Product Description

This volume was inspired by young women working in cafes and restaurants clad in those absolutely charming uniforms. Snowy white aprons and crisply starched dresses are staples of manga and anime. This guide features various popular uniforms and costumes. Select an interesting uniform or costume to try on one of your own characters!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #607804 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

Customer Reviews

Not Essential, But Kind of Fun!
This must be the strangest volume offered so far the "How to Draw Manga" Series. "Girls' Life Illustration File" profiles the intimate details of the daily lives of several hypothetical young women, each with a distinct personality: "Sporty Girl," "Uppity Girl," "Shy Girl," among others. The book gives suggestions as to what types of clothing each character might wear according to her personality, going as far to show each girl dressed in their preferred style of lingerie! There are also comparisons of each girl's living quarters, daily activities, and body language.

To be honest, I don't think this book is even as useful as some of the other books in the "How to Draw Manga" series that focuses on drawing females. Admittedly, there are many males who haven't grown up with sisters, so there may be aspects of females' daily routine (like grooming) with which they may be unfamiliar. This book may be helpful for becoming familiar with those "rituals." Otherwise the book comes off as voyueristic (I should note here that a woman authored this work, so you don't think the book's a male fantasy).

Another caveat is that the book was originally published for a Japanese audience; even though nearly all Japanese women wear Western style clothes, what each of the girls wear in this volume may reflect in part domestic cultural concerns. And the section on kimono may or may not have relevance for readers outside Japan (of course, if you are creating a manga that takes place in that country, of are drawing specifically Japanese characters, then that culture-specific info is of great value).

The book's primary strength is demonstrating to would-be-manga artists and writers the importance of creating details, such as clothing preferences and lifestyle, that match or correspond with the personality of potential comic-book characters. This installment is more about theme and style than actual drawing technique. And please, don't just copy the characters and settings in the book! Use the models as a starting point from which you can incorporate your own creativity!

A very useful book to have for reference!
I'm very satisfied with this book - the only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is the price (then again, How to Draw Manga books are always overpriced).

This book is based on six stereotypes: Perky, Sporty, Dreamy, Precocious, Shy, and Uppity. It includes many details of each girl's behavior pattern, taste, lifestyle, etc. as well as general details of what a [Japanese] girl does in a day.

There are...
- five chapters that are literally illustration files
&
- two short tutorials... one is one page and is about - finally - "how to draw" the girls and the other is two pages and are pointers on how to improve the character design

However, although most of the book doesn't literally teach the reader "how to draw" a girl, the information is very useful for any artist interested in drawing young Japanese girls.

Chapter 1, Home Sweet Home, encompasses floor plans of each of the girls' rooms, the items each of them have in their closets, the way they organize their items, etc.

Chapter 2, Girly Stuff, prove to be useful (and I think that guys would especially find the information helpful!), as it has sections like Inside the Schoolbag, A Peek Into the Jewelry Box, Dieting, Skincare, Cosmetics, etc.

Chapter 3, Fashion Statements, is in full color!! (other chapters only have a few colored pages here and there) Every girl is drawn out in their preferred daywear, nightwear, yukata (summer kimono), and lingerie.

Chapter 4, The Bare Essentials, are literally, the BARE essentials. It's basically a collection of seven pages (all colored - that was nice), each girl had a page of her own (except Perky Girl, who had two) with their nude illustrations. I suppose it's a good reference for poses and it shows their personalities, but otherwise quite useless.

Chapter 5, No Boys Allowed!, is a look at some places where only girls hang out (i.e., the girls' locker room). I liked this because the black and white sketch illustrations showed how these places look like in Japan - it's useful for anyone who wants to make a manga that takes place in Japan but isn't familiar with the country.

While many(/all?) other HTDM books are in black and white, How to Draw Manga: Girls' Life Illustration File has many colored pages - it makes the highg price of the book more tolerable. Also, the artwork by the author/artist Kazuko Tadano (director of Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R.: the Movie) is a lot better than the art in other HTDM books (my opinion, of course!). I would recommend this book. (I bought it for about $21 at Japan town in SF, but on Amazon it seems to be a bit cheaper - that's a plus!)

Parents do not understand...
This book was great. It showed me ways to draw a girls--happy,sad,dissapointed, etc. It opened a wide variety of clothes to me. Parents who complain that this book is too showy,erotic, ect. are wrong. This is art, and art is expressed in many ways. I'm not kidding when I say that... just check out some of the art of most famous artists (Picasso, Henri Matisse, Etc.).