Mangapug.Com - A community for manga/anime artists.

This topic is set up as a source for aspiring artists to get some help on how to improve their skills. If you know of a good site that has good tips, tricks, and tutorials to help some one improve their skills as an artist, then please, post it. There are plenty of people on this site, I'm sure, that would be infinitely grateful for your contribution (myself, included).

In order to reduce confusion and clutter, I will ask that anyone posting a link to another site, use this form:

Site Name:
Site URL:
Description:
Difficulty:

The description tag is meant for anything that would help some one who might want to visit the sight to know if it contains the information they need. Is it a site containing tutorials for drawing manga style art or realistic art? Does it contain instructions for coloring? Do the tutorials address how-to-draw hands, full-body images, animals, etc.? Anything that might inform the reader more about the site's usefulness to them as artists, should go here.

And difficulty can be measured in whatever way you like best, so long as any casual browser can understand what the ranking means. Some very good ways of ranking tutorials is by either using Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced type descriptions or by doing some kind of ranking system (i.e. 4/10). Whatever suits your fancy and gets the message across.

Here are a couple examples:

Site Name: 1-2-3 Bishoujo!
Site URL: (http://waylands_forge.tripod.com/123/)
Description: Contains several basic tutorials for drawing basic, drawing heads and figure-drawing. The figure-drawing tutorial is, by far, the best tutorial on this site. The instructions are very easy to understand, and are aimed at artists that are a little less talented. Very good, solid, helpful tutorials.
Difficulty: Beginning

Site Name: Artshow - Drawing Resources and Tutorials for Artists and Illustrators
Site URL: (http://www.artshow.com/resources/drawing.html)
Description: It's actually a full-on resource center for artists. It contains a very large range of various tutorials for drawing with different tools like pencils, charcoal, ink, paint, etc. most of the tutorials instruct on drawing realistically. A very extensive collection.
Difficulty: Varies

Well! Let's start gettin' 'em up, folks!

love
dani
dude

That's a great idea you have there~ ! Creating your own tutorials takes forever, so if we can use other resources legally, one stone kills two birds! ^^

Thanks, Lilli. I was thinking of posting a similar thread for Graphic tutorials in the CG tips section and also another for links to sights with good images to use in graphics. Do you think I should? Bah! I probably will.

And, actually, I got this idea from a another Message Board that I frequent that has a junk load of helpful staff and members that came up with this same type of stuff to help the members interested in these things to improve their skills. In fact, in most art forums they had resource threads like this.

Adding a couple more:

Site Name: Manga University - How-to-Draw Tutorials
Site URL: (http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/howtodraw/tutorials.html)
Description: Manga tutorials, obviously. The site contains something like mini-manga drawing turorials. I think it's an advertising site so they don't show all of their good right on the site page. There are tutorials, however, for drawing ears, eyes, hands, hair, clothing, faces, female figures and coloring pieces of artwork in paint shop Pro. Each tutorial begins with an index of the pages and content, and the drawing tutorials contain a brief mini-tutorial at the beginning that reviews how each of the items in question looks in real life. If it is a body part it has each part labeled, as if you were doing a brief examination of the object in biology. Then it shows you how to go through the steps for creating a realistic drawing of that particular feature followed by doing stylized simplification. They also show how the objects are viewed in differnt positions, emotion, angles, etc. Shows the subtle variations that can change the quality and personality of a drawing simply by adding different lines for minor details. Extremely detailed tutorials. My only dissapointment? No male figure drawing tutorial. Other than that it is a very comprehensive site for drawing manga-style people.
Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate

Site Name: Manga Tutorials
Site URL: (http://www.mangatutorials.com/)
Description: All tutorials are for drawing manga-style art. Contains a guide for drawing tutorials, books on drawing (along with reviews), and site-hosted tutorials are on the front page. You don't have to be a member of the site or message board, nor do you have to buy anything to view any of these tutorials, so don't be fooled by some of the site's layout. The Tutorials take you from the basics to anatomy (with extensions for different areas such as wing and tail tutorials), gear, details and comic booking and coloring. The tutorials are fairly brief and mainly just address the high points but the tutorials are more meant to be taken together, like subsections or steps to creating a finished product. They build it from the basics to the head and down going through the process one might follow to get a finished drawing of a person. Complaint: some of the tutorials seem a little too brief. The wing tutorial, for instance, just kind of shows you how it curves and address details, and one or two angles of view but doesn't do much more than that.
Difficulty: Beginner-Advanced

AGH! descriptions came out a little longer than expected, but, at least you'll know what you're getting!

love
dani
dude

I think it's great that you've described the sites - gives us much more idea before we click.

Thanks for the links!!!!

Site Name: Pose Maniacs
Site URL: http://www.posemaniacs.com/blog/
Description:

For fundamentals and anatomical reference drawing models, Pose Maniacs is a really good resource. I use it every time I draw One step at a time, of course. They have a few hundred (at least) different generated poses given on the site to refer to. There is also an app on there that lets you rotate 3d models of hands for reference.

Difficulty: Beginner to Intermediate. Relatively simple, depending on how much detail you aim for when drawing from reference models. The pose models themselves are quite detailed and feature all of the skeletal muscles.

@ Nitrocosm: That is a really cool and helpful site. I really appreciate you posting that. Honestly. VERY good reference material.

Site Name: Draw Furry
Site URL: (http://www.drawfurry.com/?cat=4)
Description: Ok, let's get this clear. I'm not a fan of furries. I found this site looking for hand drawing tutorials. Even though it is intended for furries, the site has a lot of very useful information for drawing hands, body, etc. And, since it's a list of tutorials for furries, there are anthro tutorials, which you can you use for things like InuYasha-esque demons, cat people, etc. which, in turn, might actually help with your ability to draw animals. The tutorials generally give you a lot of reference material. From what I've seen there isn't much instruction outside of "Use a model. Practice drawing it. Practice drawing it again. Practice drawing from memory. Lather. Rinse. Repeat." They have videos and example drawings of the break down of bone structure, anatomy, steps, but they don't talk you through it step-by-step very much. This, however, could be good for a bit more advanced artists, as it's approached from the view-point that you're probably not always going to be drawing from the full-front angle.
Difficulty: Beginner - Advanced (more on the Advanced side, though)

love
dani
dude

Wow! Thanks for the sites! This will help me a great deal!