Girl and Robot

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I've been working on an illustration this week, which is currently at the penciling stage. Will aim to get it inked and colored by next week. Let's see how this turns out.

Sketchy Drawings

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Time and effort

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A single comic page on average takes about 6 hours (21,600 seconds) to produce; from planning the layout to penciling to inking and finally to toning. When compared to the mere 30 seconds or less it takes a reader to read that same page, all the time and effort spent seem undeserved.

However to be more accurate we should take account of the number of readers a comic will have over the period of it’s existence, for example 2,000 readers translates into 60,000 seconds or close to 17 hours a page. That makes more than double the time invested in creating a comic page. Time and effort does pay.

How I'm learning to make comics: part 4

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Editing and Publishing
With the pages fully inked the last two steps left are to convert the pages into digital versions for editing and ‘publishing’ on the Web. Thanks to silicon technology and the Web, I am able to find readers for my comics throughout the world instead of only showing it to my cat since I don’t have any friends.

Scanning
The inked pages are scanned with my one year old Canon 3000Ex flatbed scanner at a resolution of 400dpi so that it’ll be easy to edit the artwork (the more pixels to manipulate the more accurate it’ll be) and also it’ll have a good enough resolution for printing on paper if I have the opportunity to do so one day. I’ve read that most pros scan their work at a higher 600dpi for commercial publication though.

Editing
The scanned pages are saved as Adobe Photoshop files and edited with the said software. First thing I’ll do is to adjust the Levels so that the line art will be pure black and everything else white in order to cut out the line art.

Using Channels, I select every color channel and load them as a selection so that all the white spaces (background) between the line art are selected. I then delete the white background thus leaving the line art on its own layer. By doing this I can add tones on layers beneath that of the line art. Doing so will allow for easier adjustments to the tones and also for colors to be added later all without effecting the line art.


Now comes the bulk of the editing job, zooming right into the pixels to clean the artwork from inking mistakes or dust from scanning. Cleaning takes up a lot of my time no thanks to my messy inking. Photoshop’s Polygonal Lasso tool is my (second) best friend because it makes it so much easier to edit the line art compared to the Eraser tool.


After clean up I insert the dialogue using fonts made for comics. Not much work involved here since all I have to do is type in the text based on the dialogue I wrote from earlier. Finally tones are applied to add body to the line art. The tones I use are basically just various levels of gray by using the Grayscale slider which are then painted on with the Brush tool. For some of the tones I erase the edges to give it an etched effect like with real tones you’ll see in real manga. With toning done I now have a sparkly new comic to show the world.

Publishing
In preparing for putting the comic up on the Web, I flatten the layers by selecting the Flatten Image function for each page and reduce the size of the resulting images to 20%. The images are then saved as JPEGs while keeping the file size down without losing too much quality. All there is left to do is to set up the webpages for each page, make sure the navigation from page to page are correct and FTP them into my website. If you don’t have your own website, you can sign up for a free webcomic hosting account at Smackjeeves

Promoting my comic and finding readers
To let readers around the world know that I’ve a new comic to entertain them, I submit my comic’s details to three excellent portals for webcomics:

• Onlinecomics.net
  
• The Webcomic List
  
• ChoiceComics.net

There is still so much more learning to do
At this point in time I’ve only learned the basics in creating a comic from scratch to finding a small pool of readers for it. There are still tons to learn such as how to create a long series comic efficiently that is consistently updated on a fixed schedule, improve my artwork, inking and toning so that I can churn out pages faster, explore new story telling techniques such as pacing and paneling, improve on my writing hence better dialogue and much much more.

Read the previous parts:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 3
How I'm learning to make comics: part 2
How I'm learning to make comics: part 1

Latest shortest comic is done

Ah! This is the longest time I ever spent on a single comic page. Anyway I finally thought of the title for it so go read the one-page comic.

Fast car, dead-beat driver and air time one page comic

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A one-page comic I’m working on right now and I might get it done over the weekend. I didn’t notice it at first but when I asked myself what is the premise of this short tale, it turned out to be almost a mini version of the Vanishing Point movie sans the illegal stuff and funky DJ (all the good parts).

I've yet to come up with a cool title for it, maybe you guys can suggest one. Just think of a fast car, dead-beat driver dude and big-air time. Go Kowalski manga style!

How I'm learning to make comics: part 3

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Constructing the comic
One can plan till the cows come home and yet have nothing to show if it isn’t executed. So with the storyboard and pages of dialogue in hand, I begin the labor-intensive process of putting it all together and finally have an actual comic to show my friends. Wait, I don’t have any. Oops, now you know the real reason I make comics…

Paper type and page size
I use standard A4 paper (a format that’s only a little longer than Letter in the U.S.A) for my comics. The only thing that I am particular about is the whiteness of the paper; the whiter it is the better it’ll be for scanning the artwork on it which I will touch on later.

I prepare my pages for penciling by drawing the border for the comic’s ‘live’ image area, the area that contains all the panels on a page. Most professional comic artists create their pages at double the size of the actual printed pages so that when it is reduced to that size, the images look crisper and sharper. However due to the limited size of A4 paper I make mine at only 1.7 times with dimensions of 7.7 inches wide and 11.4 inches high. It’s 170% of the page size of volume (Tankoban) manga books. So why do I use A4 paper and not bigger and better quality formats like Bristol boards you ask? Because it’s cheap.

Penciling
I pencil exactly like I sketch, all hairy and messy, so it’s no surprise that the eraser is my best friend. The pencil types I use are 2H wooden pencils since they are light enough to not leave too much lead traces after erasing. I don’t like using mechanical ones for no apparent reason. As for erasers I prefer the soft rectangular kind and any make will do.

Using the storyboard as a rough blueprint, I first outline the borders of all the panels for the page I’m currently working on before I begin penciling in the appropriate scenes. References are once again a big help in this department because I’m still pretty bad at drawing anything. Thanks to the Web, I search for images as reference photos of buildings and objects for the backgrounds. When I have difficulty in drawing human-forms, let’s say a pose of a character, I’ll sketch out different versions of the pose on a rough piece of paper until I get to one that I am happy enough to use. Obviously the whole penciling process is repeated for every page until they are all done.

Inking
Having completed the penciling of every page of the comic, it’s time to ink them. Even though inking is a fairly easy process of tracing over the pencil lines I still make mistakes like drawing the lines too thick or smudging the ink due to my being left-handed. I don’t use whiteout or white paint to correct those mistakes, I’ll leave them as they are and fix them later on the computer.

I use technical pens for inking, with tip sizes of 0.1cm to 0.2cm. The ones I’m using right now are called Unipin with pigment ink by Mitsubishi Pencil Co. which I can find in most stationery stores. I’ll probably get me some Sakura Pigma Micron pens in the near future to try since I’ve heard so much about them.

Once the inking for a page is done, the pencil lines are removed with my trusty eraser while taking a whole lot of care to not tear holes into the paper or start a fire by my overzealous rubbing.

Read the next part:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 4

Read the previous parts:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 1
How I'm learning to make comics: part 2

A big mess of mecha designs

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Sketches of mecha designs I made some time ago for a comic that never saw the daylight. Do any of them look familiar to you?

How I'm learning to make comics: part 2

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Visualizing the story
Based on the story concept from earlier I then begin to visualize the key scenes for the story and the designs of the characters. Again this is done mentally in my mind. It’s similar to playing out the story in my head as a mini-movie to help me visualize the settings and backgrounds for each scene and set up what the characters as actors in the movie do and say. Unfortunately it’s not in Technicolor since I’m only able to think in monochrome.

Of course those mental pictures are still fairly vague and lack detail, but now I have the key scenes and the general look and feel of the story. One thing I found that helps me improve on story visualization is to daydream a lot. I mean a lot. So the next time someone tells you to stop daydreaming, rebuke him or her by stating you’re exercising your creative imagination and carry on idling your time away.

Storyboard
Now it’s time to lay down my thoughts onto paper by drawing a storyboard. To me, storyboarding is the most important step to making my comics because it determines how well the story will be told.

Using the images I have in my mind from the earlier visualization process, I proceed to break down each key scene into panels, making sure that the reader is able to understand what is going on from one panel to the next. The layout, style and sizes for each panel can be decided on to control story flow and atmosphere; as for example using decreasing sizes of related panels to depict a character’s anxiety. Next comes the working out of what to draw in each panel, the core of the comic.

Should I draw the character from the side or from behind? Is it better to draw a close-up of the characters or a panoramic view of the surroundings? With so many possibilities to illustrate a scene in a panel, and having to keep in mind to maintain the continuance of the scene from the last panel, it’s almost a constant battle to arrive at a decision. When I’m finally done I’ll have to repeat the whole decision process again for the following panel. So it’s no surprise that I find storyboarding a time consuming struggle, but it’s unavoidable since it’s such a crucial step to creating comics.

I structure my storyboard by grouping sets of sketches of panels to each of the comic’s pages. By doing this I know how many panels a page has and the total number of pages the comic will require. Once the storyboard is made I move on to work on the comic’s dialogue before I return to refine and finalize it. As you can see from the picture above my storyboard is made up of messy sketches and notes. If I were to come back and look at it after a month, I probably wouldn’t know what it all means.

Dialogue writing
Based on the storyboard I write the comic’s dialogue in the form of a script for each character in each panel as needed. Good dialogue is crucial to giving life to the comic’s characters by making them believable so that the reader is able to relate to them. I use pointers, such as the character’s personality, relationship with other characters, emotional states and reaction to events, to help me think of what they say and how they say it.

Dialogue is my weakest aspect of comic making because of my limited writing ability and command of linguistic rules. I could spend over an hour on a one-sentence ‘thank you’ note and it comes out sounding like a death threat instead. I guess the best solution to improve is to read and write more. Maybe I could start by writing fan mail when I get my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

Final storyboard
Coming back to the storyboard, I integrate the dialogue into it by checking if each panel fits its corresponding dialogue, if it doesn’t, I’ll refine or redo the panel/s. Once that is done, I go through the storyboard again to see if I can make any final changes to improve the flow of the story such as adjusting scenes within panels or removing redundant dialogue.

Character design
I think most comic creators design their comic’s characters at an earlier phase and in more detail than I do. Somehow I prefer to leave character design until the last part of the planning process. I don’t do detailed visual profiles like full body front views, side views and such. I usually only do headshot sketches of a character to work out his or her unique features to portray their personality. I would also create a personal back story of the character to help me envision their typical postures and how they would visually react to situations.

References
As a new comic creator, references are a great source for learning and improving my abilities. Through the whole comic creating process, I would be constantly flipping through my favorite comics for references, I’ll study how the creators play out a scene or the angles and visual effects they use, anything that I can apply to my own comics. Movies and animations are also valuable resources for story themes, scenes and character design.

Read the next parts:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 3
How I'm learning to make comics: part 4

Read the previous part:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 1

Comic or Manga?

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Have you been hearing a lot of the term “manga” lately and wonder what is manga and how is it different from comics? To answer the latter it would be similar to asking what is the difference between fruits and apples. Manga is a type of comic, just as superhero comics like Spiderman and newspaper comics like Peanuts are all comics.

Manga is the Japanese word for comics. When comic buffs outside of Japan first used the word manga they were referring specifically to Japanese comics i.e.: Comics produced in Japan for the Japanese market. These days manga also refers to comics made outside of Japan that are closely based on the art style and typical subject matter of Japanese comics.
I first started my foray into comics with the likes of Marvel and DC superhero comic books. When American comic publishes started bringing in translated manga such as Akira and Appleseed I found myself gravitating towards these comics from the Far-East and neglected to collect my monthly issues of The Uncanny X-men.

What got me sold on manga was its wide range of subject matter, from serious dramas to senseless but hilarious gags, and most of all its aesthetic artwork: I’ve bought quite a few original manga from Japan just to look at the art even though I couldn’t read Japanese.

Having been an avid fan for almost two decades, not just of manga but comics overall, I recently decided to make comics of my own. It was only natural for me to emulate the art and storytelling style of manga. The use of black and white with gray tones compared to full colored pages makes it more manageable as a single person creator and suits my non-superhero stories.

Tokyopop, a major American manga publisher, recently announced that they’d be calling their line of manga made outside of Japan as Global Manga. That got me thinking, should I label my comics as manga or keep calling them comics as I have since I started making them? Or maybe I should call them manga-stylized comics? Or English-language manga? Or Mangalized Comics?

Obviously in the end I couldn’t decide. So I’ll just stick to calling them comics as they are. I guess what matters most is that my comics are able to tell my stories in the best possible way to anyone who is interested to listen.

By the way, in Japan, do they refer to a Superman comic as "manga" or "ko-mi-ku"?

To learn more about the origins and history of manga, have a read at wikipedia.Manga
To read the comics that I’ve made so far please visit my website, Mangada

How I'm learning to make comics: part 1

How I'm learning to make comics: part 1
As some of you might have already read, the reason I am learning to create comics is to share the stories that I occasionally conceive in my head. Of course the stories that are made into comics are only the ones that I feel are entertaining and worth the readers time. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read about my personal ramblings about the need to maintain personal hygiene. Trust me, you don’t.

So what I am aiming to achieve is to learn the best processes for me to convey my stories effectively by improving my storytelling and art and completing pages at a consistent level and within a reasonable timeframe. If all that sounds technically geeky, it’s due to remnants from my programming days. That’s another story not worth your time to know. Now on to the nitty gritty details.

Story
The story is the essence of a comic, without one it’ll be better to just draw a picture of a pretty girl than a whole bunch of meaningless pictures (unless it’s a whole bunch of pictures of pretty girls). To me, a good story is one that is strong enough to reach its readers emotionally. If it has a high chance of making a majority of them laugh, sad, angry, excited or ponder about the issues that it touches on, then it’s worth the effort to realize it.

Origins of a story
My inspiration for a story usually originates from many sources. Here’s a list of some of them.

• Media I’ve come across, such as news, movies, music, comics and magazines.
  
• Personal experiences
  
• Reflections of issues I’m interested in or concerned about.
  
• A random thought that appears out of the blue.
  

Story conceptualization
From the inspiration I’ll have a central subject matter which I then proceed to build a scenario around it. Once I have a skeletal structure of the story; a beginning, main plot and characters, and an ending, I go through it again and see what else I can add or change to make it more interesting. I do all this mentally in my head and most people who see me in this state think I’m spaced-out. No I don’t do drugs, it’s very bad for you, but most of the time I do just stare into space.

Read the next parts:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 2
How I'm learning to make comics: part 3
How I'm learning to make comics: part 4

Another One Bites The Dust

This was from some concept sketches for a character of a comic I'm planning on doing in the near future. Somehow he turned out looking exactly like Himura of Eyeshield 21. So into the trash bin you go and back to the drawing board for me.

World Cup Shocker

What a shocker this edition of the World Cup's been! Just an hour and a half ago home team Germany got beaten well by two late goals from an excellent Italian side. And only a few days ago favourites Brazil got dumped in the quarter-finals by a revived French team lead by the second coming of Zidane. It'll be a mightily grand affair if they go through to the finals to meet the Azzurri.

Summer Shower

My Space

No I'm not cold and stiff yet. This is how I spend most of my time during the day, yeah, under my desk. Think I'll use this as my profile image for IM.

Lots Of Characters

Some serious character design going on for a planned animation that was later changed to a planned comic but was then scrapped.

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End Of The End

I've finally completed my third comic "The End". You can read it at my online comics website.

The character designs sure turned out very differently from what I had planned. Oh well.

Girl On The Rooftop

Sketches and storyboard made for an animation about a girl on a rooftop who grows wings and flies away into the blue sky. Why didnt I complete it? Why did she grow wings? What was she doing up there on the rooftop in the first place? Who knows?

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Technorati tags: character design, animation, storyboard, design, image, picture, sketches, drawings, girl, face, head.

May Day

Just a couple of hours passed 01:02:03:04:05:06, the time/date sequence that happens once in a millennium. Some people out there commemorated the instance by doing something significant but for me, I can't even remember where I was at that time.

Dang, it's May already and almost half a year is over. Been busy trying to complete my comic by the end of the week, so haven't got any new post up for the last few days. Maybe a sketch will I post in a few hours time. Also got my first ever 'real' comment from Catnapping. Thanks so much for visiting. At least now I know that actual people do visit occasionally apart from the search-engine crawlers and spam-bots.

Media Warfare

Concept images for a website that were rejected. Drawn, scanned and edited in Photoshop.

My Flash Days 06

Ah, It's Friday and the weekend is just around the corner, what a lovely day.

Get In Line

Outcome of some meddling about in Macromedia Flash. It wasn't animated, just an image.

Greeting Card

I bet you've had enough of the 'Flash Days' already, so here's a Chinese New Year online greeting card made with Macromedia Flash and Adobe Photoshop.

My Flash Days 05

And another one. Click on the image to view the sequence/screen captures. Macromedia Flash of course.

My Flash Days 04

More abandoned animation attempts in Macromedia Flash. Dude with a mobile/hand/cell phone.

My Flash Days 03

Ummm... Uwagghh!! Uncompleted animation of a head going berserk. Macromedia Flash.

My Flash Days 02

This was an eight second clip of a subway train pulling into a station made with Macromedia Flash.

My Flash Days 01

From my early days of self learning Macromedia's Flash, this is from a small animated 'movie' of dragable objects and masking to reveal different layers.

First Scrap

Since they did not delete my account even after two years of inactivity, I decided to turn this blog into a scrap yard of my rejected and abandoned ideas, mostly in the form of drawings, sketches and doodles and maybe the occasional rant. First up is a layout sketch for the first page of a comic that I'm currently working on.

Lack of foresight

Back in 2004 when everyone and his dog was blogging, I was curious to discover for myself what the blog scene was about. At that time I was into the whole Asian-Buddhist-Zen-Yoga-Nooddles thing and regarded myself full of wisdom and thought it'll be ultra clever of me to have a blog spouting Zenny insightful advice that would guide my readers to enlightenment. After only a few posts I ran out of life changing wisdom-infused advice and realized I wasn't that intelligent after all and resigned to let this poor attempt at getting my piece of the pie in the blogosphere to slide into remain in oblivion.

Today everyone and his dog including the tapeworm in its intestinal tract is a blogger.