How to make a good manga

[MajinCanty]

I plan on making a manga series in the next few years, and I need some help. It's going to have a martial arts theme. I really need some suggestions to make a high caliber manga.

[dokool]

Head over to the Megatokyo or DeviantArt forums, I'm sure they can give you better advice than we can here.

-DOKool

[Jebadia]

1. You need to be able to draw good..to make the manga. Don't make the manga to learn how to draw good. As for coloring, there's several options, you can do the screentoning methode which you see in lots of manga (containing values of black and white and grey). You could go for full color, which would talk much more effort, but would also look good. IF you're no good at coloring all together, perhaps you can have someone else help out, just because you're doing this does mean you have to do it alone.

Other people have good strong points, for instances me, I can draw people and figures (...eh to some extent), how ever when it comes to more precise things like backgrounds or inatimate objects (like guns, or anything with several straight angles) I lack greatly in quality and detail, simply because I don't draw those often and lack much experience. If someone else would like to be involved and have talents in one area that excel from your's? Well hell, give them chance, you don't always have to do it alone.

2. A coherent, well place story to get you started for the first few issues/chapters/strips. Don't have a vague idea and work with that, sit down and consider a lot of details on the plot and concept before you jump into action. Look into a lot of information on subjects that you're story may be based around. What ever your idea for the comic is...I garantee it's been done some other time in history, as old folk lore or mythology of some sort, or happened in real time. A lot of details which you can look into to help get a good grasp on a solid concept.

3. Becareful when directing action in to pictures. You don't have to go and do a frame for every kick and punch, often artists use as little frames as possible for action scenes, and very often you get just one large image on a page capturing the moment. It just depends of the significance of the actions being portrayed.

4. Avoid the talking head syndrome. Don't draw too many frames of just the same people talking, try to elaborate if you must, especially in a sequence that involves lots of dialogue and little action, if any. Sometimes you can draw out images or sequences of what the characters are talking about, or perhaps picture what is going on in the surroundings, just keep the reader's eyes busy. A lot of tricks used in anime's do the same thing, because watching the same two folks blaber on from different angles can dull things up.


Last but not least. IF someone doesn't like it...don't blow up in their face about it, everyone has their own opinions, try to take what they think into consideration if you want, how ever it's your story and your idea and you can take it into what ever direction you want reguardless of what other people think.

If the person is just flaming you because they don't like you or they're just a prick...well fuck, kick their ass.

I hope this is someone helpfull for you :\
Good luck.

[sunandshadow]

(makes a face at the idea of a martial arts theme)

Well, there are a lot of things you can/should do in the design phase to help insure your manga turns out well. Since a mangaka is both writer and artist you have to do designwork in both areas.

Characters, for example, need to have interesting backstory, memorble names, psychology that is a logical product of their childhood, culture, and formative events, which is consistent for that character throughout the story, unless they are a dynamic character and then it has to evolve in a logical and believable way.

Characters also need to have good visual design: they should be attractive, look appropriate to the role they play in the story and their personality, and have good designs that harmonize with each other for their body proportions/anatomy, face shape and details, hair style, clothing, and habitual poses, gestures, and facial expressions.

Then you have to account for the fact that you have a cast of characters - they have to have different personality types (and come from different backgrounds) that will interact interestingly, they can't look too similar to each other or the reader will mix them up, you have to keep trach of what heights they are relative to each other, and they have to have different habitual postures, gestures, facial expressions, and styles of speaking.

And that's only the characters - you also have to think about the plot and themes and other standard elements of a story, and overall drawing style, panel layout and flow, scripting, portraying movement, backgrounds, and other art things.

Personally I've always felt too daunted by the range of skills (especially art ones) needed to attempt to make a manga myself, so if you're brave and skilled enough to make a serious attempt at it, good for you. If I was going to try to make a manga though, I personally would start by re-reading some of my favorite manga, taking notes and making a list on which was strong in each area and how it accomplished that. Then I would do character descriptions and sketches and a plot outline and run them by some editors on one of these online forums. I would get a book on any needed art skill I knew I was weak on, and then I would start writing my script/story board, run that past editors, then finally start making the actual manga.

But then, there are other people who just sit down and start drwing, making everything up as they go along, and their stuff turns out decent if not great. I all depends how methodical you can stand to be, how good your instincts are, how solid your art and writing skills are, how vivid your inspiration is, and how much work you want to put into it.

[rubyeye]

I plan on making a manga series in the next few years, and I need some help. It's going to have a martial arts theme. I really need some suggestions to make a high caliber manga.

I came across this earlier. It's about Publishing Your Doujinshi. Just scroll down a bit. It's from the Yuricon blog but you may find the information useful.

[Completely Wreckless]

You want manga, throw some tiddies in it.

You cannoot go wrong with tits.

Seriously though, throw tiddies in it.
Seriously.

But, seriously fuck what everybody else does, do you. It's your shit. No bodies gonna buy it anyway so you might as well do what the hell you want. People will respect you more if you come with some originality, throw some passion in it, show some perfection in your craft, and oh did i forget tiddies pleasssse.

Good manga is like acid. You hit it, it's incoherent, you start hearin and seein shit, you start scratching yourself, and by the end your talking to the monkey in your pillow case hoppin around like he's luke skywalker throwing shit at you and biting your finger nails.

Good luck.

[Ultimagamemasta]

Manga looks easy enough to draw....but what about having to make it on the computer. How to do that?!? I tried, I can even barely draw anything onto paper.

[Kitstune3]

Dont you just Scan it to the computer or put in computer code?

[sunandshadow]

3 ways to do it:

1) Traditional way - draw everything, including the panel borders and lettering, onto a large art board and scan (reducing the size) to get one page of manga. Manga made in the 80s and earlier was all done this way.

2) Hybrid way - draw the art for each panel of manga on a piece of paper; scan several panels, crop and arrange, use a program such as illustrator or photoshop to add panel borders, lettering, and other desired effects (This is the method I use to make my drawings)

3) Digital way - using a pressure sensitive digital tablet ($200-$5,000), draw directly into a graphics program, then edit into manga pages. (Scott McCloud uses this method. The fastest method, but difficult to control and draw details, takes practice to get used to the tablet.)

[Kitstune3]

You want manga, throw some tiddies in it.

You cannoot go wrong with tits.

Seriously though, throw tiddies in it.
Seriously.

He has a point