from docpi

In this post, I am going to share about some of the resources that I used to help me improve in my manga drawing skills.

Most of my manga drawing skills do not come from these online resources, because I have a manga teacher which teaches me individually on how to draw.

And I will still suggest for you to get a manga teacher who can teach and help you draw well. It is important as online manga resources cannot help you keep track about your level of competence and improvement in your drawing skills.

However online manga resources are still important for exposure and information, and for this reason I would like to share with you some of these resources that I use.

How to draw manga tutorials resource: MangaTutorials.com

This is a screenshot by me, on the homepage of http://mangatutorials.com/.

Basically, if you have been searching for manga tutorials on Google, you will undoubtedly find this page.

It has one of the most complete manga tutorials that I have found; from the basics of becoming a manga artist, all the way to publishing your first manga comics; it truly is a near complete guide.

They also have a forum for this website as well!

What I love about MangaTutorials.com

Looks are deceiving, as MangaTutorials.com really covers a whole lot of subjects that you wouldn’t know about.

There is even a list on publishers you might want to engage if you want to print your first comic book! And really, there is too much to talk about it here.

The most fascinating subject for me is the tutorial on how to use the Manga Studio software.

If you do not know what is Manga Studio, it is a simple software which allows you to create comics easily. It has in-built panels, helps you in creating your storyline, and much more!

And as I am looking to produce black and white webcomics, Manga Studio is a great tool!

I haven’t found a great tutorial on Manga Studio online, and I am glad that there is a step-by-step series on how to use Manga Studio.

What I do not like about MangaTutorials.com

Although it covers many subjects, it does not have video tutorials for demostrations and you are left to learn by reading the words while looking at the pictures for examples.

Besides, I personally find that they are not detailed enough in their manga tutorials. After having personal coaching from a manga teacher, I felt that there are still many details in drawing that have yet to be covered.

So basically, it is really difficult for someone to learn from these manga tutorials, and if you do not like to read, probably MangaTutorials.com isn’t for you.

However, it isn’t easy to come up with manga tutorials anyway, and drawing isn’t an easy subject to teach, so I doubt that there are many better websites than MangaTutorials.com which could teach well.

Also, the information they have there is so overwhelming, your head will feel heavy after reading all those information.

How to benefit from MangaTutorials.com

1. Join their forum, post up your artwork and let them critique your abilities.

The community in their forum is good, so in most cases you won’t be left feeling condemned after others critiqued your work.

2. Read their manga tutorials slowly, otherwise you will choke from all the information.

3. If you need information other than drawing tutorials, like how to apply toning, or if you want to look for publishers and other information, this is a very good place to search from.

4. They have activities like drawing competitions and all sorts, so it helps you practice your drawing skills while you can have fun!

Well, the above is not exhaustive, but I guess I made my point that MangaTutorials.com is a website worth checking out.

Final words for this post

If you have any other comic, manga or other webcomic resources that you want to share, let me know in the comments box, and I will do up a post or review on it.

I hope this will help you in your journey to become a manga, a comic or a webcomic artist.

Stay tuned for more updates on Manga Journey!

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from Uzii

Creating our very own characters for our webcomic or manga is the most important aspect of starting our own webcomic or manga.

However how does one start to create your own character?

This is actually one of the hardest things to decide, as most of us understand that what truly captivates the audience is how we create and portray our characters in different circumstances.

So in this post, I will share with you some of the tips of how to create your own characters, by creating your own character profile.

What is a character profile?

A character profile is the traits, abilities and personalities that make up your character.

Story writers use character profiles to determine what characteristics do their characters have.

It can be as detailed as creating your characters’ bust size, and how tall they are by measurements, or it can be a just a rough guideline of their personalities’ type for you to work on.

Creating a character profile is very important because we generally do not want to create 2 characters with similar personalities or looks at the same time.

One of the characters will be redundant if it happens, unless you are trying to create twins or something.

Story writers usually write their main characters’ profile on pieces of paper as a reference, and then manga or comic artists will proceed to draw these characters based on the profiles given.

This is an important practice to help you create unique characters that your readers will love.

Doing your own character analysis

The first thing to do is not to start writing down what kind of personalities or looks you want your characters to have, but to do your own research and analysis of successful comic or manga characters’ personalities and looks.

I realize that people do not spend time understanding what a great main character should have, and they sometimes just rush into creating a character without any knowledge.

Of course, there aren’t any rules to creating a character, but we must understand that readers are not just going to be impressed with what kind of personalities you can come up with.

Readers want to be able to identify with characters and relate to them.

Spending time doing a little analysis on your favorite comic or manga characters before starting your own helps to mold your thoughts of creating a character. Look out for what actually impresses you about your favorite character, and see whether you can improve and evolve it into your character.

Tip: If you aren’t impressed with the character you have created, do not expect your readers to be impressed with your character as well.

That is why, do your research and analysis first. Learn what kind of personalities and traits do your favorite characters have, which impresses you, and evolve it to see whether you can adopt these traits into your manga or comic characters as well.

Write your characters’ profiles down on a sketch book

Again, it is to avoid similarities of character personalities or looks, as usually one or the other becomes redundant.

Also, you can use what you have already created, and use it as a reference to create another character profile by compare and contrast.

For example, in Final Fantasy 7, Tifa and Aries are two contrasting characters. It is said that Aries was created first, before Tifa was, and when Aries has brown hair, Tifa has black hair. Aries wears a dress, while Tifa wears mini-skirt.

And there are many others.

If you get the picture, by compare and contrast, with every character profile you create, you can create the alternate character profile, and it will save you from a headache while trying to come up with more character profiles.

Below is a list of the character traits you may want to use to create your own character profile:

Your character profile
Name:
Gender:
Age:
Birthday:
Occupation:
Friends:
Basic Description:

Current Information of your character
Family background:
Birthplace:
History:
Current problems your character is facing:
Items that your character have:
Pets(if any):

Physical Description (Just give a basic description and you can draw it out later)
Hair Style:
Height:
Measurements:
Eyes:
Body (fat or thin):
Physical condition:
Clothing:
Any special traits for physical description:

Personality Description
Personality Type:
Positive characteristics:
Negative characteristics:
Likes:
Dislikes:
Goals:
Fears:
Favorite food:
Beliefs, superstition or moral values:
Others:

Abilities
Physical:
Magical:
Others:

The above list is not exhaustive, and you can add others if you want, such as Zodiac Sign and whether the character is a Protagonist (Good side) or an Anatagonist (Bad side).

Final Words for this post

These are just tips about how you can create your own character by creating character profiles first, and you can start creating profiles without drawing.

After you create your character profiles, your character designs should suit the type of personality and clothing that you have first described in your character.

Hope that this little guide will help you in your webcomic, comic or manga designs.

And that’s all for today! Stay tuned for more updates on manga journey!

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from the comic bug

In my previous post, “How to start a webcomic: Prerequisites to start a webcomic #3: Know how to promote your webcomic“, I have briefly discussed the importance of promoting your webcomic to the Internet community.

And for this current post, I am going to discuss about the top 7 ways on how to advertize your webcomic to the world.

As I have said, no matter how good your webcomic is, you will not get much readers without knowing how to promote and advertize your webcomic.

How to start a webcomic: Top 7 ways to advertize your webcomic

Now, there are countless of ways to advertize and promote your webcomic, but these top 7 ways to publicize your webcomic do not need money to execute, and thus is free.

You can always pay to advertize and it will be a hundred times more effective, but well it is not an option for many people.

Let us carry on.

#1: Engage yourself in webcomic forums and promote yourself with your webcomic.
This is a tried, tested and proven method to publicize your webcomic, and most of you will probably know.

There are some advices for you on how to engage yourself in webcomic forums.

• Build relationships first before trying to get people to read your webcomic. They don’t want spammers and people need to trust you first.
• Optimize your signature tags. Create a nice banner of your webcomic with a hyperlink to link to your webcomic site, and where ever you post, people will notice your banner.
• Helping others in the forums when they have questions is probably the quickest way for others to know you well.
• You do not have all the time in the world to engage yourself with every webcomic forum in the world. Choose one or two forums with good publicity, and stick to it.

#2: Submit your webcomic to as many directories as you can.
This is another common way to build publicity, however you need to know what makes this work.

There are two things you can get from directories, one is traffic, and the other is backlinks.

About getting traffic from directories, I have seen many directories, and most directories cater to the popular and the older webcomics as they are ranked by the number of visits and rating.

In most cases, people only look at the top ten webcomics, and rarely go beyond to view other webcomics.

So if you are new to webcomics and are expecting to get good traffic from directories, be prepared to be disappointed.

Also, most directories do not “clean up” their listings. Many webcomics may have long discontinued their updates, and the site is just left collecting dust, but webmasters of webcomic directories rarely delete these listings.

It just makes the competition stiffer for beginners.

Unless you already have a good fan base, your fan base can help you promote the number of visits within these webcomic directories, and thus it will add to your popularity if you rank in the top 10.

If any of you chanced upon a good directory that promotes fresh and new webcomics, let me know.

However, do you think you should stop submitting to directories? The answer is a big no!

The other thing you can definitely get from a webcomic directory is backlinks.

The more relevant backlinks you have to your webcomic, the more it helps search engines, such as Google, to rank you accordingly.

So if you do have a thousand webcomic directories linking to your webcomic (if you do have all the time and effort to do that), search engines will naturally rank you better than others who do not have links to their webcomic sites at all.

My advice, take time to submit to directories and build it slowly, maybe one directory a day. In a month, you will have approximately 30 backlinks, and in a year, you will have 365 backlinks to your webcomic site.

Sounds good?

#3: Showcase your illustrations and other artwork at image publishing websites, such as Deviantart or even Flickr.

Showcasing your artwork at Devianart or other image publishing websites helps to build reputation for your skills.

I have seen many artists using this method to build a decent portfolio, which even creates freelance job opportunities such as designing or drawing.

Moreover it creates many fans, and these fans can become a prominent group in helping you to gain popularity.

However, do not post up illustrations and artwork that relates intimately with your webcomic, unless you are prepared and have a plan.

There are people who steal creativity ideas from websites, and if you have not started publishing your webcomic, yet want to post up illustrations of your artwork about it, you may run the risk of having your ideas stolen or copied by someone else.

Instead, just post up good illustrations and artwork that showcase your skills, and not your webcomic.

Tip 1: While editing your illustrations and artwork you post up, do include your url in your image at the side. So that when you do post it up at image publishing sites, it will catch people’s eye.

Tip 2: Name your illustrations and artwork appropriately, and not things liks “01234.jpg”. Search engines do take note of the names of image files, and if you name your image files well, you will have more visitors.

Many visitors to my site came through images that I have posted up.

#4: Engage yourself with Social Bookmarking websites

Facebook and Twitter are some of the best platforms in getting fans.

Needless to say, you can always advertise at Facebook or post up updates at Twitter to increase popularity and keep your loyal fans happy.

Some webcomic artists started a StumbleUpon group and promotes each other’s webcomics through social networking.

You can always join them to gain readers.

Shetoldme is a very good platform to advertise your URLs or website address.

You can just publish a link, which can be your webcomic site or page, and write about 200 words of description about it.

Shetoldme will publish it, and even helps you to rank well in search engines such as Google.

I had a post, “How to start a webcomic: General Steps“, that was promoted to Google’s first page for 24 hours after gaining even popularity from Shetoldme. So I gained good visitors to my blog at that time.

#5: Exchange links with other webcomic artists

Link exchange is one of the most reliable ways to build backlinks and traffic.

When Artpatient took my previous post on “How to start a webcomic: Top 10 mistakes to avoid” and created a link on his page while describing a little about it, my traffic on that day grew about 1000%!

I really thank Artpatient for dropping by at this little blog. Really had not expected that.

So you can see it really works.

Moreover, Artpatient has a good page rank, which even adds more popularity as a backlink to my post for search engines.

However, not many webcomic artists or webmasters are willing to exchange links. That’s because it benefits the webcomic with weaker popularity rather than the stronger one.

And it is not easy to approach another webmaster by emailing him about exchanging links, as we all fear the feeling of rejection.

So if you do have people that are willing to exchange links with you, treasure them with your heart.

#6: Use mirror sites to showcase your webcomics.

It means you sign up for free webcomic hosting, such as Comicfury or SmackJeeves, and then host some of your archived webcomics with them.

This can work well as webcomic readers are found at these free webcomic hosting sites, and you can gain popularity from there.

#7: Write articles about webcomics, drawing tutorials, or even write about your own webcomic, and submit them to article sites.

This is called article marketing.

This is one of the best methods, but a very tedious one, to gain popularity with your webcomics.

Mike Criley uses videos and he post them up on Youtube about drawing manga. There are more than a million views on just one video. I can imagine the amount of fans he really has.

When you write articles about webcomics and drawing tutorials, you are establishing yourself to other people that you do know your stuff. So readers are able to take note of you and you may get more fans.

Bukisa and Hubpages are some of the best online publishing websites for articles, and you are able to earn a little money from them while you are promoting yourself.

What’s more, these online publishing sites rank very well in search engines, especially Google, and they do have a community within, which makes your articles get exposed to many people.

However for this to work well, you do need to know how to title your article with popular keywords that search engines love, and optimize your article with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Also, writing junk into your articles do backfire. So do some research before you write.

Tips on article marketing: Quantity is as important as quality. The more you write, the more your articles will be advertized to the Internet.

Final words for this post

The above methods may be free, but do require lots of effort.

Time management in needed to optimize between drawing your webcomics and advertizing.

Never neglect advertizing in your webcomic, or your webcomic will be doomed for obscurity forever. Word of mouth is not an efficient way of publicizing your webcomic in the Internet.

That’s all for this post. It’s a long one, but it is needed for every webcomic artist. Stay tuned for more updates!

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I’m back with another update, and when time allows I hope to update more than once a week.

Anyway, in this post I am going to share about the top 10 things to avoid for a webcomic.

I came up with this list while visitng webcomic forums, and heard many complaints against webcomics that upsets the readers, so do take note of these things before you start your webcomic.

How to start a webcomic: Top 10 mistakes to avoid

1. Any hiatus in the first two months for your webcomic.

Readers hate any hiatus of any sort, and especially when you start a hiatus at the beginning of your webcomic, you just lose attention very quickly.

Do take note that this is information I have gathered from webcomic forums, and it applies practically everywhere.

I have discussed it in “How to start a webcomic: Prerequisites to start a webcomic #1” that one of the prerequisites of a webcomic artist is to draw fast.

2. Failing to meet update schdules.

Another turnoff for readers is for webcomic artists to fail in meeting their update schdules.

Readers wait a whole week for just one update page, and yet the webcomic artist disappoints them. Excuses like “I was ill and had stomach ache” or whatsoever just don’t convince most readers.

Like I said, read my previous post on how to solve this basic problem.

3. Bad site navigation.

This is a major turnoff. ‘Hide and seek’ isn’t a game that readers like to play.

Some webcomic artists try to jazz up their navigation for their site, and in many cases it confuses as well as upsets readers instead of attracting them.

Everyone hates bad site navigation for websites or blogs, so if you want to attract visitors or keep loyal supporters, please make sure your webcomic website or blog has good navigation for readers.

Clean and simplicity for website and blogs is one of the best formulas for good navigation.

4. Blogs that have to explain the comic.

If we have to consult Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary or Google, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s plain silly to make your webcomic over complicated. You lose everyone’s attention.

5. Webcomics that take too long to load.

Try to keep your picture files in small sizes, and keep those quality images in your storage space at home.

Readers do not like their webcomics load slowly at all, and not everyone has broadband. If you are doing too much flash animations, I suggest trying a simpler alternative or risk losing your readers.

However, keep those quality images at home so that in case you hit jackpot and become famous, you do want those quality images so that you can print a comic book or something.

6. Too much conversation in your webcomic.

Comics and manga are different from books, so more on artwork and less on words please. This is another major turnoff.

7. Fillers in the main archives.

Readers dislike fillers, but it is definitely better than not updating at all.

However, putting them in the archives is a bad idea, as it breaks the main storyline when readers are browsing through the archives.

8. Ripping off humor and content from other webcomics.

This kills attention and loyalty from readers very quickly. We want you to write your own material.

9. Webcomics or manga that advertise with fewer than 10 strips.

It makes your blog or website look just shallow. Please have more content before advertising.

10. Calendar archives

This tells readers nothing about the content behind the dates. Choose a better alternative.

Final words for this post

To start a webcomic, understand what your readers truly want.

And since you are probably a manga or a comic reader yourself, place yourself in their shoes and you will realize that what I have suggested in this post is probably what you will agree too.

Anyway, that is all for this post. Stay tuned for more updates!

Do comment to me about what you want to see in Manga Journey, and I will try to cater to your viewing wishes.

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from anon777

We are coming to the third part of prerequisites to start a webcomic.

If any reader wishes to review the previous two prerequisites, this is the link for #1 and #2.

As we have spoken before in previous posts, knowing the general steps of starting a webcomic does not guarentee the success of your webcomic. Many webcomic artists started prematurely and ended without releasing a complete manga or comic series before.

It is important to know what are some of the basic prerequisites or preparations needed before launching our webcomic online.

By the way, the above is a really cute wallpaper of Final Fantasy 7 girls isn’t it?

How to start a webcomic: Prerequisites to start a webcomic #3

One of the basic prerequisite of starting a webcomic is to know how to make your webcomic accessible and known in the Internet.

The rules are the same with traditional paperback manga comics; as visitors in a comic shop has thousands of books to choose from, how are we going to make our webcomic accessible and known to readers online so that they pick our webcomic amongst the thousands of other webcomics?

There are some who think that if their webcomic is quality, readers will automatically approach their site and spread the news of their webcomic by word of mouth.

Nothing could be further from the truth; I just don’t see many of them in Google search engine when I search for webcomics. Instead, I find webcomic directories that houses many webcomics.

And when I click on these webcomic directories, its like a huge library of webcomics which makes their visitors wonder where to start from.

It’s like searching a needle in a haystack; there are just thousands of webcomics out there in the Internet, and how are we expecting people to enter our site and read our webcomics if our webcomics are not accessible or known?

Word of mouth advertisement is the most reliable form of marketing our webcomic in terms of getting loyalty from readers, but in the Internet world it sure isn’t the most efficient way to make a webcomic known and accessible.

Scoring well with search engines and people

It is important to be able to score well with search engines so that our sites can be accessible for readers.

What I am going to suggest are Internet marketing techniques to promote a website or a blog. It is really popular nowadays, and I suggest adopting some of their techniques to promote your webcomics, website or blog.

Tip#1: Article marketing
Description of article marketing: Article marketing is about writing articles online to promote your specific industry or product.

In the context of webcomics, we can write articles about our webcomic or the webcomic industry in general to promote our profile and credibility online, while making people know about us.

These articles are submitted to well known online article websites like Hubpages or Bukisa, where it is possible to make money while you want to promote your webcomics through your articles.

These online article websites rank highly in search engines, especially Google. They promote your article easily in search engines, and you may find your articles in the first page of search engines!

So if your article is featured in the first page of search engines, you can be almost sure that someone will be reading your article, which may also generate traffic for your webcomic as well.

Moreover, many online articles websites have a community within them, and people within these communities are most likely will be exposed to your articles, and in turn to your webcomics too.

Tips #2: Get backlinks to your webcomic website or blog.
Description of backlinks: Backlinks are links that are linking to your website or blog, and these links must come from other websites that has a different url or IP address.

Generally speaking, it is good to get links from other webcomic sites and related websites or blogs, so that you can increase traffic into your webcomic website or blog.

Moreover, Google ranks your site better when we have more backlinks into our sites.

How do we get backlinks from other websites? Ask the website owner to exchange links with you; meaning you put his url as a link in your website, and he will do it for you too.

This is one of the most difficult things to do, but it is absolutely necessary.

We can also use our articles to create backlinks to our sites or blogs; just input a link within our articles and readers will be able to access our websites easily.

Just don’t spam your links! It is possible to be blacklisted by search engines and your site or blog will be doomed for obscurity.

Other tips and advices

The above 2 tips are common Internet marketing techniques to promote our sites and blogs. And these tips are necessary steps to make our webcomic website or blog known.

There are other tips and advices, like joining a webcomic, manga or comic forum, and get to know the people there. Once they know you, you can always welcome them to have a look at your webcomic for a good read or for pointers.

Submitting to webcomic directories is another good method.

However, there are just too many advices and pointers to add, as the list of things-to-do is almost inexhaustible. Maybe in future I will make a concise list of how to promote our webcomic for everyone.

Final words for this post

I am coming towards the end of prerequisites to start a webcomic. I guess this is a pretty long series and it is time to post up something different.

Hopefully I will be able to post up more drawings soon!

That’s it for now, stay tuned for more updates!

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from genniecru

This is a continuation from my previous post, which is “Prerequisites to start a webcomic #1“. We were discussing about some prerequisites that should be met so that we do not start a webcomic prematurely to our failure.

There are many ways to create a webcomic, but there are also many people who gave up their dream because it is a tough journey to embark on. In this post we are going to talk about the next prerequisite that is essential for a webcomic artist to have before starting a webcomic.

How to start a webcomic: Prerequisites to start a webcomic #2

Prerequisite #2: Webcomic artist must be able to produce good quality artwork that appeals to most readers.

We might think this is common knowledge amongst aspiring manga comic artists, but if we do a search on Google, you might be surprised of the amount of low quality webcomic artwork that is on the Internet.

I have met many manga comic enthusiasts, and many of them don’t like to read comics or manga that has low quality artwork.

No wonder readers don’t have a tendency to search for a webcomic online for a good read, because there are few reputable webcomic artists that produces decent artwork.

There are people who argue that a good storyline is what it takes to create a good webcomic, and that artwork is secondary. They may use the example of One Piece, which does not seem to have fantastic artwork, but is one of the best selling manga comic of all times.

Granted, we may say that One Piece is an exception, but how many other popular manga comics resembles One Piece? Not many.

As the manga comic industry matures by time, more emphasis and demand has already been placed manga comic artist to produce better and more detailed artwork for production. Readers are entertained by how a manga comic looks, and not just how good a storyline is. Otherwise they would have chosen to read a novel instead.

If webcomics do not improve in their artwork, we can be sure that webcomics will never catch up with the quality of traditional paperback manga comics.

Artwork quality dilemma.

Great artwork is easier said than done. This is because the higher the quality of artwork will mean the more time and effort is needed to produce a single page of a manga comic.

Webcomic artists do not have the luxury of time; hence many of them do not spend much time on background design and fancy artwork. Therefore most webcomics nearly always seem to have inferior quality artwork than most traditional paperback manga comics.

Tip #1: Background design can be simple, but let the character design be as high quality as possible.

Reason: Characters are the most important assets in any story, as they are most instrumental when the manga comic or webcomic artist builds their story around their characters.

Hence if there is any part of artwork you want to compromise so that you want to spend less time on, that will be background design.

Tip #2: Characters’ clothes do not have to be too sophisticated or too fancy; simple but appealing design is recommended for saving time and efficiency

Reason: Especially for fighting genres, clothes can be difficult to draw when we take into account different camera views of the character and when the character is in the midst of action.

Having very complicated clothing will certainly slow down our drawing ability, Search online and look for trendy outfits that are cool yet simple to draw from magazines and pictures.

Use them as a reference to build your wardrobe of clothes design for your characters. Plan ahead, so that when you need to draw a certain outfit consistently, you won’t spend too much time trying to make your character look proportionate.

Tip #3: Don’t compel yourself to produce colored pages for your webcomic. Focus on producing good artwork instead.

Reason: I do not know the reason why but many webcomics I have seen are colored throughout. I wonder whether if it is the webcomic artist’s effort in trying to make up for its relatively simple artwork, but the truth is it doesn’t work.

Many webcomic artists do not understand color science; their use of colors on their artwork actually spoils their webcomic instead of improving it, as some webcomic tends to use colors that are too bright, and others have colors that doesn’t suit the webcomic.

Too bright colors just makes the whole artwork look very childish. Needless to say, colors that doesn’t suit the webcomic makes the webcomic lose its appeal and realism.

My advice is, if the webcomic artist isn’t good with the use of colors, please scrape the idea of colors. Using colors can be very demanding by itself, and the ability to use colors is by itself an art.

It is therefore better to focus on improving our artwork, then to venture of something that we are not so familiar with. Only after with a decent amount of practices should one try to incorporate color into their webcomic.

Final Words for this post

Personally I strongly believe that one must have a decent quality of artwork before setting oneself to produce webcomics.

That is why I hesitated trying to produce a webcomic prematurely and I am currently focusing on improving my artwork.

Given a choice, every reader will choose to read a manga or comic that has better artwork than the one that has inferior artwork.

Ask people or your friends for opinions in your artwork before trying to produce a webcomic prematurely. It will help in the long run.

For the next update, I will be posting the next prerequisite of starting a webcomic. Stay tuned!

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In my previous post here, I have given general steps of how to start a webcomic. However we have not discussed about the prerequisites of starting a webcomic.

There are differences in starting a webcomic and starting a manga comic series in a publishing firm or self publishing. Several prerequisites are needed to fulfill for a successful webcomic, besides taking general steps of making one.

As it can get rather wordy, I decided to split this topic into several posts so that we can discuss them in detail. *I thought that the above Cloud and Tifa picture is very cool; so I put it up.

How to start a webcomic: Prerequisites to start a webcomic #1

A webcomic artist and a regular manga comic artist working in a publishing firm has major differences.

Often, a webcomic artist works alone, while a manga comic artist has about 2 assistants or more helping him alongside.

A manga comic artist then produces a chapter of their manga comic, which is about 20 pages of artwork, and submits it everyday for weekly release.

However, note that the manga comic artist has 2 assistants helping him to draw out his background up, inking and such etc.

And the manga artist with his assistants runs a tight schedule meeting each week’s demands.

What about starting a webcomic? Many webcomic artist start off with a few pages or chapters for a few weeks consistently, and then they are not able to continue producing their manga or comics as scheduled; they either run late, or they are on hiatus intermittently.

Being on hiatus intermittently or running late is bad for the webcomic, because the readers aren’t obliged to wait for the author; they may forget about the webcomic easily and webcomic artists will lose their readership.

Also, many of them stopped producing their webcomics because of the tight demands, and as some of them have other responsibilies such as a day job, they aren’t able to keep up with everything, which eventually forces them to quit their webcomics altogether.

Prerequisite #1: Webcomic artists must be able to draw fast and commit to the schedule stated for their webcomics.

These are some tips to satisfy the above prerequisite:

Tip 1. Plan out most of your webcomic in advance before publishing it.

Reason: Manga comic artist may be able to plan while drawing their manga comic, because this is their full-time job and they have assistants helping them.

However many webcomic artists are independent comic authors, and thus planning while publishing webcomics isn’t going to be time efficient.

Yes, we will not have the luxury like One Piece, who is able to run in serialization for more than 11 years, but lets not dream of that when all we need is to start small first.

Tip 2. Produce many chapters ahead before releasing the first chapter of the webcomic

Reason: This will serve as a buffer if we happen not to have the time to produce our weekly chapters or pages due to some reason, like unforeseen circumstances, holidays or day job commitments.

Tip 3. Learn how to draw digitally and master it.

Reason: As I recall in the previous post about the general steps of starting a webcomic, I stated that there is not a need to learn how to draw digitally on a graphic or drawing tablet.

However, learning how to draw digitally speeds up the process of drawing webcomics; we do not have to take the intermediate step of image scanning our work into our computer or laptop before editing it.

Yet learning how to draw digitally must be mastered before starting a webcomic. That is because in my experience, we need to adapt on how to draw on a graphic or drawing tablet, for it isn’t quite the same in drawing on a piece of paper due to the difference in sensitivity of the graphic or drawing tablet.

Tip 4. Hone your drawing skills to draw fast and well.

Reason: Self-explanatory tip.

Tip 5: Do some experiment with your drawing speed. If you aren’t able to produce 1 page a week to update your webcomic at least, that is a big sign that you need to brush up your drawing speed.

Reason: Experimenting with our drawing speed helps to tell us how fast we can truly draw, and it should remind us that we cannot promise what we cannot deliver to the readers.

If you are intending to update several pages in one week for your webcomic, make sure to experiment with that demand and whether you can cope with it.

Otherwise, be prepared for a major downfall for your webcomic.

Final Words for this post

Readers are only loyal when the manga or comic becomes popular or is attractive enough. Hence, we must not expect that readers will stay by our webcomics if we fail to meet readers’ needs.

Otherwise, readers are generally very fickle in choosing their manga or comic.

In the next post, I will post up the next prerequisite for starting a webcomic.

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from warren ford

Today I am going to share about the reasons for starting a webcomic instead of using other traditional means to become a semi-professional or professional manga comic artist.

Myths of the pros & cons of webcomics

Before I begin talking about reasons why I want to start a webcomic instead of using other traditional means, I will want to talk about some myths first.

Myth #1: Webcomics are better than traditional paperback comics or manga because the former reachers a bigger audience in the Internet than the latter.

Webcomics certainly nullify geographical & physical boundaries, and it allows exposure to the international audience through the Interent, but yet many webcomics in the Internet remains obscure or unknown. Somehow the better known comics & manga are still in traditional paperback form.

Maybe because most people are still more comfortable with traditional paperback than with webcomics.

Also, many traditional paperback manga or comics are available online because of many scanlation groups & online comic or manga websites. Therefore webcomics still face fierce competition in the Internet nevertheless.

Myth #2: There is too much competition from popular titles & publishers for manga or comics in traditional paperback form. In the Internet, everyone has equal amount of chance to prove themselves.

Like I have previously mentioned, many webcomics still suffer from obscurity, and what is going to make the readers click on your webcomics amongst the thousands of other online manga & comics?

The playing field of marketing is a little different in the Internet than marketing traditional paperback manga comics, as now webcomics are under the mercy of search engines and Internet marketing techniques. Noone will magically appear in our blogs & websites if we do not know how to market our webcomic in the Internet.

Therefore publishing traditional paperback comics or manga has the same amount of competition against publishing webcomics for the Internet community, as the former is about picking our comics or manga amongst the thousands of manga comics within a comic bookstore and the latter has similar scenario likewise.

Pros of starting a webcomic

I will discuss about the pros of starting a webcomic in my context, which more likely has similar contexts in other countries as well.

Pros #1: Publishing webcomics has significant less overhead costs than publishing traditional paperback manga comics

A full 30 colored page, US-style comic may cost about SG$8,000++ for 8,000 copies, but in Singapore(my homeland), with only a population of about 5 million people (as of 2009), selling 8,000 copies is a great achievement! I must take note that I am an unknown author amongst so many other manga comic books.

Also, I would need about SG$30,000 of investment money to publish traditional paperbacks effectively. Webcomics has significantly less overhead startup costs than publishing traditional paperbacks, easily less than a couple of hundred dollars startup fees. (See previous post about the tools and equipment needed to start up a webcomic here.)

And the worst scenario is being unable to sell our manga comics, and the stock is left at our storage room to collect dust! Therefore, webcomics is certainly a better startup option than publishing traditional paperbacks.

Pros #2: Webcomics allows time and space for experimentation, while traditional paperback manga comic doesn’t allow much experimentation at all.

Manga or comics may fail to attract readership for a number of reasons, and in many Japanese publishing companies, they will cut serialization for any manga comic that fails to attract popularity.

Imagine having a stockpile of goods in our storage room, and it is because our manga comics are just not attractive to readers for whatsoever reasons! That is one major flaw of traditional paperback manga comics.

As there is little to no fee involved in uploading our manga comics into our domains or gallery, we can experiment against time whether our manga comics are attractive without incurring great overhead costs.

Pros #3: Marketing webcomics in the Internet involves much lesser time than marketing traditional paperback manga comics

Many publishers are not too kind to authors who are just beginning their careers, and in Singapore’s context, Singaporean-made manga comics are not the best kind of books to sell; publishers will rather import well-known titles from Japan and have a translation team ready to cater for Singaporean needs. Therefore it is likely to face rejection from publishers, and at the end of the day many have to take the route of self-publishing.

Self-publishing is a great pain itself.

It is a hassle and time-consuming endeavor to go to different distributers or retailers to market our own manga comics. Distributers or retailers will so often think that self-publishing authors are rejected entities from publishing companies, and dealing with them effectively will be a challenge.

Moreover, transporting goods to distributers or retailers is by itself another big physical and time-consuming challenge.

With webcomics, all we need to know is how to market our manga comics in the Internet, which has little to no overhead fees or charges. More time can be effectively spent on developing the webcomic better, or to have private time for oneself.

Cons for self-publishing or starting a webcomic

Con #1: Difficult to earn a living out of a webcomic

This is obvious, as compared to professional manga comic artists, who are paid by the amount of pages they produce from publishing companies, it is truly difficult to earn a living out of a webcomic.

Self-publishing a traditional paperback manga comic, if in success, can rake in tremendous amounts of royalties and popularity, but compared to a webcomic, it is difficult to point a finger to where the revenue and income will come from.

The majority of readers for manga comics are mostly teenagers, which may not have a debit or credit card or paypal to purchase a good read from webcomics. Hence, webcomics have a great disadvantage in the area of income.

Con #2: Need considerable discipline to post webcomics dilligently

Readers can be fickle, if we do not post up new comics or manga dilligently, readers may forget all about the story we want to portray to them.

In publishing companies, there is pressure from editors and bosses to make sure manga artists produce their work. The company do pay the authors per page.

However for self-publishers, as we do not have a definite income or revenue for our work, our motivation to work diligently for our manga comic will suffer tremendously.

Final words for this post

As I am still a student and am still exploring the prospect of becoming a semi-professional manga comic artist, webcomics is the way to go for me. For the very reason that I do not have enough funds and I am still building necessary skills to produce manga comics.

That’s it for this post for now, more updates for manga journey soon!

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Today I will be sharing my own strategy of how I want to become a semi-professional manga artist. I am planning to start my own webcomic.

The ironic thing is, I have not started on my strategy yet; that’s because I am still brushing up in my drawing skills and will not be able to start until I am convinced I am capable of drawing like the drawings of Bleach manga comic, by Kubo Tite.

I will be sharing briefly on this topic, outlining what needs to be done to start a webcomic, as this is actually a very comprehensive subject to discuss about.

Tools needed to start a webcomic

Before I begin talking about how to start a webcomic, there are a few things we need to take note: Hardware tools:

1. There is no need to learn how to draw in a drawing or graphic tablet before one can start his or her own webcomic.
2. There is no need for a drawing or graphic tablet in the first place, although it will help tremendously.
3. However, an image scanner is a must, if one is not using a drawing or graphic tablet at all.
4. Last but definitely not least, an internet connection with a computer is needed.

My scanner is actually an economical HP All-in-one multipurpose machine, able to image scan, print and photocopy at the same time. I am not too bothered with the quality of the image scanner, as I do not see the need to get a high precision image scanner as of now. HP Photosmart C4680 All-in-one Printer (Q8418A#ABA) Software tools:

1. A graphic-editing software is a must: Photoshop and Corel Painter may burn a hole in your pocket, but GIMP (open-source graphic editing software) is free. Of course I will always support Corel Painter, as this is the image editing software that my manga teacher asked me to get.

However, because I bought a bundle for Adobe CS4, I have Photoshop instead of Corel Painter. Corel Painter is much cheaper and a more powerful tool for webcomic creation than Photoshop. Webtools:

1. Free blog hosting sites like Blogger and Wordpress.org can be used to create a blog, so that we can house the webcomic in a site. There are many free hosting sites out there.
2. Ideally, buy a web hosting domain from web hosting companies such as HostGator, install your own Wordpress blog into your domain and start publishing your webcomic online.

I strongly recommend paying for a web hosting domain for Wordpress than getting a free hosting site or blog. The reasons are simple:

1. It creates a sense of identity for your webcomic.
2. Paying for a web hosting domain allows the user to optimize Wordpress features, and many of the features or plugins of Wordpress provides automatic publicity for your blog to search engines and other sites. This is commonly called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.

The above point is very important because it doesn’t matter how good your webcomic is, when noone knows about it. It will still be zero readership.

Being able to market your blog or site becomes very crucial as there are hundreds and thousands of webcomics out there for competition; who is going to look at your webcomic if its obscure and unknown?

Many readers online have their choices to read Naruto and Bleach scans or famous webcomics instead of our webcomics, and staying obscure isn’t going to help one bit.

Hence, the primary reason to get a web hosting domain is to be able to effectively reach out to as many as you can. There are other reasons to buy a domain from a web hosting company:

1. Gradually, we want to be able to contain our readers and allow them to express themselves at will. Building a fan-based forum immediately comes to mind, but it is impossible with free hosting sites, and every bit possible when we buy a domain from a web hosting company.
2. Eventually, if we want membership subscriptions, purchasing a domain is necessary to be able to build a database within the server.
3. It allows us to use custom-made design themes for the overall look of our site or blog, and free hosting sites have limitations on that.

And there are many more reasons to purchase a domain from a web hosting company. I shall not go on further on the importance of having a web host.

For a web host, I recommend HostGator as one of the top choices for a web host. The reasons are:

1. It provides a very easy-to-install interface to install a Wordpress blog from scratch.
2. It also provides a very easy-to-install interface to install a forum into the domain, such as phpBB or Simple Machine Forum(SMF).
3. HostGator is relatively cheap for all the services it provides, compared to other webhosting services.
4. It also provides good support and service. This blog uses HostGator for its web host.
5. Of every successful blog or site that I have seen, I have always seen HostGator as one of their primary choices for getting a web host.

If anyone is interested to get HostGator, you can click here.

How to start a webcomic: General steps

1. First, draw your manga comic on paper.
2. Scan the completed manga comic into a computer.
3. Add inking and toning to the manga comic with a graphic editing software.
4. Do some clean up with the manga comic.
5. Add speech balloons to your comic, according to the script of the story.
6. Resize your overall manga comic. Save it to a web-compliant image format (like jpg, png or gif).
7. Upload into the gallery of your domain. And of course, arrange the pages within the gallery.

Therefore, we are able to use an image gallery to resemble a manga comic book, where the forward and back button will just be like flipping the pages of a book.

I am not describing in detail on the above steps; it will be for another day as this is a long post.

Final Words for this post

I wanted to become a webcomic manga artist because of the lack of opportunities in my homeland, and the Internet has considerably less overhead than trying to publish paperbacks and selling them.

It wouldn’t be good to spend S$30,000 on printing manga comics and it is left there in your storeroom. The Internet sure has less overheard costs after buying a good graphic editing software, a drawing tablet, and a webhosting account for my endeavors.

And this blog is my starting steps towards being a webcomic manga artist.

I will reveal about the elements of webcomic in future. For now, just enjoy this post!

ps. Sorry about the 3 ridiculous general ramblings post before this post. I was testing out some SEO technique and I am unable to delete them. Will be more careful in future.

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