Manga Quest Review

Manga Quest: Join The Adventure and Learn How to Draw It by Ben Gibson and Serge Marcos
I decided to write this review because I have been noticing that there are tons of "How To Draw Manga"s around in libraries and bookstores. One day, when I was at the library, I saw this one book that stuck out to me, for 3 main reasons:
1. The art was totally crappy. I know people at my high scool that draw way better than these guys.
2. One the back, it says that the authors are "award-winning illustrators". I don't know about you, but I definetely would NOT have given these guys any sort of awards in the first place.
3. The length. It's short. There are maybe 30-40 pages devoted to teaching you how to draw (out of almost 77 pages)
Now, lets get this over with...
Concept: This comic book uses a comic format to get to the different components of drawing manga. It's a pretty interesting format. I think it's been done before, but in the books that I've seen, it's only been used quite sparsely. It makes for a good change of pace, despite the fact the comic is totally unoriginal. Now, this book would be an excellent if it weren't for....

Art Quality: Although I've said this before, I feel the need to to say it again: the art in this book is some of the crappiest I've ever seen. The outlining is really wonky, the color sucks, the teeth are drawn all odd (I realizing I might be nitpicking a bit, but still, the art is THAT bad). Also, the characters they go over are common, common stock. Afew examples are: Elder wizard, woman seer, child prodigy (one of the worst), the schoolgirl (man, oh man, they even messed the schoolgirl up!), the pretty boy, and one of my favourites (total sarcasm here), a demon. It bears an uncanny resemblance to Ryuuk from Death Note. Although the drawings of animals are bettter than most of the art in this book, still. DO NOT MODEL YOUR MANGA STYLE AFTER THE STYLE OF THESE BAKAS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even the mascot (a weird flying monkey thing), manages to be un-cute.

Rating: 3.5/10 It has some (extremely sparse) good points, but for the most part, this is definitely not a good "How To Draw Manga" book. Avoid this book like poison, PLEASE!!!!!!!