Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Manga Matrix presents an easy grid method for mastering manga, an increasingly popular comic style. Using this unique Japanese system, artists can plot and cross-section elements on a matrix diagram to create an infinite number of original characters, creatures, and multiformed beasts. Angels, demons, dragons, monsters, and robots are all included in this book, along with descriptions of costumes and personalities for each.

Manga Matrix is unlike any other manga instructional guide and is an invaluable resource for both the budding artist and the polished professional.

Average Customer Rating:

A Great Reference Book!!	Customer Rating:
I purchased this book a few months ago and have been using it for inspiration to aid me in fresh new character designs.I find this book very valuable and very much worth the money I spent.This book has constantly helped me to see character design in a new and fresh perspective.

Amazing book for ideas	Customer Rating:
Veery good book to ideas and the matrix sistem helps alot to do new (and good) characters, its a big book and worth all the money. Note: this book is NOT a how to draw book, it teaches how to create characters not how to draw them.

Inspirational	Customer Rating:
This book shows how to combine different elements in creating a new and original character. Beautiful work. Only weakness is not that much step by step instructions for someone wanting to practice this method of character creation. He creates the characters without any intervening steps - just a grid showing what elements he selected and the end result.

unleash your own creativity

Customer Rating:

Make sure you don't just look at the pictures and you'll learn plenty from this book! It does a great job of breaking down parts of the body to help you think how to combine different things to combine unique characters. If you are only looking to copy drawings, this is not for you. But if you are serious about creating your own characters this is tremendously helpful. The art in the book are certainly of high quality, but the process that it takes you through to understand how to effectively create character is extremely helpful. I have a bunch of other famous "how to draw" books, but this really goes beyond how to draw to what to draw. This is not for beginners to quickly learn how to draw something impressive, but for serious artists who really want to explore their own creativity with a tour guide. Loving it, and so worth rereading too!

a pleasant and thought provoking tutorial

Customer Rating:

The main purpose of this book is to systematically pre-design your characters and do it in a way that is logical, formulaic and archetypically sound. I almost wrote that I didn't think it was 'for beginners', but thought the better of it when I remembered those that inspired me in my youth and younger days... They were not giving me 'step by step' instruction, instead they inspired me by their work instilling in me the desire to do my own work, and to imagine. What Tsukamoto-san has done here is just that, with the added benefit of laying out a methodology of creation. I can see this of greatest benefit to those starting out who have various characters laid out in the scheme, but who lack the skills to 'invent' the soul of that character. This book is to explain and punctuate that skill. When first I paged through after opening my mailer envelope from Amazon... my initial impression was the flash of inspiration I got when I first (in the early 1970's) saw the work of Brian Froude... or when I was perusing the works of Roger Dean or Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo... or reading over and over again the works of jean Giraude's (Who created work under the name Moebius) "The Air Tight Garage" in Metal Hurlant. Not to mention Fred Schrier or Dave Sheridan's spectacular works of wonder. It is that that makes me say to who ever takes the time to read this review, please do yourself a favor, get this book. Keep it by your desktop, close at hand and read it in the still of the evening when you want to dream, or in the heat of creation when you need to find that one thing to fill the gap. It is that good! Even though the mythologies are primarily 'foreign' (being from the ancient Shinto and archaic Japanese cultures, though not completely!) to the western mind, maybe it will inspire 'aspiring artists' to plunge into studies of ancient cultures of their own ancestry! It is a wonderfully presented book. And to those who have been out there for a bit I would say, "YES! It is worth the price!" I give it 'two thumbs up"!