Nah, he's a troll. A banned troll.

Huh?

EDIT: Ah. Never mind.

Personally, I think manga is more of an art style. However, it is a varied and multifaceted one.

No, of course you don't have to be Japanese to draw manga. I like to draw manga and I'm an American. I have heard stories of manga being made in China, France, and even New Finnland. You can draw manga no matter what nationallity you are. If your ideas are fresh and new, you can bring the manga art style into the light for even more people to enjoy!

(This comment was posted by Dr W aka the MangaMan. MangaMan proudly supports all manga creators.)

i dunno what to call your work W., but it's certainly not manga. more archie that anything else, thinking about it.

Otakus are considered losers everywhere! I embrace what I am.


And I think that this picture is still manga, you don't have to be as good at drawing as CLAMP to be a mangaka.

Anybody here heard of Kurokami (Black god) ?

The artists are Korean and it was originally written in Korean but in right to left panels like manga and was translated into Japanese. It is frequently classed as one by improrters. It was even made into an anime.
And obviously it would be called a manga in Japan, since that's what they call comics in general. But you wouldn't know if you read the pages whether the creators were Japanese or not (providing you don't look at the names on the cover).

In regards to my own style that I'm trying to semi-perfect before I wire in, I call it "Mangaesque".
-Esque is a French-origin suffix for "In the style of" not "Like" And I think it reflects the mix with European styles pretty well by adding it.
Even though it would be pretty much called Manga anyway in Japan.

Regarding people thinking I can't create Manga because I'm white:

If they feel that strongly about it, they should go and stop reading Manga translated into their native language altogether. They should just learn some Japanese and go away to read the ORIGINAL Manga.

It has already been explained why you can't use the Japanese usage of the word to define the English usage. Regardless of what the Japanese may call it, it is not considered proper use of the word in English to call the X-men a manga.

Nobody is saying you can't make a manga because you're white. Race has nothing to do with it. You can't make a manga because you aren't making a commercial comic expressly aimed at the Japanese market. Although rare, there are manga artists who aren't Japanese.

I also find it insulting to have people classify my own work as manga. Rather than have it be judged on its own merits, people will judge it based on how well it copies particular stereotypes. That is why I've moved away from using the style with anything that isn't a direct parody of Eastern genres. Working in an Eastern style seems to imply some level of conformity and a lack of originality, attracts people looking for comics that copy particular Eastern stereotypes, and repels people looking for interesting or original content.

I hate that stereotype. I think that every single manga artist has their own sense of style and originality, even if they seem to be following a single style. I wish people would be more open towards this... I remember when my roommate came back from art class saying that manga was not a form of art. That really made my blood boil. I mean, if manga isn't art then why did MOMA do a manga exibit that summer... Some people can be so arrogant.

It is the artists and the following they attract that create that stereotype. Many of your Western comic artists who use the "manga style" are trying to emulate an existing idea both visually and thematically. They aren't trying to make something original or use their own sense of style. They copy straight out of "how to" books or try to straight out use another artist's style rather than develop their own. Their fan devotion to that particular idea only serves to cheapen that idea. Their target audience of like minded people looking for a derivative narrative and visual style only drive away readers looking for a more original experience. In many cases, they even drive away legitimate anime/manga fans since many know that the copy is never as good as the original.

Smackjeeves is a textbook example of why that stereotype exists. Just pick a comic at random...

Or take a look at the "Most Popular Comics" section...

I can only see four there that aren't in some generic form of the style.

In the "Hot Comics" section there's only one.

I mean, in some ways you need to copy other styles that you admire in order to perfect your style right? In my manga school they always pushed us to do this (more so for poses etc rather than actual drawings though).

I think the only thing it should be acceptable to directly copy in Manga is the screentones.
Especially since you can buy the same ones anyway. You're pretty much cutting the overall cost of having to buy whole sheets.
Then again, there's the whole idea of buying sheets, scanning them and printing them over and over again onto clear, stickyback sheets.

Me? I did the latter but without that last step. I even made my own in MS paint a few years ago that seemed to look pretty good. None of them got printed. And then I found a few "How To Draw Manga" books with digital screentones on disks that you install into Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.

Then I changed my mind on using them in Mahlaste since all three main characters are visually impaired without specific devices. And when you can't see properly you rely on colour (Take it from somebody who's worn glasses for nearly a decade now) to see where you're going. And screentones aren't the way to go to portray that.

So I'm saving the screentones for other things I'm working on. Probably GEML when I get 'round to it.

Anyway, poses are not a good thing to copy. Because making up your own is part of the "fun" of creating unique characters with their own personalities influencing how they stand and how they move.

Referencing is a whole different thing. That means looking at something and using it as an inspiration or to help you learn how to draw what you want to draw. if you're drawing a panel depicting a martial arts move, you will probably have to look at it in action somewhere be it books, the internet, videos or from life.
If you have the pose you want, simply copying from a page, picture or frame is usually the worst may to layout a page since they are showing the viewer/reader HOW to do something instead of how to draw it. And so show it from angles that don't go for visual impact.

You have to look at what you're looking at, and imagine the scene in 3D. Then pick the best angle from what you're imagining to make the most out of it. Maybe even do a few adjustments or exaggerate features. You're not copying. You're using the knowledge you have collected from the image and putting it to use in a different form.

The same goes for anything. Facial features, expressions, objects, buildings, clothing... The list goes on.

It makes all the difference between painting a Picasso and painting like Picasso.

Maybe borrow from, but outright copying really doesn't help you develop your own style.



And most sequential programs in the US push students to learn anatomy and take life drawing classes to learn poses. Studying how someone else draws a pose doesn't really help you to learn about that pose. It is a much better approach to focus on understanding the underlying structure of the human body. At the school I attended, they evenhad special life drawing sessions on the weekends for the sequential department where the models would do action poses and use props. Students could walk around the model and draw the pose from multiple angles and get a good sense of how the anatomy worked for that pose.

I agree with you, that's definitely the best approach to study poses etc, but there are times when studying teh human body isn't all that you need to master a technique. The example that comes to mind is drawing Chibis... I think it'd be pretty difficult to find someone with a head the size of their body that can model for you. Manga can have some weird proportions involved, and I think there are times when everyone needs to study how the artist they look up to the most accomplishes what you're trying to do.

Actually, even when drawing extreme proportions it is essential to keep real life anatomy in mind. This is why in Western sequential art and animation curriculums, you learn real anatomy first and then learn to caricature it. Even chibis have some foundation in real life. It is what makes them appealing and instantly recognizable. And quite frequently around here, I'll see local animators drawing people on the street for practice and drawing them in stylized forms with exaggerated proportions.

I'd even go so far as to say it's a requirement for animation. It's hard to half-ass the angles in animation, so you need to be able to draw every character in every possible pose and from every possible angle. Disney started mandatory life drawing sessions for his animators and quite frequently, they would use the model as a base for drawing more exaggerated characters. Some studios in the industry still do this.

Not to mention that if the original artist makes a mistake, you'll make a mistake.

You can be but it doesn't necessarily mean you'd be good as an American or a Japanese mangaka.

I'm not Japanese, but my comic is a manga. Anyone who says otherwise might have to answer to a two-foot tall ornery jackrabbit with the strength of a small orangutan.


As for what the Otaku think... well... let me do what they want, as long as somebody buys my manga

I'd say that Avatar is anime-inspired but not anime. To talk about Avatar or say, Teen Titans and other anime inspired western shows, the animation 'timing' is Western (I've gone to school for 2D animation to give myself some qualifying statements lol)

In animation, you have 24 frames per second and of those 24 frames, only 12 pictures are drawn (if we don't count layers... I won't get into that). That means that it is animated in 2's. Sometimes, more pictures will be added to give a more 'squash and stretch' and 'pop' to movements that aren't monotonous like jumping. I would animate the few frames before the 'take-off' in 1's and then the rest of the animation in 2's.

Anime, on the other hand, is animated in 4's or 5's which means that for every 24 frames there are 6 individual pictures.. 1/2 as much as the usual Western animation. In the end, the characters in Western animation have a much more fluid motion.

The character designs also have a more 'western' feel to them... like you have someone used to drawing a certain way but have been asked to draw with someone else's style ... you get this 'pseudo anime' that seems more like it's pretending and trying to be something it's not.

There's also the factor of storyline... I could name the all the anime that go on forever with no set 'the is how it starts, this is how it ends, and this is how many episodes it will have. Western animation and tv shows continue to air as long as there are people watching and they make money.

The Japanese also put a lot of effort into hair... it's not something you see in Western animation.

I certainly don't think that only Asians can make anime (let's face it, the Japanese only do keyframing and it's the Koreans that draw the bulk of the pictures) but in the end anime is a very distinct style and you need all the factors and that includes timing to make it right.

Manga is hard to imitate when you don't know much about it. I think webcomic artists can do it well and probably because they are also interested in the genre and not just asked to 'imitate' a style they know nothing about by their boss.

hair is hard.. I might make all my human chars bald :P

Manga is not an style.
It is a genre with a lots of styles.
Big eyes or not,it doesn´t mean nothing,because you can find manga with normal eyes,too.

Manga isn't a genre. it's the name comics have in japan, and it encompasses many genres.

Saying you have to be Japanese to create manga is like saying you have to be Dutch to paint portraits after the Flemish style. People did say that at the time but is wasn't true.

Maybe Japanese are the best at it because it they developed the style, but you don't have to be Japanese to create manga anymore than you have to be French to be an Impressionist painter.

Amazing how the same things are said about styles of art through the ages.

All I know is I wanna be the first (assuming there was no one before me) American to debut as a cartoonist in Japan.

Wish me luck.

Well, I think it's a style...
People only think it's Japanese and stuff because it's the style that is largely popular over in Japan.
Here, we draw in a different style. Then we learn it generally from people who are Japanese who have grown up with it.
Sorry if I made no sense/ we're on a completely different subject now...

No way you don't have to japanese to draw manga or anime. Personally, to me it's just another style of art that anyone can learn.