You Can Draw Mecha
ISBN: 1-932453-54-7
Publisher: Antarctic Press
Author: Sherard Jackson (with Ben Dunn and Robert Acosta)
Publication Date: October 2004
Series: You Can Draw Manga
Price: $19.95
Pagecount: 192
Color: no
Breasts: Not really
Short Impression: Focused on non-transforming giant robots.  A good 
     catalogue of styles and themes.

     Okay, so if you want the stuff from How To Draw Manga #25-26, you'll
need those issues.  Not to say that this book is totally new material, but it
doesn't re-use those particular comics.  Rather, a number of Ben Dunn's mechs
(Tiger-X, a Mazinger parody, some RNC battlesuits, etc) are used as
examples.  
     Here's the chapter list: Basic Setups, Designing Factions, Size
Relations, Combat Mecha, Heroic Mecha, Fantasy Mecha, Animal Mecha, Organic
Mecha, Battlesuits, Boosters, Faking It.  Chapter two stands out as being
more worldbuilding than specific drawing, and it's about setting up your
sides.  "Size Relations" is about using scenery to make sure people get the
proper sense of scale.  And the final chapter is like a slightly more serious
chapter of "How Not To Draw Manga".
     Anyway, YCDM starts from the assumption that you can draw, and is really
about themes and design elements.  In fact, the introduction explicitly
points out that "how to draw" books really can't help you draw, only loads of
practice can do that (like I say at the top of this file).  :)  But it's a
very good taxonomy of non-transforming robots, and I think it could really
help someone take their basic skills and get them on the road to putting
together a coherent cast for a story.