Manga is a composite art that can depict the future. | The Way of the Mangaka.

I'm currently challenging my hand at drawing manga.

When I was a child, I loved Manga and wanted to be Mangaka.
In my childhood, there were few ways to become Mangaka or to learn Manga techniques, and I eventually gave up on the idea of becoming Mangaka.

Now I mainly use photography and videography as a way to express my creativity.
It's a great experience and it suits me.
However, photography and videography can only describe what happened in the past.

Nowadays, we can see a lot of videos on YouTube and other video media that focus on the production process of Mangaka.
Mangaka themselves are also appearing on social networking sites and video media, giving us more opportunities to learn about their production process and their lives.

One of my favorite Mangaka decided to start an online community for people who wannabe Mangaka.
I wanted to participate it.
Manga can depict the future.
I decided to challenge my hand at manga again.

I will join an online community for people who wannabe Mangaka, hosted by one of my favorite Mangaka.

In order to gain the right to participate in the community of wannabe mangaka community, I had to pass a selection process.

The test consisted of drawing and submitting a short Name.
Name is a kind of blueprint that a mangaka creates before drafting.
Name is a brief description of the screen structure and dialogue, in addition to the placement of the characters, their expressions, and the setting of the story.
Based on Name, Mangaka has a series of meetings with the editor to create the story.

I submitted my Name for a short dialogue between two characters, set in a future world.
I submitted the following is my Name and passed the selection process.

My past manga challenge that inspired by blockchain.

I had challenged myself to publish manga on my blog around 2019.

At the time I was interested in blockchain technology and attempted to use my manga itself as a metaphor for the concept.
My idea for the manga was to present short, fragmented episodes with no clear story line connection, which could be connected in any order.

I also shared the plot and hoped that people other than myself would participate in my manga.
In this concept, copyright inheritance through distributed ledger technology was not technically realized, but I hoped for a future in which such a means of expression would be possible.

Unfortunately, this attempt did not work due to the technical limitations of my manga, and I was unable to create a movement.
But I did not give up.

My prototype of manga in 2019

A few ideas to make up for the technical deficiencies of my manga.

I have decided to reintroduce this concept to the community of wannabe Mangaka.

My goal is to overcome my technical limitations through collaborative learning in the community, but I also think it is significant to be able to introduce this concept to a community of wannabe Mangaka.

I took on the challenge of creating a new Name for my manga, building on the one I drew in 2019.
I had a lot of technical limitations.
Not only did I have to be able to draw manga characters, but the Koma-Wari: advanced panel layout technique of manga developed in Japan, was a big challenge for me.

I skipped a lot of drawing manga technical issues by alternative means, and valued expressing the concept as quickly and easily as possible.
This idea has been carried over to this manga challenge.

When I drew my manga in 2019, I replaced Koma panels with a movie screen to skip the Koma-Wari issue.

I limited Koma panels  to three different aspect ratios (23.5:1, 16:9, and 4:3) and decided to arrange Koma panels vertically to represent the story.

For my manga challenge this time, I decided not to make Koma frame layouts in Name stage, but to use a movie storyboard format.
I placed the characters in horizontal panels that resembled a movie screen, wrote their lines, and specified what kind of lighting and lens would be used for that scene.

By clearly deciding at Name stage which lens (wide-angle, standard, or tele) will be used for the scene I'm depicting, I intend for a dynamic sense of movement to appear when Koma frames are divided.

The idea of figuring out what lens to use for each Koma frame of the manga came from Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA.

In the manga AKIRA, the compression effect of a telephoto lens and the distortion of a wide-angle lens are used to give the manga a sense of dynamism.

I decided to use Photoshop, which I am familiar with, to draw the manga, instead of a manga-specific application.

The technique of drawing manga in Photoshop was based on the technique of Mangaka - Naoki Yamamoto, which was featured on Manben, a TV show facilitated by Mangaka - Naoki Urasawa.

Photoshop helps me with its layers, campus rotation, and zooming features.

I am looking forward to joining the community of wannabe Mangaka.

My expectation in joining the manga community is not only to improve my manga skills, but also to meet and engage in friendly competition with other wannabe Mangaka.

I am looking forward to working with others who share the same challenges.

The community is closed and I can't write about its specifics, but I will write about the process of my own challenge in this blog.

I hope this blog will help me interact with manga lovers around the world!

I share my manga on this blog under the Creative Commons license - Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

(English)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(Japanese)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.ja

Reference

Akira, Vol. 1 - Katsuhiro Otomo
https://www.amazon.com/Akira-Vol-1-Katsuhiro-Otomo/dp/1935429000

Naoki Yamamoto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Yamamoto_(manga_artist)

Manben - Naoki Urasawa and Naoki Yamamoto

Thank you for reading.
August 1, 2021, written by Masa - Focus on the interaction.