MANGA BOYS AND GIRLS HAVE PETS, just like you and me. They also have exciting adventures that take them to lands with animals who befriend them. Sometimes, magic transports characters to enchanted worlds where they meet mystical guides accompanied by magical creatures such as unicorns. All these types of animals have a special charm, because they’re drawn in the manga style, which we’ll take a look at now.
There are so many personalities you can give a cat: mischievous, curious, playful, evil. Sometimes it’s fun to draw cats slithering around the legs of the chairs in your house. This one is a fluffy sweetheart.
The thing about manga animals is that they’re so darn cute and adorable. Unlike American cartoon animals, which are very cartoony, manga animals straddle the fence between realistic and cartoony. So, you generally won’t find a manga rabbit standing on two feet like Bugs Bunny. However, the face will have cartoon elements that make it cheerful and sweet and easier to draw. Manga animal eyes should be big with giant shines in them—much like the classic big eyes on manga humans. And by giving manga animals long eyelashes, you imbue them with a look of kindness.
Dogs and pups make great supporting characters, especially in scenes in which kids are despondent and need a friend to talk to—even if the friend can’t talk back. Puppies bring an audience into a story and make the human character sympathetic. Note that tongue out and one ear up is a happy expression, unless you’re a person, in which case, it’s just weird.
Don’t draw a long snout on a mouse, or you’ll turn it into a rat! A cartoon mouse is cute because it has a short nose.
Chipmunks are real cuties! I’ve got one in my backyard. You can’t believe how tiny they are until you see them—about a third of the size of a squirrel. And they’re very, very fast. You can recognize one instantly by the brown and white striping.
Usually thought of as a backyard animal, in manga, the bunny rabbit is also cast as a curious fantasy character. As such, it can be colored pink, blue, light green, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a natural color. Note that on real rabbits, the ears point back or down, not up.
Do you know the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? It’s important to know for drawing, because in comics, tortoises are often used as characters but turtles seldom are. A turtle can swim and has webbed or fin-type feet, but a tortoise is a terrestrial turtle and doesn’t swim. A tortoise has feet like an elephant. Tortoises have squarer faces, which are cuter than the more reptilian heads of some turtles, such as deep-sea turtles. Tortoises have high shells, whereas turtles have low shells. Most cartoon “turtles” are actually tortoises.
A real tortoise, in fact, has a sweet, charming disposition, very much like its cartoon counterpart. I used to own a couple of tortoises. One of them would actually come to the sound of her name and eat right out of my hand. Her name was Samantha. When I moved to New York from Los Angeles, I gave her to the L.A. Zoo. She loved to be scratched under the chin. This is what she looked like.
A beautiful and captivating sight in the woods or forest! The gaze of a deer casts an almost hypnotic spell. Speckles on its back signify that it’s a youngster. Keep antlers modest, or the deer will look aggressive.
The unicorn is the most popular fantasy animal in shoujo (pronounced SHOW-joe), the manga category read primarily by girls. The original unicorn depicted in art was an aggressive, bearded beast, but over the years, it has evolved into a sweet, serene animal—one that brings joy and light with it.
