So in today’s making manga we are going to talk about tools. But before that I wanted to talk Doujinshi vs Manga. In Japan to be a mangaka you need to be published in a magazine, a serial magazine like the famous Shonen Jump. You can enter a contest, get feedback, get picked up, get an editor, draw your manga and get noticed, maybe even if you are popular get an anime. Doujinshi is amateur art of maybe someone else’s characters, maybe with a sexual feel. But can a doujinshi author be a mangaka? The rules outside Japan are a little different. I am a writer and an author first, so the writing is important. I am creating my own original manga in graphic noise so I will skirt the grain and call myself a manga artist. I have 7 books published in the grydscaen series and graphic noise will be my second manga. The first manga “A Storm’s Coming” is being used by 2 counseling centers as a tool for self esteem for under privileged teenagers and homeless youth. So for now mangaka works for me.
Onto the topic at hand. Tools for making manga.
Mechanical pencils (0.5, 0.7, 0.3 lead widths)
white erasure
kneaded erasure
cork backer ruler
sharpie marker
copic black liner pens (0.03, 0.05, 0.1, 0.3 widths)
copic colour markers
manga paper A4
circle templates
light box
ink fountain
nib pens
tracing paper
tone sheets
utility knife
scanner
photocopier
Photoshop/Illustrator or other art program
InDesign or other layout program
That is a lot of stuff.
These are all tools of the trade. I have not myself used tone sheets. But I have decided that I will try for graphic noise. I also did some inking for the line art in the last post so we are getting used to that. When I did “A Storm’s Coming” manga it was all pencil with no inking. We went direct to print with pencil so it is possible.
These tools are what you should use to create your manga. When I make manga my scanner is not 11×14 so I have to go to the Office Supply store and have the pages copied down in size to 8.5×11 for my scanner. Once I scan the pages into my mac computer, I need to transfer them to flash drive and onto my laptop which I have full versions of Photoshop and InDesign as well as Illustrator. I create the books in InDesign and layout the pages. I colour the artwork or change the levels in Photoshop. If I use tone sheets these will have to be applied to the actual pages before they are scanned. But we will get more into making the book later.
So there is your list of tools. I also wanted to talk about character sheets. I am working on one for Shiro the writer in the story. They should include multiple angles for the character as well as what they are wearing. This is a learning process for me so we are still moving slowly. I am on chapter 6 of the novel so we are moving right along.
If you are interested in the “A Storm’s Coming” manga, see the “Other Works” page.
Happy manga.