Well this is embarrassing.

Hey there everyone, its been so long a little over a year since I wrote anything here. How have you all been doing, if anyone is still reading this stuff.

Well I am 21 now, got glasses (nearsighted), loosing hair, fairly happy and doing well. I have been reading a lot too.

I am still working at this dead end job but planning to leave soon. I have decided to do my master’s from NID (Nation Institute of Design) so Japan will have to wait I guess, it’s considered one of the top 20 design colleges in the world. Its tough to get in, as for 15 seats 350,000 students apply via 3 stage selection process. I will be applying for Graphic Design discipline and specialize in illustration and type design (people who make fonts; this will surely help me with creating new fictional languages for my story). The process starts from second week of Jan. I will see to it that I do everything to get in. Tough challenges are so fun they make you forget everything around you, I love them: few joys of being alive

I’ll post some work soon.

Let me know how you people are doing.

Tutorial – Manga Writing : 03

Hey its been a long time since I posted a tutorial, so here it is.

First of all I want to apologize for my previous tutorial (Tutorial – Manga Writing : 01) the part where I talked about 3 Act structure I found out its bullshit :P, but I wont delete it because it shows my inexperience which is important coz you wont become Geroge R.R. Martin or Paulo Coelho or Eiichiro Oda or Tsugumi ohba the first time you write a script.

“You learn to draw by drawing and learn to write by writing.”

Reading or watching tutorials wont take you far. Reading books helps a lot though, read anything you can get your hands on good or bad, old or new, fiction or history or romance or anything else, if its bad figure out why its bad and how can you make it better or if its good try to notice what makes it a good read.

So putting all that 3act structure crap aside lets start fresh.

Now a story can have as many acts as you want 3, 15, 22, 50, 100 or 100+ but speaking specifically for manga which publishes 22 pages weekly or biweekly or monthly the last page should end in a way that readers cannot wait to read the next chapter thats where a act structure will come in place, in the beginning of the chapter you start building a situation and as you get to the end, your story should reach almost to its peak (emphasis on the word almost), you leave your readers involved and hanging (remember this will only work with a serialized manga with multiple chapter, one shots have a different approach)

I am reminding you again forget about the 3act structure if you want to make a complex story, it will kill your script.

Q> Why is the 3 act structure that I talked about in previous tutorial so bad?

A> I am working on a story which is extremely complex, its 14-17 times more complex than one piece. While creating it and read some good books I realized that none of them had a 3 act structure if these stories were limited to a 3act structure one piece, naruto or bleach would end in lest than 10 chapters, avatar would be a 12 minute short film, harry potter or A Song of ice and fire or The alchemist would be a 100 pages short novels. 3 act focuses on just one character this wont work in any story with multiple protagonists like one piece, naruto, bleach, harry potter, game of thrones etc. and their are so many more draw backs to it. Read this to learn why 3Act structure is bad – http://www.raindance.org/why-3-act-will-kill-your-writing/

Creating a story is not an easy task you may think it is coz all you come up with is a concept which is quite easy to come up with but developing it into 100-600 chapters in a progressive way by which your readers feel involved and connected is the hard part. A story has so many components concept, plot, character profiles, environment, setting, back story, hints of future, etc. Don’t feel down no writer before or after you got or will get it right in their first try even the one with a born talent. I myself am struggling though it but as I said earlier we can only learn to write by writing. Have some people proof read it for you of different age groups and non professionals, this will help you know what readers like and don’t like.

I dont know how much this helps, but I am happy I posted it.

One more this the reason I might not post things anytime soon is I have graduated from college and working at a very low paying job as it is the only thing I can get my hands on and other times I draw, paint, read and write. I will post but not anytime soon.

I am back!!!

Hey, long time no see. I hope your are all doing ok. 6 months it has been, it feels good to be back. For the past 6 months all I did was draw, write and read. I am not really good at the drama part so I’ll just cut the chase and get right to the point.

First off the mistakes I made that you shouldn’t. You see the day I went off grid and days following it I was too excited and started studying everything at once. It was like I was doing portrait in the morning, anatomy in afternoon, figure and poses in evening and after that studying perspective. Well that continued for 4 months after which I met a nice person who is a painter but has color blindness (meaning: he cannot see the colors of the world as they are but see it in a desaturated way not black and white :P), he told me the right way to practice drawing.

And the right way is to take one step at a time, start with what you like, I started with faces coz I thing they carry the most emotions then anatomy then poses then background and so on, dont try to swallow everything at one you will choke like me. So I have been doing it the right way for the past two months. I am still not where I want to be and at this point this is 2% of where I see my self. If you are just starting out too remember quantity matters, the more stroke you put on a paper the better you become.

Thing I did that were right to do, I read a lot for every theory you study you practice it 50 time. Leonardo the Vinci (the only person I consider my teacher and mentor because he was good artist and he is dead. I know one thing about myself is that I cannot learn from teachers who are alive or in a classroom, I need to do thing myself and I do them my way) said :

“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”

So I guess its time to show my work, I cant show you everything coz I don’t know the exact amount of pages but by reviewing the bill its about 18,000 pages. I might have done about 50,000 sketches if not more and its nearly impossible to take that many photographs but some that are lying on the top I can show and by the by art has made me a philosopher too, let me know if it happened to anyone else.

Sorry for wrinkled pages I didnt keep them properly.

(5 minute Portraits)

(Watercolor Skin tone study)

(Hands and feet)

I know I didn’t grow much and I don’t feel good about it, but I will keep drawing until I die I guess, oh that reminds me you see every other motivation fades away after a while but the best motivator is death (I am serious) death is a universal truth for every thing that takes birth. It really works for me try it for yourself and remember:

“A satisfied artist is an artist no longer”

See I told you I became a philosopher :P. It’s good to be back 🙂

Hiatus

Hi I have got some news for you people.

I am going on a Hiatus. Well as you know lately that I have been improving in drawing but my skills right now are not even close to 1% of what I want them to be (I mean to say my drawing sucks right now). I need to get better and fast, I have 5 months left before I graduate from college after that I dont think I will have much free time to spare. So I am going off-grid (no social network, no parties, no blogging, no nothing only drawing) I will be drawing for 14-18 hours a day for next 6 months. There will only be few times when I wont be drawing like when I am sleeping, eating, bathing or I am in toilet XD. Anyways I cant promise that I will come back exactly after 6months, if I get better fast I’ll be back early or might take a little more time than 6 months.

For people who have read or watched Naruto or One Piece – you can think of this departure as a when Naruto left his village with Jiraya train or when Luffy left to train with Rayleigh. XD

I am not saying I am them and I dont even I have a real teacher I will be training on my own only (I have some mentor who I like to think will be watching over me ^^ I’ll talk about them when I get back). But if I ever want to be like a character I want to be like Zoro and learn skills from the Devil himself ^^

Anyways I might post on 31st March when I submit my manga for the competition. I will simply post it to let you how my first manga ever turns out. It wont mean I am back. My training starts tomorrow 10th February 2014 so I know that I wont be back before 10th July 2014.

It was pleasure knowing you all, even though it was for a short time I really appreciate all you support, likes, comments and everything. Your support was something that kept me on track but from here I have to figure things out myself.

And I know this post sounds a little dramatic and cheesy, well I want to make manga and create world’s best stories, so its given that I would make this post a little dramatic 😛

K then Time to say Good bye ^._.^

Thank you, ありがとうございます, 감사합니다, 謝謝 , Merci, Danke schön, Grazie, Благодарю вас! , Gratias vobis ago.

Practice Post : 07

Well I though of a story. The guy is the youngest and the strongest Field Marshal(highest post in world army) earth has ever seen and the girl is the daughter of the king of Oranus (earth is in war with this planet). The guy is captured by the people of oranus and the girl sees him and falls in love. They both run away but are caught by the their people. The two worlds start fighting again as they want to take them to their planet and set an example by killing them but the girl is killed on the crossfire and the guy being the strongest kills the troops of both army alone. Now neither earth nor oranus will accept the guy so he set of to wander the universe alone with his dead love. ^^ Well I portrayed it as a love story but in my dream it was mainstream battle story. I was the guy in the dream but I changed the character a bit by removing the beard and keeping the hairstyle.

Well I know I don’t post a lot now but most of the time I am practicing, I don’t even get time to use facebook or google plus. Well as you know I started with anatomy, I am still going at it and rather than learning the manga anatomy I am learning the real human anatomy then stylizing it to make manga character. You dont have to do it this away. For me this is easy and I have started working on foreshortening and poses too.

Till next time ^__^

Practice Post : 06

Time to show some progress ^^

A Mistake I was making earlier was that I was making the hips too wide for a teenage or a 6.5 head girl, now I have corrected it. The last one has more clean line. Its still not perfect, i’ll say 50% I understand. It will definitely take another day to perfect it.

Practice Post : 05

Well now that I am as good in drawing as I was a year ago its time to tell you that all I can do now is not even 2% of what my goal as manga artist is. Its time to take the next step ANATOMY!

I have started with anatomy of highschool girl in 2nd or 3rd year(16-18 years old), that is a 6.5 head figure.

(cant draw feets and hands yet :P)

I have only been practicing this for 6 hours so I am as good as any other beginner. I’ll post a tutorial on this once I master it myself.

Practice Post : 04

Just because I am not posting doesn’t mean I am not practicing.
“Not everything I create is pure gold but still I practice every day to become better than what I was yesterday.”
– Rahul A.Kumar(ラック)

(Click Images To Enlarge)

See you next time ^^

Day 8 – Smart Choices

Well first of all sorry for posting so late, I have been busy with other things and I wont waste time explaining those things so lets get to point.

Smart Choices

What do I mean by smart choices?

Becoming a mangaka is not easy nor is getting serialized but that’s not even the hard part the had part is to stay serialized. I cant target one particular thing with it, its just a way to survive as a mangaka. It wont just be you, there will be many people with the same dream as you, so to beat them and get on top you need to make smart choices, for that all you need is proper information on the subject. Let me explain you by some examples.

01. Right now two great manga and pillars of shounen jump are going to end Naruto and Bleach as soon as they end jump will be looking for new talents so rather than submitting your work now and competing with two great final arcs you can submit your work when they end, well its a different story if its your dream to compete with them then go right ahead. Wait up take your time and build your story.

02. Differences for manga artists and writers. As a writer you will most likely be specialized in one genre so you will be bound with it, of course there are exceptions. But for a manga artist there are no such bounds lets take Obata Takeshi Sensei he has worked on many titles of different genre Bakuman, Death Note, Hikaru No Go, All You Need is Kill, Blue Dragon, Cyborg Grandpa G, Ayatsuri Sakon, Hello Baby, Hajime, Rampou and Urooboe Uroboros!. If you cant write stories or cant draw don’t get down a manga is a work that has 50-50% balance of art and story both are equally important. A smart choice as good writer will be to find an artist or develop art skills and a smart choice as an artist is to think of a nice story or find a writer to work with.

Bad Choices

You will definitely end up making a lot of bad choices but dont worry making bad choices is a good thing, I learn a lot from bad choices. I mean I deliberately make bad choices. If there is one right way to get something and then I will definitely end up taking 100 wrong ways but rather than considering my self a fool I think I am genius because now I know 100 different ways to not make mistakes 😉 u get what I mean.

You, I and every one lives a short life which is a series of good and bad choices, don’t be afraid of bad choices because a bad choice will help you learn and a good choice will help you win. Every mangaka has two things in common to inspire people and be the best mangaka.

I dont know what I am trying to explain by this post, its just I have been distracted by other things right now and writing this post might inspire me again. It might not help you but it will definitely help me ;). I’ll try and post a more meaningful blog next time.

An unknown person once said

“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.”

Tutorial – Manga Writing : 02

This tutorial is an update to Manga Writing, so check that out before reading this or you can read I am gonna talk bout software for writing and pattern to write your story in.

Without wasting any time lets get to it.

Software for writing your concept, synopsis or entire script

3 Software that I have used and that I recommend are:

01. Final Draft – (free & paid)

02. yWriter – (free)

03. Celtx – (free & paid)

01. Final Draft : Right now they have the released 9th version of it but I am using 8 or 8.3. I mostly use final draft to write down my concepts (only concepts). The software is really good and offers a lot of features like thesaurus, text to speech (you can make the software read your script – really cool feature), scene cards (different scenes in different cards (can change the cards color is required)), and many more, check there website for more details. This is also the industry standard software for script writing even James Cameron uses it for Avatar.

02. yWriter : This was the first software that I ever used for writing script, let me say it looks slacky like a windows 98 software(app) but it is very functional. Its user friends, it has a lot of tools to work with like story board time line, database for characters, items(props), locations and not just a simple data base you can add alternate names, images, notes, bio, goals, description of characters. There are a lot more features to this app which even I haven’t explored. Use it if you are a geeky writer and need a feature rich script writing software.

03 Celtx : This is my favorite, I used this to write my scripts. Its very easy to use. It also have a very detailed database more detailed than yWriter. It is available for both mac & pc. Celtx has cloud features you have to pay for it but its not that expensive or if you dont need cloud you can just download their free version. They have a lot of third part tools too, but again you will have to pay for it.

Download their free version, try them for 30 days and decide for yourself that which one is better for you.

Lets move to the interesting part.

Pattern for Writing a script

Many of you might not be interested in the software I mentioned your are happy with using word pad or Microsoft word or any other text editing app available to you.

The pattern for manga script writing goes this way.

Replace the things inside parenthesis () as required for your script

Page 1 : (number of panels on the page)

Panel 1 : (Wide, top down exterior or arial view of city traffic, we see the man and his surroundings)

Caption : (Add captions if required like why the man was in traffic and other details)

Panel 2 : (Mid, front view of man bumping into a woman, we see the woman from behind)

Caption : (There was a soda can lying on the ground man tripped on it and bumped into the woman)

Man

(thinking – what a beautiful lady)

(saying with sorry and calm tone)

Ah, Miss I am so sorry.

Woman

(saying with humble tone)

Its ok sir.

Alright this was the easiest and most productive way to write script for manga writers even if you don’t draw your own manga, you can write down every last detail in caption so that the artist can draw close to your imagination.

The best part is the pattern I just described is available in all three software so you wont have to waste time writing Page 1, Panel 1 , Caption the above mentioned software will do it automatically for you.

As for me I only use software now to write down the concepts that I think or dream of. For writing entire script I do a process called “Nemu” in Japanese you can call it storyboarding its the rough layout of the actual manuscript. This way is more creative for me as I can doodle it up while thinking of it and make changes as required. These are some examples of it.