Hello, could you help me? Most of people I show my art to are saying the same thing: "it’s manga". It really bothers me because I feel like I don’t have my own personal style (I don’t get cute, colorful, dynamic, etc. only: manga) -even more as I really tried to draw away from such style… I don’t know what to do anymore. Secondly, as it seems I’m unable to understand this myself, could you explain me where the differences & limits between manga style versus cartoon and comic styles are? Thanks!

Heya, myself and some of the mods have been chatting about this ask, and in general our main experience is that, yes, a LOT of us grew up drawing “manga” even if we didn’t necessarily want to. This isn’t your fault, that’s just how the cookie crumbles; but there are some people around you who have gone the wrong way about telling you something, because now you’re looking for some different “style” to put yourself under without considering the fundamental steps you should be taking towards building up a repertoire of artistic expression.

Any “style” will take a lot of work to learn how to draw, it’s not something you can do just because you want to do it. Manga has this strange connotation because of artists like Peter Gray and that, in general, the designs are so much simpler to copy as children because of manga’s birth as an animation medium. I had that friend always criticized for drawing like Disney, with the exact same connotation that they were just copying someone else’s style and not putting real effort into learning how to draw; and that can feel super disheartening, absolutely. This is a good opportunity, however, to learn how to take criticism on the chin and keep pushing forward.

I personally think what you should do, is just take a step back from trying to please the people around you. Focus on what you really like to draw. If that IS manga, then keep going for it! If you want to change something, though, you’ll do best to start from the beginning- otherwise you’ll keep pulling from your pre-existing repertoire and your many associations with manga, and you will keep just drawing like manga. This is why everyone always says to experiment with your art and use lots of references– the end goal of this entire process IS to draw what you want, because you want to do it, with the knowledge to actually do so.

This is a good time to mention that style doesn’t really exist. The limitations are none, and the differences are as numerous as every person in the world who ever put their pen to paper. Sure, there are definitely things that someone could point to and say, “That’s Manga,” but that encapsulates everything from Astro Boy to western shows like Korra. Gumball looks like it could air after Aggretsuko on a Saturday morning, and Winks Club is straight up Italian. Not to mention that Moomin is a Swedish Children novel and TWO a bona fide Japanese anime.

If you want to skip fundamentals, studies, various constructions, etc, and copy some other “style,” you’ll just be setting yourself up for failure, and put yourself into a box which otherwise wouldn’t exist if you just approached things with an open mind. This is probably what people are trying to tell you when they say your work is “manga.” The problem isn’t that you draw manga, the problem is that you’ve explicitly stated to have never drawn anything that doesn’t look like manga.. which means you’ve got a lot of cool stuff yet to discover.

Scary thought but uuhh experiment,,, and,,,,, use references!

(Love from Mod Koikro55)

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