Assignment 4: Make a Manga

Brief

For this assignment you will create your own two-page manga story.

This is an opportunity for students who love manga to really indulge their interest. However, it does not need to exclude any students from attempting to create their own story. Your manga narrative does not have to be shaped by obvious manga genres like romance, fantasy or horror. It could also visualise a funny animal story, or document a mundane, everyday task.

There are at least two possible approaches to the assignment:

1. You could adopt some or all of the manga visual stylings as listed in The Look of Manga section to deploy in a story you have already told in your artwork or a new narrative.

2. You could use the manga narrative style or genre themes as previously listed but expressed in your own developing style of illustration.

You need to produce a two-page sequential narrative. 

The aim of this assignment is to create a sample double-page spread showing a character or characters embarking on an adventure.

Research

For research I used my 'Manga in Theory and Practice' book by the legend 'Hirohiko Araki', the artist behind 'JoJo's Bizarre Adventure'; I read through the book and made note of important elements in creating a manga.

Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki 1

From what I read, the first pages are extremely important, they need to set the reader up for what to expect from the manga (pg.21). Once you figure out what art you want in the book with a certain style, you need an intriguing titles that can make the readers want to turn the page (pg.22-23). Another point to note is that Hirohiko drew panels with purpose, if there was a panel that could do without he would change it and refine it (pg. 38)

Not only is it important to draw thoughtfully in those first pages but the dialogue has to entice the reader to continue to the next page whether its shock value, sad tones, anger or suspense-- there are plenty of avenues to explore (pg. 25).

Going deeper into what goes into creating manga, there are "Four Major Fundamentals of Manga Structures". They are characters, story, setting, and themes; it's all what goes beyond and deep than the artwork (pg.41). Each are important to fully grasp since they can make or break the manga.

Characters

When it comes to characters, the most important aspect is the motivation since the readers want to get to know who will be taking them on this journey; you want to readers to root for the character and truly feel for them. With motivation, you should show the characters weakness, your readers are only human-- everyone has faults so why shouldn't your characters (pgs. 49-53).

You can make good characters turn evil if you eventually show "ugly feelings" that the reader can actually share with an evil character, because of this you'll create an outlet for the readers own "ugly feelings" (pg. 55).

One way that Hirohiko Araki creates their complex characters is by writing the characters history, it can create an in-depth idea to how your characters react to certain situations regardless if that history is not unveiled (pg. 59); you can write and reflect things that a character would be like such as their age and gender, their "history of education", what music they like-- it can be as extensive as you like (pg. 63).

The most important element is allowing the character to grow through the storyline; the same applies to supporting characters, and those supporting characters should encourage the main characters growth- and vice versa; as well as providing chemistry and bond with the main character (pg. 66-67).

Story

Story writing comes next and the structure of the story should follow some of the basics of introduction, development, twist and resolution. Since I am only producing two pages, I'm not going to completely worry about this section although for a sense of story and practicality I will do a simple overview of these story marks (pgs. 86-87).

There are some story patterns that can harm a manga, such as: having the author speak, it'll interrupt the flow and could possibly take the readers out of the immersion. Coincidences, too, can harm the story, it won't be as rewarding as the characters working to where they need to be than it being handed to them. "The protagonist blunders" can impact too, if a character messes up on something they know a the back of their hand, it will question the characters integrity.

"It was all a dream", if you found out all the heartache, pain and joy that you felt was just the character dreaming or having a vision, you'd feel betrayed and would end up losing trust from the reader that relied on your storytelling (pg. 98-99). Avoid creating reality in the manga (unless based on a true story), since the readers are trying to escape reality. Also, if you're trying to use a negative arc, make it so-- just avoid adding positive elements that may overthrow the negative arc (pg. 100-103).

Setting and Ideas

I'll wrap this section of research with the last few notes, touching on setting and ideas. Setting has to be well-researched to make it believable and to create a mood; however, its okay to not use all of the research-- to not overwhelm the story. You can create a setting on many considerations, relying on many things with focus on organizations, history of the setting, the geography; the topic of manga itself whether its a romance, sport, slice of life (pgs. 154-159).

When it comes to ideas, Hirohiko Araki would start off with scribbles of ideas, developed into sketches, into scripts and then the panel layouts and then the eventual pages. Ideas should come from things you like, or "opinions that aren't your own" that intrigue your own thoughts, or "events that provoke emotional reactions" (pgs. 177-179).

Wrapping up...

Reading through this book, the book itself is very informative about the ins and outs of manga creating, and so I drew back from a lot of research to avoid babbling because I am only doing 2 pages worth of manga, however, I wanted to get into the mind of a mangka.

I also purchased 'Manga Art Secrets' by Dalia Sharawna that teaches the practical techniques of creating manga, I have practiced a little with these techniques and I will refer to this book as I design my 2 pages.

Mood Boards

Manga Inspiration

I like Manga styles that have a lot of contrast and textures, so I think I'll references these as much as I can.

Character One Mood Board

Character Two Mood Board

Planning

I'm going to approach this as if I'm writing more than just two pages since I really want to take a lot from this exercise, so when I plan my ideas I might merge the two together-- and the script might be longer than two pages, depending on how the process goes, I may end up altering it or making more than two pages.

Plot ideas

Script

Character History

Character/Monster sketches

Thumbnails

Process

At the end of this section is a video of the digital process, to sum up what I did I took two pieces of Bristol paper and sketch and inked on the pages of the finalised thumbnails. From there, I scanned the images and inserted them digitally on a canvas. My reason for this is that I didn’t have the finance to buy screen tone just like the manga artists, and this way I was able to adjust freely my final illustrations.

I would darken the ink and lighten the paper, multiply the layer and add the tones under that main layer. After that, I would apply different effects and brushes that would create the illusion of actual screen tone transfer and include shadows with different tones of grey.

Initially, I was content with the first draft which was this image but wanted to get feedback from others since I knew I could do much better. My friends gave me constant feedback on what needed improving and it really enhanced my learning result I created a better final image. The feedback was to exaggerate the facial expression more, add screen tone to the jacket, create more interesting and meaningful text, roughen up the zombies more.

Moving onto the next page, I was very conscious of what mistakes I had made before: so, once I inserted the 2nd page draft, I immediately changed the facial expressions, added more screen tone (with purpose) and roughened up the zombies more. After the changes and applying the same techniques that I did for the first page to the second, I let my friends give me feedback and I worked on that feedback. Adding road markings, adjust the face a little more, add more sweat and expressive lines, avoid the characters looking at the viewer, and to play with font again.

After that, it was done.

Final Work

Evaluation

The objective of this assignment was to create 2 pages of a manga, and initially I was going to do 4, however I’m glad I wanted to put my all into this exercise and so I referred to friends who have read manga to give me feedback, I constantly had different manga’s around me to reference to for shading techniques, facial expressions, layout, text— so I ended up just doing 2 pages after all that.

This assignment has to be the best one I’ve done, I was able to create something that I could only ever imagine creating; because of my constant reference observations and by researching what it’s like to be a manga artist and doing some tutorials on creating manga, it really allowed for my art knowledge to expand and create to the best of my ability.

With this assignment, I had one personal objective of mine that I wanted to overcome, and that was to constant push myself. I have a tendency to go with what I first create when I come up with ideas of when I finish a piece, I get too comfortable and I get too stubborn to change it. I personally feel like I was able to overcome that with this assignment…

I ended up using the script as a loose guide for what was meant to be said in the two pages since I had originally written them for four, and when I was reflecting back on my research I had remembered that the first two pages had to pack a punch to get attention of the reader-hence the guy getting bit and the full page. I think because the researched said that dialogue isn’t as important, I began to relax about being so hung up about what they were going to say, how they would say it, if it would flow, would it be cringe or would it make sense. I just wrote what felt right after illustrating those scenes.

Something I could personally improving with this assignment is to grasp perspective better and to not be afraid to use a different angle to create a mood, on the second page and first panel I worry that it looks to uncomfortable with the characters being too far to left and the zombies approach from the right, it feels very squashed and cut off.

Overall, with research and planning I was able to create something that was beyond my creative limits and found something that I look forward to in my future art journey.

1 Hirohiko Araki, (2017) Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga: 1, VIZ Media LLC.