Sta.sh
Draw my Naruto OC Manku Urakami. It's can be all thet u want, fan art, face screenshots, couple art or else.
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I really like designing female characters, but I'm starting to think I might not be very good at designing male characters. While I've gotten a lot of compliments for my female character Hilde from the manga I recently drew (and yes, I know I've stopped posting pages, I have decided to scrap them and start over), and even had editors suggest I make her the main character because she was so appealing, nobody ever complimented Kiva. Personally, I really liked his design, but yesterday I took my work to my old school to ask a story professor what he thought, and the first thing he said was "This Kiva character is not marketable. His design is nothing special. The girl on the other hand looks great and you shouldn't change a thing." So now I'm sitting here and reworking Kiva's design, and I'm thinking about giving him some sort of head gear, like goggles (even though he's not a pilot or anything that would require goggles) or a headband or something to replace his dumb hat that is hardly noticeable anyway. I'm also thinking about making his hair spikier and more traditional shounen (like DBZ's Goku or Naruto or that Fairy Tail dude), but I can't help but feel it makes him look old school. I'm really trying to avoid that look because it is SO cliche (as are goggles), but then again, maybe cliche is the only way to go.
My professor gave me some weird advice when I told him what manga I was referencing for styles and such. He said "Don't reference serialized manga. Reference newbie mangaka one-shot stories, because that way you know the absolute recent trends in styles." So I downloaded a bunch of one-shots from Jump's main page, but I didn't see much of a connection in the styles. Some people looked more old school or clearly referencing Naruto or something, some people were really awful, and there were only a couple of artists who I thought really had an interesting style all their own. It's so confusing...
So, I want to know what you guys consider to be your FAVORITE lead male character in a shounen series. What attracted you to this character? Was it his design or his personality? If you have any links, that would be great. I'm going to completely redo my comic after I finish one or two of these backlogged commissions and then try again with editors. My teacher also informed me that I shouldn't listen to advice from anyone but editors at the magazines I am aiming for. So does that mean I ignore his advice? I don't know anymore.
Also, if you want to be brutally honest about my character design for Kiva, you may say what you like and dislike without worry that I will hate you or cry or whatever. You can even call his design "stinky doodoo" and that I'm a "poopy pants artist" and I will be okay with that.
Hey, I think this means I no longer have any confidence in myself. Super!
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Uneasy 
another character would be inyasha (sorry for my spelling) because when you first met him he's kind of a ass but as the series progresses you see more of his kindness and learn more of his sad past and how even thought all of that he's still trying to help the girl that looks like his past lover who he was tricked to hate. i can think of more like ren from shamen king or ed from full metal alchemist
but i don't want to boar u
I like Inuyasha too. I kind of like asshole good guys who eventually kind of soften up
straight lines and overlapping muscular connections are key.
i'd like to be of help in that field!
Okay, so. Before answering this question I had to go and look at the shounen series that I actually like... and still I'm not sure if I will be answering this the way you're looking for. BUT here goes.
So even though this is stupid sounding, Naruto is still one of my favorite male characters in a shounen series. I think for me it's not so much that he's mischievous or even that he's got a sweet little heart-- but it was because he tried to have friends but couldn't. That sounds a little weird, but I love that sort of pathetic character that would really love to be friends with people but can't (due to luck or character flaw). I liked Akira from Hikaru no Go and Gokudera from Reborn for the same reason. I really love the whole "you're my first friend" sort of meeting. I think adding that sort of softness to a male character gives them a little depth. I don't know what boys want from a shounen series (as i am not a boy), but I like the boys to have a little bit of girliness (HAR HAR PUT HIM IN A DRESS??).
I have a hard time reading series where I can't immediately go "aww, you're kind of sweet" with male main characters. I mean, I don't want it to be on page 1, but I like seeing something worth rooting for emotionally. This is why I could never get into One Piece, and had a hard time with anyone other than Hiei or Kurama in YYH.
I feel like what you do with your female characters is that you give them strength to give them character. Strength in varying levels and in varying ways (ie, Arma being physically strong and Neiva being emotionally collected) to me gives a girl that extra edge. And you have AMAZING female characters. I mean, it's been like a year since I've read any of your story, but I can still name all your girls and I adore all of them. I think your females are better balanced on strength/softness than your male characters. But again that's personal opinion.
I do have a hard time liking Kiva's design, but it's his outfit rather than his physical characteristics (love the hair, the ears, tail, etc). But I think that's just me being me. I hated a lot of people's outfits in series that I ended up liking later.
AND ALL THAT RAMBLING AFTER NOT POSTING ANYTHING FOR LIKE GOD ONLY KNOWS HOW LONG. Sorry to dump this here.
I think I liked Naruto in the beginning, but by the time I'd had enough of the series I think he no longer really had trouble making friends. I mean, that no longer became his motivation. I know in the pilot one-shot it was all about him trying to make friends, but to me that part of the series was dropped really quickly after just a volume or two of the serialized manga. Kiva is actually like that (I know I haven't posted many pages...) where he has zero friends do to his appearance, which has made him a bit of a self-centered jerk to people who ARE nice to him, but by the end of the story he's made at least two friends and is starting to learn to get along with people who previously shunned him.
The thing with his clothes is that he is trying to find a place where he belongs, and he decides his experiences with people have been bad and he wants to become a beastman and try living with them, who he is sure will accept him, so he has made his clothes to look like theirs. In the story at the end he meets beastmen who make fun of him because they don't consider him a fellow beastman, and at the very end he gives up trying to be any particular group and to just be himself as best as he can. And while, to me at least, that sounds pretty darn good, a lot of people who read the story missed that, so I guess I didn't present it very well (one-shots are HARD. I think I work so much better with time to let characters evolve, but you only get 36 pages to do that with a one-shot). Since I'm scrapping the beastmen aspect, I could probably go in and redesign his clothes a little bit. Though... like you said, a lot of shounen manga characters that are popular aren't exactly stylish. Goku and Naruto wore orange, Luffy is a pirate in a straw hat wtf, and Yu-Gi-Oh has magenta spikes in his pyramid hair.
I really like Akira from Hikaru No Go, too. In most manga like this you are made to hate the rival character, but here you kind of feel sorry for him because Go has been his life and all of a sudden this kid who can't even hold the stones right beats him on one of his first games. I don't hate Akira at all and obviously the reader isn't supposed to. I like Hikaru too, of course, even though his motivation and Akira's motivation is more or less just to win for the sake of winning and eventually to beat the other. When you think about it, they have pretty weak motivation... but who cares! It's surprisingly real this way.
What's really interesting about my female characters is how I probably am always going to be better at writing female characters, but not necessarily FOR women, if that makes sense. That is probably why it's been so hard finding a niche for myself, since I am clearly not a shoujo writer/artist and never will be. It's pretty clear to me that FaLLEN will only get published by an actual publisher IF I make a name for myself with something more mainstream.