Pigma Manga Mania!

Konnichiwa mangakas!
Translation: “Hello manga artists!”

Manga with Pigma Set
Manga with Pigma set

We’re super excited over at Artsavingsclub right now, because we’ve recently added a few awesome new additions to our Sakura Pigma range! We’ll still get to the Pigma Brush pens and Micron Plastic Nibs, but today we’re taking a look at the Pigma Manga set.

Japanese manga comics gained immense popularity in the 90’s, which still carries on to this day.  A big reason for this is the worldwide phenomenon, the animated counterpart to manga, Anime!  If you aren’t in the know, there’s still a very good chance that you’ve watched some of the more mainstream anime cartoons/movies without even realising: Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, etc.

Manga has a very distinctive look to it, which is notably different from Western comics.  At first you might notice the obvious spiky hair or big, shiny eyes, but thematically there’s also a slight shift, with themes often including, and appealing to, aspects of Eastern cultures.  It’s also commonplace to find the likes of strange otherworldly monsters (both scary and cute), as well as science fiction/cyber-punk, and even romance.

History lesson aside, let’s take a look at what’s included in the set.  There are a total of 6 pens: Micron sizes 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, and 0.8, a (very nice) Pigma FB Brush pen, and a 0.8 white Sakura Gelly Roll pen for highlights.  The perfect selection of tools for any professional or beginner manga comic artist (or any comic artist for that matter!).  If you’re new to drawing manga comics, the back of the packaging also has a breakdown of which pen is used for which purpose, which makes getting started as easy as can be.

For our example drawing, I got the ball rolling with my sketching our cyber-punk, laser canon wielding anti-hero using a Caran D’Ache mechanical pencil loaded with 0.7 Red Color Eno lead.  I started the inks by using the 0.5 and 0.8 Microns for our character and border outlines.  The Pigma FB brush pen was used to fill in all the solid black areas (although this thin, felt-tip brush pen is awesome to draw with too).  For the smaller details, I went with the fine 0.1 Micron and the extra fine 0.05 Micron.  Lastly, I finished it off with a Gelly Roll, with which I added little white highlights to the hair, the text (which says “Rad!” in Japanese), as well as little speckles to the sky.

You could end it here and call it done, but I took it one step further by scanning the drawing in black and white, bumping up the contrast, adding halftone shading (the little dots) and a newspaper texture in Affinity Designer to really make the drawing look like it was taken straight out of a real manga comic! “Sugoi!”

Whether you’re a professional, or aspiring, comic book or manga artist, an avid inker, or even a draftsman, we’re sure the Pigma Manga Set will give you everything you need, and more, to do pro-level work with.

Manga Drawing
Pigma Micron pen illustration
Finished illustration

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