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Patient Question:



Urgh, I really tried to fool around with this myself and not bug you about silly questions, but I finally cracked. =/

I'm kind of having a dilemma in my art. And its not because I'm having trouble drawing this or that (well I am of course, but I know how to get myself to practice and improve), it's really my determination.

I haven't started a big, official manga, but I have mainly taken my time to do short few page comics, or just stuff here and there to work on paneling, characters, scenery and the like. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, since I've been working on comics since I was 10 and manga since I was 12; but right now it's all a bit frustrating. I know it takes years and lots of practice, but still...I dunno.

I get a good idea for a manga, and start out small with it, just a few pages (from what I’ve read and my own experience, its best to start small till you get the hang of something). But lately, every time I get pretty far in it, I just quit. I feel I made too many mistakes, it isn't coming out right, the overall idea and concept isn’t how I viewed it anymore and I basically just give up for awhile. Then I start up again with another mini comic and usually fail again.

How did you keep pushing yourself forward? I know it's kind of a silly thing to ask, since it's more on a personal question than 'how to draw this' question. But I think it might help me out if you could give me some advice about how to handle this, because I really want to step up and work on doing a manga, I really do. I just am having a lot of trouble starting and getting orginized. DX

Thanks for bearing with me.





Staff Advice:


I appreciate your effort in trying to resolve your own problem, I don't mind it when you have done so then you ask for help, that's a good learning process. (That's why there are teachers.)

I wonder whether I can help you with this completely.... because everyone suffers a different problem during their development, it might be good if you can bring this to a group's attention at if you feel you need further assistance after my feedback.

My take on this is... it's not really a manga problem you are having, it's probably a mind-set you have toward the mistakes you are making.

If you are focused on bringing out what's on your mind quickly, then go back to refine it later, you can pull a whole chapter off before you feel it's not working too well and you have to change something.

I will share how I do it...

When I was in my teens years, I used to make stories and not finish them, I did go through a period of not finishing work, eventually I got so tired of not finishing my story, I looked at my work and think how I could make myself finish it.... my teacher suggested that I do shorts.




1. I started doing short stories of 16-20 pages. 1-shot story discourage me less, and it's easier to finish, so I did a long series of short stories of my characters, sometimes the pages go to 30-40 pages.



2. Then I started developing long series in really really short sequence, like... 20 pages of rough sketches on paper, that's my "script", 8 pages for one sequence, 2 pages for another...

The really short sequence allows me to draw any idea I have come up at the moment for the story I am doing, keeping things fresh, and easy to edit.

Originally I do one chapter in one shot, now I only do one event in one shot, and draw transition from Event A to Event B separately. Not too long ago, I made the mistake of leaving out transition in my story scripting, and caused me to have poor transition in my storytelling, an editor's critique helped me to realize that problem, so now I plan my transition just like how I plan big events in the story.



3. Emotionally how I push myself forward:

a. Get your own readers:

Even if it's a friend or two looking at your work, they are your readers, your job as a mangaka is keeping your credibility and not disappoint them half way through. This will keep you going. That's where manga eventually should end up, having readers read them, so the earlier you get readers to read your finished work the better. You will get feedback and work out your problems; drawing alone for yourself is important, but reader interaction ultimately is what manga is for.
It's much easier to give up when you are only on your own, if you really can't find a good reader, find someone to criticize your work... as long as it doesn't discourage you, even anger can make you move forward.
Today internet makes it more accessible to find readers, its not easy to gain a lot of readers, but starting up has become more convenient.


b. Think of finishing the work, don't think too deeply about your mistakes:

In my take, manga is a.... "you made a mistake, move on, correct it in the future" type of medium, it's not a medium where you should go back and fuss over your mistakes, in fact, the people I know who attempted to fix their manga hardly do it well.... So it's better to "let it be" and keep moving.

In real manga biz, you don't have the time to fix your mistakes anyway, your readers are already waiting for your next update.... So after you realized mistakes, just keep going anyway and finish it. After a few years, if you want to come back and edit it or redo it, do that.

Finish the manga with the mistakes in it, that's a part of your development, a part of your growth, your readers will appreciate it. You will enjoy accomplishing and finishing a story. It feels really really good when you know you have finished something.


c. Focus on the storytelling and the emotions:

I have two stages of development for manga storytelling. First step is just getting the story down, without worrying about techniques, worrying about technique flaws will slow me down.

People who draw slow usually have some common traits, worrying about mistakes, and uncertainty of what they want.

So if you don't think about those things, just go with what you have at the moment, get down what you want, and then edit it, you can get pretty fast.
For storytelling stage (where I sketch roughs) I don't worry about those things and just let the concept, the ideas, and the emotions flood to my sketches. When I do the final THEN I worry about techniques and illustrative quality and so on and on... I sometimes don't even do any panels when I do my roughs.

An example of my progress:
[link]

I hope... that helps.



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