How to Make Your Own Manga Comic

Introduction: Creating a Manga Comic is a work of art that requires time, persistence, and patience. The Manga market in Japan is huge though most of us didn’t know that in 2006 Manga was an industry worth $200,000,000. In this guide you’ll learn to create Manga Comics from concept to final draft.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pens
• Paper
• Computer
• Scanner

Create Manga Comics from scratch to final draft

1. Begin with a synopsis. You need to decide what your Manga Comic is going to be about. It can be anything. Just remember that the real key to a good Manga Comic is “exaggeration”. Read a Manga comic like “Alita: Battle Angel” or “The Guiver”, and then compare the story and characters in it with something sillier like “The Dirty Pair”.

2. Once you have an idea of what your comic is going to be about, write out a paragraph about the story, from beginning to end, but leave out the details and characters.

3. Try to break down the paragraph into one sentence that describes the comic. Then you’ll have a good idea of what to name your Manga Comic.

4. To further develop your story, you will need to work on characters. Characters have values, interests, loves, hates, friends, enemies, powers or talents and a background. Write out a profile for your characters as if you were describing the character to a friend. If, however, your Manga Comic is going to be about a particular character who is the central role in everything (a first person perspective), then you’ll benefit by getting yourself to the book store, purchasing a diary book, and writing out a fake diary of your character. You’ll be surprised what your mind is capable of when you use the diary writing method.

5. For your first issue you will need to decide on how much background or plot you want to expose to your readers. Try teasing your readers with hints about the plot, but pack your Manga Comic full of action. Love is often a good reason for anything to happen. It is the easiest of plots, and people like to read about it. Betrayal is another key factor in a good Manga Comic. But with Manga you can write anything, as silly or as serious (or a combination of both) as you deem necessary or desirable.

6. Break your story into sections. Decide at one point you want to tell your readers something, or if you just want to introduce a new character, what scene and what circumstances are necessary. A spill in a cafeteria hall is enough reason to bring the demons of hell down to earth—at least in Manga Comics it is. Again, remember that exaggeration is the key.

7. After you’ve developed sections you will put them into a sequence of events, or what is commonly referred to as a storyboard. This is where you will also be creating your storyboard for the drawings to be placed. You can start with notes of “where” you want your characters to be and “what” they should be doing.

8. Draw out your characters in action. Start working with your pens and paper to create your masterpiece of Manga. It is recommended that you purchase books on learning to draw the popular Manga style, although this is certainly not necessary. Your interest in drawing Manga is not necessary to create a Manga Comic. You can draw by yourself or hire someone else to draw for you. Perhaps even creating a partnership with a colleague or friend would be ideal.

9. The final draft should be a combination of writing and sketches ready for conversion into line drawings. No matter how good you are at sketching and shading a picture, you’ll need to get someone to draw straight lines or master the art yourself. Most Manga drawings are just as exaggerated as their written counterpart.

10. Now that you have your Manga Comic story board and art mock-ups, get in touch with a publisher. You can also self publish on a number of web sites. Be sure to read reviews of these web or electronic publishers before you do any business. Drawings can be imported to software like Microsoft’s Power Point, where the images and text can be moved around and put into a sequence. You can then self publish your comics by printing the file to a PDF format. This means that you save a copy of your work in a “read-only” format (so nobody can change your Manga Comics). Other software like InDesign are good tools, too. You will have to experiment for yourself to see which software works best for you. Most mainstream publishers will require you to submit your work as a hardcopy. If you self publish, you won’t need to submit any hardcopies to a publisher, but you may have to make your electronic file available to a printing company if you want to sell hardcopies to your fans.