Welcome to the Making Manga series

I wanted to talk a little about the process of doing lineart for your manga. I took a break illustrating graphic noiz manga 2 to write a novel in the series and now I am in the process of getting back to drawing. I have 62 pages of lineart completed for the 96 page manga and I promised myself today that I would start drawing again. I wanted to talk about a subject that has been plaguing me lately in the manga for the writer character Shiro Ijima. This topic is character consistency. So lets get started.

Character Consistency

The main characters for the graphic noiz story are Shiro Ijima, the bestselling author and Noiz, the amateur manga artist. They are partnering to create the Fissure manga based on Shiro’s bestselling scifi novel series.

Drawing a manga requires you to draw the characters over and over again. I find that I have drawn Noiz more than I have drawn Shiro. Noiz stays pretty consistent when I am drawing him except maybe his hair is a little longer at times but Shiro’s facial features change all the time. This is the bane of my amateur manga artist existence at this moment.

Now I was told by another manga artist to take a sheet and use a ruler and measure the facial features of the character and just keep drawing the character over and over as practice. This may be something I try in the future. At this point with 28 pages of lineart in front of me I may not have time to do that. I think I want to launch back into drawing the manga now that I have the book done and can focus back on the artwork.

Deciding what you characters look like

It is best when you are making your original characters or OCs that you make a character sheet for them and draw their outfits, facial features, hair and eyes so that you have a reference. I think I have talked about character sheets before. I did one for Noiz but not for Shiro which may be part of my problem.

Noiz has his signature curly dreadlock hair which is wavy and easy to convey in the illustrations. Shiro’s hair is straight and short to his ears and hangs down a little longer in the back. His hair is also an issue when I draw him because it seems to come out different every time.

The other features are the eyes. Shiro’s eyes are narrower than Noiz’ which are more round and larger. I try to keep this consistent in the drawings but sometimes it goes awry. I also try to have more expressions for Noiz than for Shiro who is more serious.

You also need to look at the character’s clothes. Shiro has a white button front shirt with black pants look, a grey suit, white shirt and tie look, and a white t-shirt with grey sweatpants and a grey scarf look. These are the only outfits you see him in. This is opposed to Noiz who has various black and grey shirts and sweatshirts with hoods as well as black pants and grey shorts. Noiz’ clothes are typically dark. All these items need to be taken into account for each character.

Don’t try to be perfect, just draw

If you try to be perfect nothing will get done. Do you best blocking your characters and keep trying. If the page doesn’t look right or the character is a little off don’t just give up, keep trying. With practice the characters will become more consistent.

I know that this is my fifth manga and that my drawing has improved drastically from my first one (except for the doujinshi I drew in art school which is righteous but I was at school at the time drawing every day). Even there it is because of practice that my drawing improved. I drew cover art and illustrations for The Seer of Grace and Fire work in between drawing the graphic noiz manga. By drawing everyday or nearly everyday you can get your speed up and train your eye and your hand to be able to execute what you want. My first manga was drawn in 2014, with additional in 2015, and most recent at the end of 2016. The second graphic noiz book will be twice as long which is ambitious but I will conquer.

Please stick around and if you want to see more of my work visit natsuyauesugi on Instagram and Patreon. The links are available on the grydscaen homepage.