The best way to improve your ability to visualize is to practice visual skills, share your results and grow through mutual feedback. You can start your training right here: I've started to collect key experiences on visual storytelling, gathered in my workshops on drawing manga and storyboards with many diverse participants. Let me share these insights with you. The first part of „The Courage to Draw“ shows how to „Make Emotions Matter“ in a visual story. To be able to render varying emotions of a character design and training to imagine a fitting context to these emotions is not only the best way to get a story going; it's a first step into training visual storytelling in general. Once you understand how to „get into the mind“ of a fictional, drawn character, making it believable, you will be able to design more vivid figures and encounters inspired by your own, real life as well. Depicting emotions is a driving power of gripping visual storytelling, and the simple steps depicted here show you how to connect pen and words to get the story going.

1. Teaching review of manga drawing and
storyboarding workshops
Marianna Poppitz
http://urbanplanetcomix.com/
The Courage to Draw:
Make Emotions Matter!

3. We love to see visual stories (be it in
films, comics, mangas or animes) –
that's why most people join my
workshops.
“But how could I start to draw by
myself...?”

5. At the end of my workshops, I often
get this feedback:
“I didn't even know that I'm able to
draw... like this!”

6. It's simple: Your love of visual stories
fuels the ability to express your own
ideas visually!

7. To learn how to use your hidden
visualization skills, lets address first
things first.

8. Before you start visualizing a whole world, start
with an emotion. Start with a smiley.

10. And then, step by step, go adding detail.

13. Drawing too much detail can be distracting,
though: less is more.

14. Manga figures are often reduced to a visual
minimum.

15. Simple character designs are easier to recognize,
throughout different moods and behaviors.

18. And the simpler the lineart, the more you can
highlight emotions in facial expressions.

19. So, be it smart heroes or common folks, make
them recognizable!

21. Basic sketchnotes can visualize a first rough
emotion, manga techniques will take you further
by defining facial traits, enhancing the feeling.

23. To improve your power of visualization, start to
focus on:
#1 SPEED: Drawing faster will help you to go with
a minimum of lines. At this rough stage you learn
best how to tweak your character in order to make
it look the way you like.

27. #2 CHANCE: One magic about drawn emotions
is: they appear on paper almost accidentally.

28. Use that, asking yourself:
What is the reason behind this puss? or that
smirk? or the hidden rage?

31. #3 IMAGINATION:
Imagine situations, invent statements and
backgrounds that sustain your drawn emotions,
and you'll get the story rolling.

32. Trying that for conflicting emotions will lead you to
a story development in a sequence of pictures.

33. To sum it up in a nutshell:
Emotions are the driving power of gripping
storytelling. Give them reason and depth, so we
will ask to see and know more!

35. Of course, mere talking heads won't do the job to
tell a complete story.

36. Follow the next “Courage to Draw”-episode to
understand how to capture dynamic figures in
space.

37. For upcoming workshops, please check:
http://urbanplanetcomix.com/workshops/
BIG THANKS to all participants of my workshops:
you keep inspiring me!
http://urbanplanetcomix.com/workshops/

38. Marianna Poppitz teaches groups and individuals:
illustration, manga drawing, storyboarding, visual
storytelling, youth education;
in workshops i.a. For:
BDK e.V. Berlin,
cultures interactive e.V.,
DJG Berlin,
Embassy of Japan in Germany,
Goethe Institute Minsk,
Klassik Stiftung Weimar,
Stiftung wannseeFORUM,
VHS Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg