Cover Image: Chibi! The Official Mark Crilley How-to-Draw Guide

Chibi! The Official Mark Crilley How-to-Draw Guide

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Member Reviews

ARC provided by the Publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Another great how to draw book by Mark Crilley. I would recommend Mark's book to anyone who is interested in learning how to draw Chibi characters.

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This book (and your fuzzy-costumed tour guide Mochy) will teach you everything you need to know about drawing chibis! From the word "short" in Japanese, this manga illustration style features cute characters with big heads, tiny bodies and adorably exaggerated facial expressions. Play with proportions to create highly stylized itty-bitty chibis or unusually tall ones, using their big eyes and giant personalities to convey animated emotions, from surprised and joyful to sad and mad.
32 step-by-step lessons cover everything from proportions and poses to clothing and digital coloring.Create every kind of chibi: boys, girls, pets, witches, fairies and anthropomorphic characters.Learn how to turn your friends, family and yourself into adorable chibis!Includes a chapter dedicated to making chibi crafts, such as phone cases, greeting cards and do-not-disturb signs.Show everyone how awesome your chibis are!

Super helpful and interesting. Loved it.

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I loved flipping through this book to see the different drawing tutorials. The step-by-step instructions all had photos and very good explanations of how to get from point a to point b. I only wish there were more details about how to do the coloring, and different options for that.

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Draw your very own Chibi!
Thanks to NetGalley and F+W Media for the opportunity to read and review Chibi!: The Official Mark Crilley How-To-Draw Guide! This instructional book is narrated by a cute, humorous character with a fun name (made by a play on Japanese culture) in a comic/manga format. The sections are "Chibi Basics", "Characters and Poses" and "Chibi Craft Projects" and give detailed instructions for drawing any Chibi you could ever want to draw. I love this book because it’s not limiting Chibi drawing to characters inside a story but gives a variety of inspiring ideas for your very own Chibi! I’m purchasing this book for the school library! 5 stars!

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I showed this book to some of my students who were interested in this type of drawing and they found it interesting, one or two commented that it was a little basic for them so would gauge it as a beginner to intermediate level.

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A very good book for people who want to learn how to draw in a very cute style.

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Cute book with easy instructions. In this Chibi book you or your child will learn step by step drawing techniques. Some of the pictures were hard to “read”.

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Chibis are a Japanese-style illustrated characters with big heads and small bodies. Chibi! the Official Mark Crilley How-To-Draw Guide is a book that teaches you how to draw them.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Illustrators (with a manga-style bent) in beginner or intermediate stages of development would benefit from this style.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
Learning new things can be stressful. However, this is a book that tries to make things simple, straight-forward and also inject a bit of humour into the process.

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Drawing chibis (big heads and small bodies) that are seen in manga is easy and cheap if you use
Chibi!: The Official Mark Crilley How-to-Draw Guide. All that is needed is some nice bristol paper, a regular pencil, a pencil sharpener, several pens with a variety of tip sizes, a 15” clear ruler, some kneaded erasers and some practice time.

Mr. Crilley starts simply with the basic chibi girl and boy including their hairstyles, clothing and manga emotion symbols. In Part 2, he includes some more advanced poses like panda, fox, witch, fantasy, kissing and action. The chibi dog, cat and robot are adorable. Part 3 gives 78 ways to use your new drawing abilities including cards, signs, t-shirts, stickers, buttons, rubber stamps, pop-ups and calendars. My favorite, and sadly lacking, ability was to create a chibi that looks like a real person.

Chibi!: The Official Mark Crilley How-to-Draw Guide would be an excellent gift for the manga fan in your life. If they are already into producing art, it would also be nice to include those items listed in the first paragraph that they are lacking. I have been asking my daughter, an A+ art student in high school, to make my face into a manga character for my blog. She has let me down for over 13 years. Now I can do it myself…with substantially more practice.

I would highly recommend purchasing the paperback version of this book. The kindle version is hard to read on a kindle as some of the illustration break over several pages. On a larger tablet, the kindle version is fine. However, if the reader wishes to use tissue paper to copy the chibi examples to get a head’s start on their own drawing (please don’t judge), a tablet won’t be easy to use. 5 stars!

Thanks to the publisher, Impact Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

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This how to draw book hooks would be artists from the beginning. First off it tells you that fancy art supplies don’t matter. Just paper and pencil. Then it’s only rule is to have fun. The cute animated character dressed as a teddy bear even tells you to throw the rule book out the window. I really like how the books talks about proportions throughout the book. The various sizes, and how the artist should size the hair, etc. For example should things like hair be sized to match the body or the head? Plus towards the end there are other great crafting uses for Chibi. Overall a a nice book for beginners.

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Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: I had issues with the eARC because it would cut parts off. Other than it was fine.

Check out author's other books? Yes
Recommend this book? Yes

Notes and Opinions: This was a lovely book it showed you how to make many things in a relaxed and understandable way. I do wish that this copy we received for review was better formatted as it cut things off and made parts hard to read. Other than that this book was fantastic and I could see those of all ages benefiting from the techniques that are in it. Even me being 13 and an avid drawer I found a lot of tips that I could use in my work. I will be sharing things that I drew shortly on my Instagram feed under @endyochita so you can see them there.

Go Into This One Knowing: Easy to follow, great information.

This book was reviewed by Endy

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Got the chance to read a review copy of Chibi! the Official Mark Crilley How-To-Draw Guide. I was a little skeptical about requesting a copy of it on Netgalley. I tried manga drawing before but i still couldn't work out the body proportions as well as I hoped so I had to set it aside then. But @markcrilleyreal's lessons were very easy to follow. I also like the freedom Chibi drawing has given me as a beginner because it's not as restrictive as Manga art. I only started doing the basics but they're a lot of fun to do, and I'm excited to try out the other activities in the book.

I'd also like to mention that I like Mochy. Mochy's introductions are funny and cute, and I love that he motivates the reader to draw and have fun.

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First, I want to thank Mark Crilley and Netgalley with providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.
Chibi! The Official Mark Crilley How-to-Draw Guide by Mark Crilley was amazing! I had just learned about Chibi’s the other day and ordered some online Adult Coloring books Never did I think there would be books on how to draw the cute characters! I was pleasantly surprised there was! I could not wait to read this book! I am so glad that I did! Now I will know how to draw them too!
Mark does an awesome job of showing you step by step on how to draw each body part of the Chibi. He does not limit to showing you just boy and girl Chibi’s. He also shows you how to draw animals, robots, etc. Plus, there are beautiful illustrations in the book as well.
I enjoyed the educational part of the book where Mark explained the origin of the Chibi.
After reading this book I am excited to try my hand at drawing some Chibi’s of my own.

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