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Manga Artist's Visit

Students at the Academy were treated to Manga drawing lessons from visiting illustrator and comic artist, Anna Fitzpatrick as part of the school’s Book Week celebrations.

 

Students at the Academy were treated to Manga drawing lessons from visiting illustrator and comic artist, Anna Fitzpatrick as part of the school’s Book Week celebrations.
Miss Fitzpatrick visited the Secondary Phase yesterday, Monday 29th February and provided groups of students with a step by step drawing class on sketching out a Manga style character.
The artist first met with a group of students in the library, some of whom were real Manga enthusiasts and she worked with them on the basics of creating a typical character in the animation/cartoon style that makes Manga unique.
She focused on teaching simple and traditional artistic techniques and encouraged the students to use the basics to create their own versions of the comic style characters.
She provided advice on giving the details of the face the right amount of definition and how simple lines and shading can change a character to make them look older or younger or change them from innocent to being more sinister.
She spoke a lot about getting the eyes the right size and the importance of featuring light bubbles in the character’s eyes
Anna said: “The bigger the eyes the more innocent and cute the character is. Smaller eyes are used for the shadier or older characters. Putting light in the eyes is also important and the more light bubbles in the eye the more innocent the character is. The same with the shading of the pupils, the more defined the shading the harsher the character.”
She helped the students map out the character’s face to get the right proportions for the face and showed how to get the right flow of the hair.
She also explained about the nose or the lack of the nose on a Manga character and said the nose was not as important as the eyes.
She added: “It is the less expressive part of the face and is sometimes drawn as a triangle or a dot, but I also like to use a little hook shape.”
All the students presented their finished drawings to Anna at the end of the session and a few of students also showed her other Manga style drawings that they had done previously.
Anna then went on to take a small group of Year 12 A -level art students through the Manga drawing process and afterwards they also worked on creating a Manga creature known as a Chibis - a cute, big eyed character, with a childlike body used in some animations and cartoons.
Later in the day Anna also worked with some of our  Year 7 Students.