Manga is a Japanese art form and is a popular form of comics and animation. Many children may watch manga without knowing it such as Pokemon, Naruto, One Piece and Dragonball- these are all manga. Manga is a distinctive art style which is usually characterised by big eyes, crazy hair and tiny mouths and noses.

Working with a group of pupils from years 2, 3 and 4 we used faceyourmanga.com to create a mangatar, a manga style avatar of themselves.

Once the children had created the mangatar we print screened the image and pasted it onto Word and enlarge it so that it fitted onto an A4 page. Once we had done that we used small canvases and the children traced around the eye of their character by using the projector as a guide. We then painted the image in bright colours to give it a comic/ Pop Art style. To finish off the work we went over the lines in a thick black pen and this made the art really stand out. We then worked very hard to put the display in place and these are the results.

Why don’t you have some fun and make your own mangatar? But a word of advice... don't let your pupils use masks, gadgets or tattoos as they feature smoking and other inappropriate options. Otherwise have fun!