Practice Post : 07

Well I though of a story. The guy is the youngest and the strongest Field Marshal(highest post in world army) earth has ever seen and the girl is the daughter of the king of Oranus (earth is in war with this planet). The guy is captured by the people of oranus and the girl sees him and falls in love. They both run away but are caught by the their people. The two worlds start fighting again as they want to take them to their planet and set an example by killing them but the girl is killed on the crossfire and the guy being the strongest kills the troops of both army alone. Now neither earth nor oranus will accept the guy so he set of to wander the universe alone with his dead love. ^^ Well I portrayed it as a love story but in my dream it was mainstream battle story. I was the guy in the dream but I changed the character a bit by removing the beard and keeping the hairstyle.

Well I know I don't post a lot now but most of the time I am practicing, I don't even get time to use facebook or google plus. Well as you know I started with anatomy, I am still going at it and rather than learning the manga anatomy I am learning the real human anatomy then stylizing it to make manga character. You dont have to do it this away. For me this is easy and I have started working on foreshortening and poses too.

 Till next time ^__^

Day 8 - Smart Choices

Well first of all sorry for posting so late, I have been busy with other things and I wont waste time explaining those things so lets get to point.

Smart Choices

What do I mean by smart choices?

Becoming a mangaka is not easy nor is getting serialized but that's not even the hard part the had part is to stay serialized. I cant target one particular thing with it, its just a way to survive as a mangaka. It wont just be you, there will be many people with the same dream as you, so to beat them and get on top you need to make smart choices, for that all you need is proper information on the subject. Let me explain you by some examples.

01. Right now two great manga and pillars of shounen jump are going to end Naruto and Bleach as soon as they end jump will be looking for new talents so rather than submitting your work now and competing with two great final arcs you can submit your work when they end, well its a different story if its your dream to compete with them then go right ahead. Wait up take your time and build your story.

02. Differences for manga artists and writers. As a writer you will most likely be specialized in one genre so you will be bound with it, of course there are exceptions. But for a manga artist there are no such bounds lets take Obata Takeshi Sensei he has worked on many titles of different genre Bakuman, Death Note, Hikaru No Go, All You Need is Kill, Blue Dragon, Cyborg Grandpa G, Ayatsuri Sakon, Hello Baby, Hajime, Rampou and Urooboe Uroboros!. If you cant write stories or cant draw don't get down a manga is a work that has 50-50% balance of art and story both are equally important. A smart choice as good writer will be to find an artist or develop art skills and a smart choice as an artist is to think of a nice story or find a writer to work with.

Bad Choices 

You will definitely end up making a lot of bad choices but dont worry making bad choices is a good thing, I learn a lot from bad choices. I mean I deliberately make bad choices. If there is one right way to get something and then I will definitely end up taking 100 wrong ways but rather than considering my self a fool I think I am genius because now I know 100 different ways to not make mistakes ;) u get what I mean.

You, I and every one lives a short life which is a series of good and bad choices, don't be afraid of bad choices because a bad choice will help you learn and a good choice will help you win. Every mangaka has two things in common to inspire people and be the best mangaka. 

I dont know what I am trying to explain by this post, its just I have been distracted by other things right now and writing this post might inspire me again. It might not help you but it will definitely help me ;). I'll try and post a more meaningful blog next time.

An unknown person once said

"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."

Tutorial - Manga Writing : 02

This tutorial is an update to Manga Writing, so check that out before reading this or you can read I am gonna talk bout software for writing and pattern to write your story in.

Without wasting any time lets get to it.

Software for writing your concept, synopsis or entire script

3 Software that I have used and that I recommend are:

01. Final Draft - (free & paid)
02. yWriter - (free)
03. Celtx - (free & paid)

01. Final Draft : Right now they have the released 9th version of it but I am using 8 or 8.3. I mostly use final draft to write down my concepts (only concepts). The software is really good and offers a lot of features like thesaurus, text to speech (you can make the software read your script - really cool feature), scene cards (different scenes in different cards (can change the cards color is required)), and many more, check there website for more details. This is also the industry standard software for script writing even James Cameron uses it for Avatar.

02. yWriter : This was the first software that I ever used for writing script, let me say it looks slacky like a windows 98 software(app) but it is very functional. Its user friends, it has a lot of tools to work with like story board time line, database for characters, items(props), locations and not just a simple data base you can add alternate names, images, notes, bio, goals, description of characters. There are a lot more features to this app which even I haven't explored. Use it if you are a geeky writer and need a feature rich script writing software.

03 Celtx : This is my favorite, I used this to write my scripts. Its very easy to use. It also have a very detailed database more detailed than yWriter. It is available for both mac & pc. Celtx has cloud features you have to pay for it but its not that expensive or if you dont need cloud you can just download their free version. They have a lot of third part tools too, but again you will have to pay for it.

Download their free version, try them for 30 days and decide for yourself that which one is better for you.

Lets move to the interesting part.

Pattern for Writing a script
Many of you might not be interested in the software I mentioned your are happy with using word pad or Microsoft word or any other text editing app available to you.

The pattern for manga script writing goes this way.

Replace the things inside parenthesis () as required for your script

Page 1 : (number of panels on the page)

    Panel 1 : (Wide, top down exterior or arial view of city traffic, we see the man and his surroundings)

        Caption : (Add captions if required like why the man was in traffic and other details)

    Panel 2 : (Mid, front view of man bumping into a woman, we see the woman from behind)

        Caption : (There was a soda can lying on the ground man tripped on it and bumped into the woman)

Man

(thinking - what a beautiful lady)

(saying with sorry and calm tone)

Ah, Miss I am so sorry.

Woman

(saying with humble tone)

Its ok sir.

Alright this was the easiest and most productive way to write script for manga writers even if you don't draw your own manga, you can write down every last detail in caption so that the artist can draw close to your imagination.

The best part is the pattern I just described is available in all three software so you wont have to waste time writing Page 1, Panel 1 , Caption the above mentioned software will do it automatically for you.

As for me I only use software now to write down the concepts that I think or dream of. For writing entire script I do a process called "Nemu" in Japanese you can call it storyboarding its the rough layout of the actual manuscript. This way is more creative for me as I can doodle it up while thinking of it and make changes as required. These are some examples of it.

 Find the way that suits you the best. I'll post update on Writing tutorial as I get more skilled in it.

 Thank you for reading ^^

Tutorial - Manga Writing

Most of you wont read this article as you want to get to drawing part fast but writing a story is very important, keeping readers interested is the main goal of a manga. Drawing manga is hard work you don't wanna do it twice for the same script so make sure you script is perfect then move to the drawing process.

Making a manga requires two things :

01. Manga Writing : A good story is heart of manga, your story should have the power to keep people interested in it. Art has the privilege to be good or not so good but if story isn't good it wont sell. For example : What do all great manga have in common? A good story! they may all differ in art but their stories keeps reader interested.

02. Manga Drawing : In a manga the only way to explain your story to reader is by art so art process is as import as writing a story.

Well then lets start

Things you need to write a good story :

01. Concept : Your concept can come from anywhere like a dream, a person you met, a real life event but mostly concepts come from others concept. Let me give you can example u must know Naruto even if you don't know keep reading. Masashi Kishimoto sensei once said in an interview that the concept of Naruto came from concept of Goku from Dragon Ball Z. (1st pic - goku, 2nd pic - naruto)

I know you can make out the similarities like blonde spike hair, blue-orange dress color, and they have a similar attitude too (shounen attitude). So what i am trying to say its complete fine to get inspired by other stories or concept and then create your own be sure not to steal it completely though.

02. Genre : Now decide on your genre its very important. Lets have an example imagine you have a concept of a love story now a good writer can make a love concept in a horror genre (like protagonist and heroin face an awful lot of horror stuff but they help each other and in the end they survive and fall in love) or a horror concept in love genre. You can introduce comedy genre in a suspense story anything is possible, widen your comfort zone, you might only be good with writing thrillers or love stories but introduce other genre in your story too, it creates a dynamism, readers like it but don't over do it, it will cause negative effect.

03. Main character : Even if you cant draw, doodle something on a page because when you start writing story your biggest problem will be a blank page and you wont know where to start.



Maintain a notebook or a sketchpad or a binder for each project and keep everything in it like ideas, sketches or doodle, panels, names, schemes etc.

04. SET : Now you need a set or world to place your story in for example World of ninjas in Naruto, world of pirates in one piece or soul society in bleach, you can use our existing world or past or future, define this world in as much detail as possible, don’t fear if you don’t know how to sketch, write down everything, with the help of your details the artist will be a able to create something close to your imagination.

05. B.M.E : You must be wondering what does B.M.E stands for, well its simple – Beginning Middle End.

You must have heard about the 3 act rule, same thing applies here too. Think of a story as a music you cant have everything on high note then it will be just noise, u need to have a phasing in a story, ups and downs.

What is 3 Act rule?

Its like this :

Act 1: The protagonist need to accomplish some thing so he/she sets on a journey to complete their goal. At the end of act 1 he/she is very sad about things in their life but somehow gets motived about their goal and moves forward.

Act 2 : The act 2 can also be called the point of no return, there is so much at stake that there no way the protagonist can turn back. At the end of act 2 he/she is all defeated and demotivated the ending of act 2 and starting of act 3 are the peak of the story as the end of act 2 should be the lowest point the protagonist can hit with his failure and ~

Act 3 : ~ The starting of act 3 should be the highest point he can achieve in his life the point when he has accomplished his goals. The end of act 3 is just to end the story in a way that everything after it looks good, of course in your mind that’s how writers keep the story alive by making people think about their story even after its ended.

A really simple chart to understand.

This is how I write my stories, I hope this helps you. I myself break the rules of story making many times, you can do it too. Remember a story will get published if it is good - no other factor is involved. 

Keep a watch.

(I'll be posting an update to this tutorial in future and I will also make a tutorial on art, all my tutorials will be constantly updated as my skills evolve.)