Zero to Hero - Making my First Manga!!

When it comes to creative dreamers, I think there are two kinds of people: those, who make it happen, and those, who don’t. After many years of entertaining the thought of drawing my own manga, I decided it’s time to finally make it a reality. I will be documenting my journey in this blog.

A little about me:

I read a lot of manga during high school. I practiced sketching, imitating the various drawing styles most days after school. I have watched my fair share of online tutorials, had fun learning but I rarely produced actual finished works. Then once college came around I stopped drawing and couldn’t really find the time for it since. I did not go to art school, didn’t take any classes or any of that. So if you are in the same boat, I hope my words here can motivate you to get started too. :D

First steps - Planning

As with everything else, thorough planning is necessary before getting into action. After some thinking, here is the plan I came up with. As of writing this post I am at the inking stage and so far it has been working well for me.

My process

1. decide the (rough) length and genre

2. find author

3. adapt novel to script (if needed)

4. create page layouts/thumbnails

5. sketch with pencil

6. ink pages

7. digital effects

-YAY! You've done it!

A few comments about the above

1a) When deciding the genre of the project, take into consideration not just what you enjoy reading, but what you can actually draw...This might sound very obvious, but make sure you can at least draw a half-decent wolf before going into Little Red Riding Hood.

1b) Now, a few words on the length/scope. This is such a major life lesson. YOU MUST START SMALL, otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure. I see this all the time on collaboration forums. Writers often have this 500+ chapter epic fantasy saga in mind, and want an artist to commit the next few decades of their lives drawing it (for free of course, "I hope you understand"). It's the same for artists who can't finish their works, or just never start, because their idea is overwhelmingly big.

If you’ve listened to Olga Rogalski (Road to Manga) on skillshare, she recommends 20 pages for your first one-shot mangas, as that is a common threshold beginning artists can't cross. If you can get past that, you’re mature enough to take on a bigger project. I decided on around that page count too. As for genres, I was thinking action, fantasy, romance.

It is also worthwhile noting that I wanted to start asap, so I requested that the writer use an already finished work, or at least a fully formed idea.

As it happens, I was super lucky and found a writer right away, with a story that was just what I was looking for! Stay tuned to know how I found my writing partner!