Mastering Manga 2: Level Up with Mark Crilley

You can't go wrong with this book, yet another useful, fun to read book by Mark Crilley! This book not only contains a lot of reference but other than the reference pages every single drawing in this has plenty of steps that take it slow so you don't lag behind like many other books. This is extremely useful for a beginner like myself, when I finished a drawing and shaded it i felt very satisfied that the steps made it much easier to draw than other books. Ontop of that every page has plenty of explaining on the steps and what you will be drawing. For a beginner you CANNOT go wrong with this book I'd get it as soon as you can, with the very useful addition of the environment page and many new additions to the previous book. Mark Crilley manages to make every page seem fresh and not like he is repeating himself from the previous book which is nice since I know I'm getting my monies worth. I thank Mark Crilley for writing this it has helped me a lot with my drawing!

My 12 year old son is very artistic and has recently gotten into manga in a big way. This book has really helped him develop his manga style of drawing. It is very noticeable how much his drawings have improved having learnt from the book. The book itself is very well designed and presented, with lots of illustrations and easy to follow lessons. Other similar books can be a bit on the basic or simplistic side, but Mark Crilley's is entry level but done well. He covers many aspects of manga style drawing and is both encouraging and inspiring. If my son is anything to go by, it works. My son is now a Crilley fan and if he becomes a successful artist himself, I'm sure he'll cite him as an early influence!

This is an absolutely brilliant book. It really helps you tell your story for comic drawing, putting things into perspective, how to colour things correctly, add drama and more importantly how to build your story board from scratch through to the finished product. My favourite book of the 3 so far. Just wondering if & when there'll be a Manga4. I do hope so.

I bought both this and the first edition in order to gain valuable insights into how exactly to create decent looking manga characters. There's plenty of good tutorial, tips and examples in this book to get you started, beginners need not beware, it is easy to understand and starts off slow and simple, how to draw eyes, how to draw a basic head at various angles etc. Eventually it progresses quite naturally into more in-depth lessons, literally, as it teaches you the basics of perspective, foreshortening and creating 'space' in which to place your action. It will teach you how to give your creations more character, more depth to the environments you put them in, and how to add details like wet clothes, rain, and other tricks of the trade. It is by no means a fully comprehensive guide on everything you need to know, for instance it seems to be geared towards traditional pencil and paper art, if you are creating digitally you will need further instruction on how to do line art, colour, and add effects as this features nothing on such things at all. As a guide to the fundamental design and creation of characters and environments in this particular style though it has been of great help and I still refer to it regularly when embarking upon a new project.

This book really helped me get better at drawing. You really get some good hints, tips and instructions on how to "level up". What I also really like is that Mark Crilley also goes more in depth on how to set up a manga from start to finish. Well worth the money

My daughter, who is Manga-Mad, says it's perfect. I must say it looked very good when I was able to see a few review pages when I looked on Amazon. This is a great feature and gives you an idea of what you are buying. So, to sum up, both my daughter and I can recommend this book to anyone who is interested in developing their Manga drawing techniques.

This book is great for teaching you the tips that most people would either ignore or give you extremely lengthy explanations for. Helps to give you a more solid drawing rather than a character you've drawn and it's floating in a blank page, my drawing now have a good scenery to them now rather than just the character. Keep up the good work mark crilley

Bought his and the first one. They seem to have a perfect learning curve, just enough to stretch a bit at each stage. I am now gaining some fluency. Very clearly laid out in a step by step fashion. Disagree with this one being too similar to the first. It is a natural progression with the extra level of detail and subtlety that is introduced.