybody uses that you probably want to avoid. However, it is your story.

Do a draft of different movement styles. Move your own body around in front of a mirror to capture the movements and to help, doing stretches, to help you visualize what the body looks like in each position. You could even take photos and print these out to assist you.

Naming your characters is up to you since you are the one creating the story.

You can ink your manga, but the quality might suffer depending on the strength of your scanner. If the quality of your manga is lessened by inking prior to scanning, then you may want to consider doing your inking digitally in the future.

You can search Google if you want, or you can get ideas from anime character names. You can create one yourself, or ask your friends and family for advice.

If he’s killed to save his soul, perhaps his development up to that point has been a descent into evil, as he slowly becomes a worse person, not better. He only realizes how far he’s fallen when he is finally confronted by his father. His father loathes him now and believes he is irredeemable, and so he regretfully kills him. Was he actually irredeemable? It depends on what kind of story you want to tell.

No. Manga books don't have to be long. Just make sure the plot is developed, with a strong beginning, middle, and end.

I found a word I liked for my character (malachite) and translated it into Japanese, so I got "Marakaito."

Not everyone is born a natural Michelangelo, so any art you can call your own should be unique. Something else you could try is choosing a few quirks that are "unique" in their own way for your characters. Shyness, for example. If you character has this trait, then their expressions might differ from those of more social people. You definitely do not want to be anywhere close to plagiarism, but using a popular character as a reference, then tweaking parts to make them your own is a good idea.

Practice changing the range of your own voice to get an idea of how different characters might speak, see what ones work best for each character. Also look online for ideas of different voices matched to the character traits of each anime character.

Yes, it is. Loads of people do it and publish them as art doujins at ComicCons and places like that.

Focus on the facial features and clothes designs. If your character is a spell caster, he or she might have slightly wilder hair and almost a glow to their eyes. As for their clothes, maybe make them have a cape or a robe. Magical people usually tend to have sharper figures also.

That would be very hard unless you're a pro. Practice with foundations and once you are more experienced, you can draw without foundations. But even very experienced artists cannot draw without foundations.

Start by basing them off people you know and give them personality and a back story. Make sure that your character seems realistic.

Instead of trying to give them everything, focus on the necessities: A believable personality, a big character flaw, like being selfish, and then elaborate.

While yes, there are many school manga, you could add your own twist to the story. Merge the school manga with another genre, such as horror, shounen, Mahou shoujo, isekai, mecha, or even seinen. That is how many people get the wonderful school manga's we love today!! Yes, you could sell this story. But in order for it to sell it needs to be of good quality. And make sure that you would make a manga that can compete with the other successful school manga out there.

Krita has more editing tools and can be a bit overwhelming. It's closer to Photoshop, less natural. If you want to get into digital drawing/painting and editing, this might be the better choice. Krita is more demanding on your PC, Sketchbook pretty much runs on anything.

A cliché is a word or phrase that is used so often that it begins to lose any specific meaning.