500 Manga Characters For Your Game

Previously, I mentioned two books that provides stock artwork you can use for your games. One of those books is called 500 Manga Characters by Sweatdrop Studios.

As the title says, this book has 500 manga characters, fully drawn for you to color and use for whatever purpose you like including commercial ones (more details on that later). The whole book is in color and is pretty hefty with 528 pages in a graphic-novel sized format. The majority of the pages within the book features one of the characters you can use. Each of those character pages sports a giant number and a large black and white image of the character. On a smaller scale, you’ll see a colored version of the character, giving you an idea of how it’ll look like in color, and a short description of the character.

Gotta have goth? This book has them!

There are over 15 types of characters within the book ranging from your typical teenage and adult characters to more exotic monsters, mecha’s and animals. Chibi’s are also present in the volume which makes for one heck of a variety for those looking for different types of drawings. With 19 artists contributing in this volume, the drawings all remain in the manga style but can vary in quality from bad to very good. Most are in the mediocre* side thankfully so your $20 USD is not wasted on this book (should you decide to get it, that is).

The good, the bad and the ugly.

One of the great uses I see for this collection is how you can easily get characters for your game! There are monsters, characters in fighting poses, and there are tons of NPCs just waiting to be used. Going through each image can be a bit of a chore on the first go but once you leave bookmarks (preferably of the sticky note kind), it’ll be a snap to find and use what you need. If you want, you can even use these images in your prototype. No fuss, no muss!

Bring it on!

Some other good points about this book is that it lists the artists who drew what character making it easy for you to credit the appropriate person. You can also use that list to find your favorite artist’s work within the book. There are also 14 pages in the back dedicated to pointing out how to color the artwork digitally which is a pretty nice touch for those who are unfamiliar with the CGing process.

Don’t know how to CG? No problem!

Though the book description says that all images are in JPEG format, in reality, they are all in PSDs. When I saw the PSD formats within the CD, I thought they’d actually have multiple layers with one layer sporting the black line art and another layer a white base color but the file only consists of one layer. Kinda disappointing but no biggie in the end, imo.

Presenting: the one layer psd!

Before I go into the license agreement, here’s the table of contents of the book for those interested:

Introduction
How to us the CD
Teenage Female Contemporary
Teenage Female Traditional Asian
Teenage Male Contemporary
Teenage Male Traditional Asian
Fantasy
Action
Sci-Fi
Historical
Gothic Lolita
Child Male
Child Female
Adult Male
Adult Female
Chibi Male
Chibi Female
Villians
Mecha
Monsters
Animals
Hardware
Software
Basic Tools
Brush Tools
Blocking in Colors
Light and Shade
Airbrush and Beyond
Artists
License Agreement

You’ll fight either one any day, right? ;)

The terms allow you to use the art assets for video games (it specifically states that to boot), allowing you to modify, enhance and use it for commercial purposes. You can use it in your website and any multimedia product too. There are restrictions of course but they are reasonable such as not reselling, distributing, and copying the images singly or in a collection, using them for pornographic or illegal activities, and not sharing it over a network. But don’t take my word for it, check out the complete licensing terms here and see for yourself. :)

I actually borrowed out this book from the library initially and after going through the images, checking out the license agreement and the price of the book ($20 USD MSRP but you can get it much cheaper), I decided to buy my own copy. I haven’t used it for anything yet but I know it’ll come in handy if I’m in a time crunch. If you’re short on time, don’t have a lot of money to spend, or can’t draw for your life, try this book out and see if it’ll work for you.

* I just want to point out that my standards of art may be different from yours but from the image with characters #151 and #152, 151 is mediocre and 152 is good in my estimation (slight tiff with the hands). Bad ratings goes to those drawings with a lot more problems than 151 for which I don’t like the face, hands, and hair. For more samplings of the drawings within the book, check these images out: mechas ~ animals ~ mediocre ~ ugly ~ chibis