Do you need to study the human body to draw better comics o manga?

Hi Camilo,

You pose an interesting question. While manga art style does tend to look very cartoony and removed from "normal" human anatomy, it's still very important to understand the fundamentals. But manga art is as varied as any other and can range from "chibi" to more realistic like Blade of the Immortal. Primarily, it's the rendering of the faces that is the most stylized aspect of manga illustration but even then they still follow the basic rules and so you should not ignore studying human anatomy.

As you compose panels and scenes, you need to really understand how the human body moves to portray a convincing illustration of a person. You might not be drawing the muscles in as much detail but you should still know how they connect so that it looks like you're drawing a person and not a rag doll. In addition, you will generally not draw every figure from a photo reference so it is very important to understand basic human anatomy so that you can illustrate your characters in a variety of poses.

If you begin your artistic career from a place of knowledge, you can more effectively move to a more stylized art style later. Learning the basics will provide the foundation for your abilities as an artist to create new and interesting illustrations and not mere copies of poses other people have done before you. It's probably more work at the beginning but once you've mastered it you'll be more capable of producing better pieces later.

I hope that this is helpful. Have fun learning and drawing!

NOTHING! ... Manga art is so far off what a human body looks like. However, there are so many tutorials online. Check the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQU-DsqA7og