How to draw Manga: Ultimate Manga Lessons Volume 1 is a good book to start with if you are trying to learn the art of drawing manga. This book covers almost all the basics and helped me alot. It tells you how to use different drawing materials and how to start drawing your own manga. It also showes you the differenses between male and female cheracters. Also as to be acspected in any how to draw manga book there is some mild nudity (but nothing that detailled). So alaround I think this is a very good book to start drawing manga with.-_-

This is the most amazing drawing book I have ever purchased. This book is extremely helpful, especially towards the end. It shows characters in different poses to help you learn how to draw them. It does suggest in the beginning to copy some of your favorite artists' work. I copied pictures out of my manga books and then tried to do something original, and I have improved greatly! GET THIS BOOK!!

The Good:

Compared to the other How to Draw Manga series, I would say this book was a summary of every book in the series. With multiple artists and varying styles, it offers a beginning artist a definite edge and foundation for drawing manga. Not only does it show a more stylized version of manga, and also shows a more realistic version. This was one of the more useful books for head angles. The heads are a variety of , high, low, and side angles. This is very useful for a beginning artist so that their work doesn't look dull or monotonous.

The Bad:

I somewhat felt a little ripped off when I saw the price for such a small book. Also, it seems as if this book doesn't go deeply into each specific section. It's more of a 'general' help book. For instance, if you want to know more about anatomy, I recommend buying the 'Bodies and Anatomy' book in the How To Draw Manga series. This book is more of a 'overall' book.

In conclusion, I'd recommend buying this book if I was a beginner or intermediate. You can always improve as an artist. Hope you found this helpful.

okay this is my first review ever so hang in there with me alright? Now I purchesed this book "How to Draw Manga: Ultimate Lessons vol. 1" mainly because I like the other HtDM books and I wanted to see what this had to offer me. When the book came I was expecting it to be as big as the other HtDM books. Boy was I wrong! it was as thick as the others but the hight and with were 'shorter' none the less the content of the book itself prooved to be of some help. The book itself starts off with the begining mini comic or 'manga' if you will then the table of contents, and then the actual material. The first chapter is all about the basics, starting with "practice by starting with copying" then it moves onto how to go and create your own charatures by showing you the basics of drawing (start with a rough general outline of blah blah blah then refine it and add detale blah blah blah). First they start with the head and face the move down to the torso, arms, and legs. In the book they also show examples of expressing emotions, depicting 'cool action poses', a little bit of sceanery, and how to properly hold your drawing tools. IN the book itself it says these are the goals it's trying to teach you:
1) The Basics of Faces
2) Basics of Figures
3) The ABC's of Tools ans Materials
4) Basic Background and Special Effect Techniques
and
5) Producing and Original Draft of Manga

In all it's a pretty helpful book; however it'll do you jack if you don't put it to use.. in other words keep on drawing. The book is only there to help you get ideas on how you may want it to look. It's not going to do it for you, or magically you'll be able to draw "manga" the instant after you read it.

Now I gave it 4 stars because for some reason I felt that it was lacking a little something in it.. other then that it's a great refference book for anyone, not just people who want to draw manga/anime, who wants to improve their drawing technique.