Let’s Draw Manga - Transforming Robots
Author: Yasuhiro Nitta - Plex
Published by: Digital Manga Publishing
Distributed By: Watson-Guptil Publications

History Of Plex: The Creators of The Book

Let's begin with a short history of Plex, the creators of the book. Plex International Design's main office is based in Tokyo, Japan and they also have a branch in Hong Kong, China. They are most renowned for their toy design for GOBOTS, GUNDAM, ULTRA-MAN, DIGIMON, and THE POWER RANGERS. The company was originally established in 1981 under the name "Popy Planning Room" and specialized in the planning and development of character toys in Japan. Shortly after, they struck a business arrangement with the Bandai Group which successfully launched THE POWER RANGERS series into the world market since 1993. Today they are known as Plex International and still remain a conceptual design and development firm that specializes in the production of licensed toys and merchandise for popular T.V. series. To find out more about Plex visit their website at Plex-Web.com.

The Author: Yasuhiro Nitta

Yasuhiro Nitta is the author of this outstanding book. He is responsible for the organization, composition, and cover designs. In other words he is your teacher and guide as you learn on your journey through the book. He does a great job as he walks you through the creativity process through his illustrations and explanations. So don’t shy away from the book if you don’t think you have good enough art skills to draw transforming robots. The author walks you through the steps all the way.

Inside The Book:

The book is 128 pages long, and covers anything and everything you can think of among its pages.

The book starts off by giving a history of transforming robot design in Chapter 1. Here is a brief summary of that history:

Plex Transforming Robot design began in 1982 and took off with the commercialization of the MACHINE ROBO series. They were small and had elaborate transformations. Here in America we called these first transforming robots GOBOTS, who appeared as an animated series here on TV in 1983. As time progressed the GOBOTS who started out at a total length of 8 cm grew to the size of 20 cm. The robots progressed in size as well as became capable of transforming into any shape you could think of. From there on we see robots that can morph from animal to humanoid, animal to vehicle to humanoid and so forth till we come to the transforming robots of today. The art has progressed to give us larger and more innovative transformations each year and continues to progress onward today. The newest series in Japan are MACHINE ROBO RESCUE-2003 and MUGENBINE-2004.

Plex had a hand in this progression all along the way and the book is based on their accumulated experience in the area of transforming robots and has been created to pass on that knowledge and provide a simple explanation for those who develop a feel for designing and drawing transforming robots of their own.

Onward to the drawing board:

Now we’ll talk about the chapters about transforming. Chapter 2 starts you out with the basics. The first thing you’ll learn is how to transform a cuboid. Then you’ll learn how to reposition the cuboid and manipulate it to become more human like. Next you will learn depth awareness which will complete your basic training for designing transforming robots.

After you’ve mastered Chapter 2, we move onto where the fun begins in Chapter 3, transforming from land vehicle to robot. This chapter walks you through the basic concept of car and robot transformation. It will show you the different ways a vehicle can be manipulated to look like several different robot designs.

The next chapters are the same as Chapter 3, except they cover different types of transformations. From Chapter 3 onto the last chapter, it will teach you anything from, land vehicle to robot, aircraft to robot, animal to robot and much more. You will also learn many things in between such as designing heads, hands, legs and different looks for each robot you want to draw.

The Final Gist:

'Let’s Draw Manga- Transforming Robots' is an innovative, well written, and well drawn guide to the art of drawing transforming robots. It is must have art instruction book for any artist who wishes to learn the art of drawing transforming robots, as well as collectors who just love Transformers and wish to know the concept behind them.

Credits and Special Thanks:

Special thanks to John Whalen and Digital Manga Publishing for allowing me a copy of this book for review.

Extras that may interest you:

Check for more Let's Draw Manga Books at a retailer near you:
Let’s Draw Manga-Astro Boy
Let’s Draw Manga-Ninja and Samurai
Let’s Draw Manga-Sexy Gals
Let’s Draw Manga-Monsters