How to Draw Anime Robots

Many anime robots are classified in the "mecha" category. Mecha (or meka or mechs) is an abbreviation of "mechanical" and is also a play on the Japanese word for animated mechanical creatures, which is "meka." Drawing these usually pilot-controlled robots can be extremely time-consuming and intricate, and takes a skilled hand.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Eraser
• Graphite pencil or charcoal
• Sketch pad

Draw Intimidating Anime Robots With Style

1. Figure out how your mech (robot) will work. One robot can have body armor, big metal limbs and jet propulsion, while another can have machine gun arms, flame throwing feet or even turbo engines for power.

2. Draw the "skeleton" for your robot. This will vary depending on the shape and size of your mech, but should begin with a series of simple geometric shapes. You can draw circles for the hands and feet, a cylindrical oval for the torso, rectangles for the legs and a pentagon for the helmet or head.

3. Refine each body part now that you have a basic skeleton. Every robot is different, but here are some options: cinch the waist with a metal band to create a midsection, define a lower pelvic shield (almost like metal underwear), define the lower section of the arm below the elbow with a larger rectangle to denote separate components, add a chest plate with ancient writing and enhance the robot's feet with oversized, space-age metal boots that extend to the knees.

4. Add symbols to shoulder shields, knee pads, elbow pads and metal gloves to denote your robot's affiliations. These could be drawn from a popular anime comic or completely created from your own imagination. By choosing foreign-looking symbols, your character will appear more exotic.

5. Finish your robot with mechanical details, such as bolts, wires, circuits, strange lines, textures or smaller-component robots.

Tips & Warnings

• If you're struggling with the details of your robots, strive to include only straight lines and angular machine parts. This will keep your robots looking mechanical and imposing.
• Keep mecha heads small (think Transformers), as large heads take away from the detail of the body structure of robots. Besides, big heads on robots often simply look out of place.
• If you are having trouble layering your robots, you can draw separate parts on different sheets of your sketch pad and then trace each layer on one sheet of paper to conjoin all the parts. Be sure to use a grid to keep all components in proportion.
• Try to keep robot details simple. If you add too many components, your robot can end up looking clunky.