Some photo reference material and templates for the Manga Cartooning class at the Boys & Girls Club (B&GC)

Normal straight on reference shot of Final Fnantasy VII Adevent Children Tifa Lockhart.
Worm's eye view of Final Fantasy VII Yuffie Kisaragi: reference shot was taken from a low angle.
Bird's eye view: reference shot was taken from above.
Just a few reference shots using these articulated Final Fantasy figures as art makinins.



Just a few 8.5" x 11" templates with digitally applied B&GC Art Lab backgrounds that can printed and used for thumbnail planning of a manga story set in a classroom.

A few more Comic Page Thumbnail Templates

This additional batch of thumbnail comic page templates features a few digitally applied screentones, so additional elements can be overlaid right on top of the patterns and backgrounds by drawing them on a sheet of tracing paper taped to the template. Once a pleasing result is achieved, the drawings could then be transferred to a thicker sheet of paper and then cut and pasted on top of the screentones.

A couple of reference backgrounds and panel templates for a School Manga story

Tweaked some photos of the school on Photoshop, so that they could be used as practical reference for creating the backgrounds on a Manga story taking place in an American school.
Courtyard.
School entrance.

Hallway leading into ESOL classroom.
Art Classroom reference 1.
Art Classroom reference 2.
This first template with a background establishing shot of the the bus loop could be further enhanced by pasting some characters and vehicles directly on top of it.

Blank version that can be use to draw your own wide-angle establishing shot for your story.
This last template could also be flipped over to have a wide angle establishing shot at the top and the two vertical panels on the bottom.Ditto.
The blank templates are letter size when printed on regular copy paper and can be used to quickly try out different comic story layouts and design ideas as oversize thumbnails. This preliminary stage can help you explore the structure of your story visually and plan your work flow more efficiently. If you were planning to draw a regular American size comic story, the originals typically are drawn on more expensive and heavier illustration supports (like 2-ply bristol board) that measure 10" X 15". Thus using the sketching templates to work out the early structure of the comic is both time and cost effective.

Watercolor thumbnails

A fun practical way to get to know your watercolor paints and brushes is to sketch thumbnails. By making quick test strokes with different strength washes of a single color and testing simple color mixtures on a small surface (this example was done on a 7" X 10" Arches Cold Press-CP watercolor block which has a slightly rough surface), you can quickly get a sense of the tonal and hue range that can be accomplished with the palette selection of a given paint box. It is also an efficient way to figure out picture composition (the way parts are arranged within a picture) and the effects that can be created with a given brush. The two top rows in this example were sketched with Utrecht watercolors using a fine #1 Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinski sable brush, and the bottom rows were done with a large Pentel Aquash waterbruh and Pentel Vacance watercolors. As it would be expected, the small #1 sable brush can produce very fine details like the branches in the first thumbnail (top left corner) while the large waterbrush can create broader strokes and faster paper coverage as seen in bottom thumbnails.
The thumbnails below were done with Maimeri Blu 12-pans watercolor set on a 7" X 10" Arches Hot Press (HP) watercolor block using a #3 Winsor & Newton Artists' Watercolor sable brush. This new watercolor brush features a longer contoured handle that might take some time to get used to for those that enjoy sketching on a drafting table (for which I find shorter handle brushes to be more comfortable). The paint can be harder to control on the smooth HP surface, for it tends to sit on the paper longer before drying. It might often seem that washes are easier to control on a CP support (another name for watercolor paper), but it would be advisable to try and practice on both to discover their strengths and the effects that can be created on each. When painting landscapes, I would try the CP support first. The HP support is recommended for fine detailed work, and it's also a good paper for color pencils.