Hello beautiful ladies and lads of read.cash!
Today I want to share with you some little things I learned when I created my first manga page. I will also include tips that (in my opinion) could be useful for you when we want to create your own manga, these tips will definitely help us avoid some common mistakes I made due to ignorance or little knowledge on the subject. Let's get started:
in general terms, a manga is a cartoon or a comic whose art is based on a specific style of Japanese drawing.
Reading order on a manga is different from the comic, while in a comic the reading order is from left to right, in a manga is totally the opposite (right to left), however, both (manga and comic) agree about reading from top to bottom.
Panels are the basic structure of a manga, these generally have square shape and inside of them we will write and draw our story. Every scene or drawing has their own panel.
in order to include written content in a manga you need to use something called speech bubbles or text bubbles. Text bubbles typically have globe form and they are blank spaces where we will write our story as I already described. It is recommended that the text bubbles are big enough to be seen with naked eye but without covering most of the art so the scene can be understood visually too, that is, trying to have a balance of 70% art 30% writing per panel . Depending on the manga genre this balance may vary.
I did learn all my knowledge about manga as self-taught. I read many mangas and related information to it through the internet. I worked on this project alone and my first advice would definitely be to work with team, we will get results faster, we probably will deal with less stress and our product will be of better quality.
Now I will proceed to mention the basic steps of a manga development:
1) Select the manga genre
The first thing we should do (in my opinion) is to choose the genre of our manga. There are many available genres but I will only mention those in which I have the most experience.
1.1) Shonen: in a genre where action scenes stand out. Generally, the story goes around a main character who grows stronger as the manga goes on. The goal of our character is to protect something from their enemies. The target audience generally want to see outstanding battles (it's a must in this genre) and the story behind it doesn't have to be complex (but it can be if we wish to).
To increase the chances of being successful in this genre it is important to focus efforts on creating intense battle scenes whose art is beyond than amazing. The public negative criticism is always the same in this genre: "The story is original and entertaining but there is too many filler content chapters and almost no action". Another example of negative criticism is: "I waited for so long to be able to see the battle of A vs B and got so dissapointed when finally saw it, I didn't understand many of the panels scenes and the battle ended in a blink of an eye." We must learn from these opinions and try to avoid many filler content or poor art quality (specially in battle scenes).
2.2) Shojo: it's the favorite genre of female teenagers. The content is focused to show the way a female character learns from every event she goes through, her reaction to certain typical events of adolescence, her first love and other things. A strong point in this genre has to do with the communication developed between the female character and another character who she secretely likes.
To increase the chances of success writing a shojo manga, emotional scenes should be amazingly done. An excellent personality development of every character is highly recommended as well as taking good care of the bonds made between them. The key here is to write content with deep emotional background.
2.3) Seinen: The story here is generally complex and gradually becomes clearer as we read more chapters. The intended public on this genre are mainly composed of adults so the expectatives and requirements about writed and drew content are very high.
To increase the chances of success in this genre we should always add some reality and logic to surreal or fantastic events. For example: "Everyday I traveled to the nearest lake and tried to levitate lake's water with my mental powers, however, this wasn't posible until a Full Moon night happened, then I understood this unknown power was somehow related to the Moon." As we already know we can't levitate water with our mind but it is truth that the Moon affects water behaviour.
2.4) Parody: this is a genre in which elements of an existing work are frequently taken and mixed with elements created by us to generate a different (new) result from the original, the written and/or artistic content will be different than original, that is, we can express events that occurred in the original manga from a different point of view.
For example: let's suppose we are working on a Naruto Shippuden parody... "Hinata is trapped by Kaguya during the Great Fourth Ninja World War then Kaguya opens an interdimensional portal and disappears, Sasuke tries to find her using his Rinnegan to travel around places but didn't got any result. The war ends, Hinata is never found and Naruto lives as a solitary shinobi because Himawari and Boruto didn't born, Sasuke never had his first date with Sakura either because Naruto still likes her..." and from this point we can twist the original story as much as we want to creating a different product that includes a cool chibi art
In my case, I chose this genre because it allowed me to obtain results relatively quickly without a very heavy load of stress. This genre was perfect for my educational (training) purposes. We need to read a lot when creating content using this genre to avoid copyright issues, so I invite you to check out some specialized information sources on this subject.
Tip: it's wise to choose an existing genre for our first manga and avoid mixing it with another one because we will add an extra layer of complexity to an already complex project.
2) Establish the work team
After selecting the manga genre, the most important thing to determine is the number of people who will work on our project. Generally, a manga is made up of more than one page of content, so it's not the best to work alone. on this project Why? Two basic reasons, the first one has to do with the time it would take us to complete the manga page and the second one is related to the quality of the project.
The estimated deadline to finish a manga can be extended considerably when working alone for the simple reason of not being able to execute multiple activities at the same time (while the illustrator draws page 1, the writer creates the sketch of page 2)
The quality of a manga can be negatively affected when we are working alone. We may be a great illustrator but have trouble writing the story or the other way around, there is always one thing we do better than other so it's wise to work on the role you feel good about and leave other roles to other team members.
The basic roles to work on a manga project are writer and illustrator but there are other roles too so I will start describing each of them right now.
2.1) Writer: this role will take care of writing our manga story line. As writers we must create the personality of each character and describe their physical appearance, draw simple sketches of each scene because it will help our illustrator to know important things needed to fullfill his role like scene perspective for example. Everything that don't belongs to art is done by the writer /except editing).
Tip: is a good practice to think about the way our story will end from the beginning, this will help us to keep the focus as we develop or manga and events on our story happen. It will also help us with how we would raise every character personality and how important events our story will affect/change them.
2.2) Illustrator: is the person who will give life to the ideas and descriptions made by the writer through art. As illustrators we must have deep knowledge about how to draw landscapes, structures, characters, animals and others.
Illustrator must have direct communication with the writer and establish from the beginning is writer will allow or not certain creative freedom to the illustrator. Sometimes writers will require their story to be represented exactly as they described it on a document while other times writers will be flexible about artistic decisions.
For example: The writer provides us with a description about a cleric type (white mage) character and the writer is flexible about this character design wich allows the illustrator to make some artistical decisions like avoiding to draw this white mage character with a black pointed hat (very common accessory of black magician) like it was described by the writer on a document instead the illustrator chooses to add a tiara on this female cleric's head improving the design of this character and the manga quality overall. That is why good communication between the writer and illustrator is important and it will be an excellent decision to exchange opinions about their work because it will significantly enhance final product's quality
Tip: It's important to take notes after every reunion made with the writer because it will help us along with his document to create the required art.
2.3) Assistants: ink assistant, lettering assistant, shading assistant... there are many kind of them. Since I worked alone on this project and executed each existing role (except editor), I don't know the range of action for each particular assistant type, so it would be good to get more information using other specialized sources.
Tip: if our team is made up of two members, a good way to cover assistant tasks is to distribute it between the writer (he can do the lettering) and the illustrator (can do inking and shading for example).
2.4) Editor: is a person with more experience and knowledge about manga than us. Editor most important function is to find and fix errors, it can fix a hole that exists in our manga story or it can suggest a change of perspective in the art of a particular scene. The editor is responsible for maintaining and/or improving the quality of our work. He generally works for the company that will be in charge of publishing our manga.
Tip: This role should never be excluded from our project. If we want to take care of the publication on our own (without the intervention of any company) we must contact someone who has more knowledge and experience than us in the area to work as our editor in order to maintain the excellent quality of our work.
3) Planning: it is wise to establish a schedule of activities, include deadlines and outline the weekly tasks/objectives. Always keep in mind "Think twice before acting" or in this case "Plan twice before executing" to avoid future headaches, we must keep the focus on our weekly goals so we can reach our final goal.
Tip: We need to study our limitations and our range of action so we accoplish in the best way our plannification
4) Get to work: now we can work on our role and in a blink of an eye we will be publishing our first manga (or at least our first manga page).
Additional advice: before trying to make our first manga it is wise to read a lot of content related to the topic we want to cover. If, for example, we want to develop a romantic plot, it would be best to document ourselves with products made by other prominent artists in this genre, for example Romeo and Juliet or Twilight. This will allow building a mental library (in the case of writers) or a mental gallery (in the case of illustrators) that will be of great help when developing our manga.
On my manga page there are references to Naruto, Boku no Hero Academia, The Powerpuff Girls, Megaman and a few more. I did create this small project with the intention of learning about the development of a manga then I could create my own manga in a known genre (like shonen). Each element of my manga parody page that has similarity to another anime/comic/ manga belongs exclusively to prefious named authors and not to me, that is why this manga page is not for sale.
Esto es todo por hoy. Espero sea una información útil para sus futuros proyectos!
