The Shocking Truth about Drawing Manga

Come on, Anime is nice and all -- it certainly might be helping the fortunes of both animation and comic books as we know it -- but for all intents and purposes, we're still importing a culture that most of us couldn't even hope to be a part of.

Even worse for budding American Artists (and anyone else who can't claim any Asian blood), people can tell the difference between "Real Japan Manga Taste" and "Baka Gaijin Roundeye" in a heartbeat, and avoid it like the plague!

The reason? A lot of people who want to draw manga are... no surprise here... manga fans. Young manga fans, especially. Drawing manga (or any other type of sequential art, really) requires a lot of "invisible" structure underneath that isn't always obvious to younger readers.

Furry art, on the other hand, is universal; people have been drawing animals for as long as they've been drawing, period, There's no such thing as "Fake Furry Art", just good furry art and bad furry art -- and it comes from all over the world too, not just Japan!

And for whatever reason, furry fans are usually older than the average manga fan... so it's less likely that an "amateur" furry artist will mess up basic proportions or foundations the way an an amateur manga artist might.

(Oh, and if you plan on becoming famous? Good luck trying to stand out in a homogenized art style like Manga! By the way, your artistic rights are much better protected outside of Manga. Check out the stuff about the "Tokyopop Manga Pilot Contract" if you don't believe me.)

Anime and Manga have their moments, but when it comes down to it, if you have to start drawing ... go with furries!