Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Getting started with making
manga is actually very hard. You have to know how
to make good stories, make an interesting script, and then turn it into
an engaging storyboard. You have to understand
how paneling works, how pasting works, how to ink and add screen tones, and to actually figure out what kind of manga
you want to make. But to be honest, you can learn the basics of that
in almost 1 hour. And this is exactly what we are going to
do in this class. Hey, my name is To, and I am a mangaka and also a
content creator on Youtube. And in this course, I am excited to share
my knowledge with you as someone who wants to get started with making manga. I started making manga
back in 2021 and I absolutely had no idea what
I was doing at that time. I made a lot of
manga since then, and I learned a lot along the way through a lot
of trials and errors. And after practicing
for almost three years, I was able to make
my last manga, the number one Romans manga on the manga creators platform. Now I'm not saying
this to flex on you, but rather to make
the point that even the mangakas who have
thousands of readers and seem to have an
overnight success all started from
zero, just like you. And so in this course we are going to cover
a lot of things, including how to make your manga story with techniques that are used in all popular
mangas that you read. How to make
interesting characters that the reader can
actually relate to. How to script your
story and turn it into an engaging storyboard that the reader would want to read. How to panel your storyboard and connect that with pacing. We also will be talking
about how inking works and how to give your manga the
traditional Japanese look. You are also going to
learn how to letter your manga in an effective
and efficient way. And finally, we are going
to learn how to be more productive and how you
can beat procrastinating, Since it seems
like a big problem for most of the people
who make manga, this course is for
absolutely everyone. If you are a beginner and don't really know
what you're doing, this course will
teach you a lot. And if you have some
experience making manga, I will be sharing a lot of pro tips that will make your
manga stand out as well. Making your manga stand
out is easy to say, but a lot harder to do, especially considering
that there are hundreds and thousands of people who are trying to
make manga every day. But hopefully, after
watching this course, you will be able to have a better understanding
of making manga, which will make your journey
to success a bit easier. For this course, we are going to be using clips to your paint, but if you don't
have it, there's a free trial that you can
download to follow along. And also if you have
already used that, then you can still get like 80% out of the information
I talked about. Since I'm really
teaching you how to make manga and it
does not really matter what drawing software you use or even if
you like to draw traditionally there
will be still a ton of valuable information
that you can learn from Skillshare is awesome because it's centered around active learning through your
participation in projects. This course is no different when you're done watching
all the classes, you would have already applauded two to three projects that will help you a lot in
your manga journey. Take this course as a little
manga class in school, and see the projects as some homework that
you need to do. By the end of the class, I will personally make sure to give you a
complete feedback on all the projects that you applaud so you can
improve way faster, because feedback from
the right people could really change
a lot for you. You can also give other students here some feedback as well. And don't forget, have fun with it and good luck on
your manga journey.
2. Your Why: Why do you want to make manga? This is a very
important question to ask before even starting, because without a strong reason, you are going to quit
making manga at some point. So that's why this is
the first class in here. I want you to think about what inspired you to make manga. Think about what you
like about manga. Think about the reason why
you want to make all of this. And it does not have
to be something complicated or something really deep, you just have to know it. But whatever your reason is, make sure to always have it
in the back of your mind. So when times get tough, you'll remember why you started. Let me give you an example here. For me, the reason
why I want to make manga is to inspire
other people. Just like I was inspired
by anime and manga, watching anime and reading manga literally change my life. And I really want to do
that for other people too. I have lived a lot of moments and experiences that
I want to share with the world through my mangas to inspire others to
be better humans. Maybe you have your
own stories too, or maybe you want to make
people laugh or entertain them. Or just make them think about something a
bit differently. Just make sure to know
it before starting because it will help you a lot through your manga journey. And now let's actually
start making some manga.
3. Making The Story: When it comes to
making a manga story, the first thing that
you want to decide is, what genres do you want
to include in your story and also what kind of
story you want to make. For example, when I wanted to
make my manga Smile For Me, I wanted to make a
high school Romans one shot with an emotional
shocking ending. Try to figure out that
before actually starting, because this will set the
direction of your whole story. There are a lot of
genres that you can choose from A little tip here. Usually combining two
genres that don't usually come together could make your manga stand out
a bit more like, in my case it was romance, but also with some
horror effect into it. Similar to drawing,
seeking references is very important when
crafting your manga story. In this process, it's better
to explore mangas that resonate with the atmosphere and the genre that you are
aiming to capture. Also focus on those that
have gained some kind of popularity and have some good
ratings from other people. Take the time to see your personal opinion
about these mangas, to see what you actually
liked and also disliked. And then select mangas that
only align with your taste, but also have received good
feedback and popularity. After you do that, I want you
to consume these mangas so we can kind of get in the mood of making something similar. Now, we are not trying to
copy them or anything, we are just using
them as a reference. Now the next thing is describing your story
in one sentence. Write a very basic, easy to understand sentence
that describes your story. The more you simplify the story, the easier it will get
to make the final story. I have some examples for you here so we can get what I mean. Lufi wants to become the
parrot king, that was it. Naruto wants to
become a hokage and Aaron wants to kill the
titans to revenge his mother. All of these mangas have
very complicated stories, but it always starts with
something very basic. But now, before you do this, make sure to answer
these three questions. Not a lot of people are going to be interested
in your manga, just like all mangas out there. Make sure to know who you
are making this manga for, because it is not for yourself. But of course, you should like the manga that you
are doing as well. It is very important to tell a message
through your manga, otherwise the reader
will feel as if your manga was a
complete waste of time. The reader should always feel something after
reading your manga. A feeling of joy, sadness, motivation or whatever you are trying to make them feel
After you write this. Now it's time to
expand the story. I'm sure that you don't want your story to be very
predictable and want it to be unexpected so that it hooks the
reader completely. Luckily, there is a secret to every Manga story
that does that. And I am going to
share everything I know about it in
the next class.
4. Kishotenketsu storytelling technique: Let me introduce you to the
Kisho Ten Katsu technique, the four parts
storytelling method, which is a traditional
Japanese way to tell a story that will make your story very unique
and definitely not boring. And almost every Mangaka
you know also uses it. The four parts are
ki, so ten ketsu. Each of these
Japanese characters represent a part of the
storytelling method. Don't worry, this
is not the same boring hero journey story that you have been teaching in school and is used
in Western media. Even if you are
still a beginner, this method is going to
difference your story from all these predictable stories
out there and will put you ahead of 90% of
people who write stories. Now let me introduce you
to the four part method. The first part is called key, which stands for
the introduction. This is the beginning
of your story where the settings and the main
characters get introduced. In this part, you will give the reader a lot of
information about the world and just information in general to
understand the plot. But even with that being said, the reader will still
need at the beginning, which I will teach you how
to do in the next class. The second part is called show, which stands for the
development stage. This stage will make us connect deeper with the protagonist. In this stage, you have to make your reader very attached
to the characters, but not a lot of changes
are going to happen here. We're just making the reader
ready for the next stage, which is going to be the twist. But one thing is really important here, which
is foreshadowing. Since the next part of our
story will be the twist, we don't want it to be random. We leave little hints around
the development phase that will still not make the reader know that
the twist is coming, but rather making them get an Aha moment after
seeing the twist. Let me give you an example here. Let's say it's among
about basketball. One of the player suddenly want to switch the team,
which is our twist. Now in the development phase, you can leave some hints such as he is keeping training
or something like that. And when the reader
sees the twist, he will think that, uh huh, that's why he was
doing all of that. Make sure to make it
not obvious at all. The reader will
actually be surprised by the twist and not
really expected. The third part is called ten, which stands for the twist. Major changes happen
in the story, or a big surprise, which is the climax of
akishotenqetzu story. And it's there to
introduce chaos. It can be something
very unexpected and that shocks the
reader like a betrayal. For example, this part should be the most exciting and hardest
hitting part of your story. The first and last
part is called Ketsu, which stands for the conclusion. This is the resolution
of your story. The reader will know
that the action is over. This part is basically a little
bonus to wrap things up. One thing that olmngakas
do at this part is leaving a little hook at the end to make the reader read
the next chapter. Since the quiso ten quetsu
method is also used for making chapters and
not only the whole story, but I will be talking
about that later as well. Now if you still don't exactly know what all of this
means, don't worry. Because in the next
class I will show you a complete example of
Akio Ten Quetzu story.
5. Kishotenketsu Explained: I'm going to be breaking down the first chapter of
my hero academia. If you don't want the first
chapter to be spoiled, maybe you can read it
and then come back. But at the end of the day, it's the first chapter and it's
not really a spoiler. Boko hero first chapter begins with introducing the
protagonist Deku. We get to know
about the world of my hero academia and that
all people have superpowers. We are showing how fight works and we get
to know more about Deku and that he wants to become a hero even though he
does not have a super, by this stage of the story, we stop getting
told about events that happened in Co's
life previously. And we start to
see the new events that are happening right now. Like the relationship between Ku and his childhood
friends Baku. And Ku getting saved by Almight and getting
told by him that he cannot be a hero with
no superpower decks. Classmate gets attacked by
a monster and we get to see that twist here which is that strongest
hero of all time, Almight hesitate and does not
get involved in the fight, but Deku the powerless loser decides to get involved
to save his friend. Which is the climax
where Deco is proving that he really
wants to become a hero. Eventually Almight
gets his power back and ends the fight. Almight changes his mind and tells Tku that he
can become a hero. Which ends the first chapter. Also it is a hook. Since now we want to
know how he will become a hero without
having a superpower. What you just saw right now was the perfect example of a
Kisho ten quetsu story. Which tells us that
this method is used for every chapter in the story
and not only the whole story. The graph for that
looks like this. Where you have a big kisho
ten quetsu story that consists of little small
kisho ten quetsu stories. In every chapter
we use the quiso ten quetsu method for the
emotional engagement of the reader while reading a
certain amount of pages. Pro mangakas don't only use
that for the whole story, they do it every single chapter. It is very important that not all of the parts
have the same length. You should focus
on the ending of the development stage until
the end of the twist, where the conclusion starts. These are the most
important parts in a quiso ten quetsu method. And because of the
momentum we have built through the
development part, the twist part will
be very surprising, but only if it is in
the right timing. So making sure that the
development part is not too short or too
long is very important.
6. Hook: The hook is a part of the
emotional engagement. So make sure to hook the
reader in your first page, since it really decides if the reader want to
continue reading or not. And this is not just
about the story, even with art, you should be giving your best
from the beginning. Now as I said, to make the reader even interested
in reading your story, we have to hook them with the first page or
a couple of pages. Here's exactly how
you can do that. Using a very dramatic
scene that grabs the readers attention at the very beginning
could be very helpful. This could be a dramatic action, a unique setting, or a visually stunning
character design. Make sure to make the reader
wants to ask questions, make them think about what is happening or what
will happen next. This can create curiosity and motivate them to keep
reading for answers. You can do that through the text in your speech
bubbles, for example. Basically, what you are
saying in your story. This is very important. But don't worry, I
have a whole class on that in the later section. But for now, just remember
that it should be very unique. At the end, leave
the reader with a strong reason to turn the
page and continue reading. Now, do you notice the
amount of effort and preparation you are putting
in for your story right now? Imagine that this part gets
skipped by a lot of people who just draw whatever they like and think
that will be good, which is why already, by following these tips, you will be really ahead
of a lot of people.
7. Oneshot vs Chapter 1: Since a lot of people get
confused about this question, here is the answer. Quiso ten quetsu is the perfect method
to make a one shot. But the only difference between a one shot and a
first chapter is that the one shot is a story that begins and ends in one chapter. Which means that it is
a story by its own. If the reader reads
it until the end, then the story is done. Unlike chapter one, where the story will not
get to an end, but rather actually starts
When making a one shot, keep your story simple. Only introduce concepts
that you absolutely need for your story or that
would interest the reader. And don't try to make
the next one piece or naruto with a one shot, because this is
not going to work. Rather, focus on
making a simple story. Here's also another tip as well. When making a first chapter, make sure to really think
about the twist part because it will set the
direction for the whole story. Just like when Deco proved
that he can become a hero, led to him actually becoming
a hero for the whole story. Now you might think that we
are done with the story here, but let me tell you that making
the plot or the theme of the story is actually only 40% of actually
making the story. Because the other 60%
are your characters and I am going to explain everything about them
in the next class.
8. Making the Characters: This is by far one of the most important things that
you should be focusing on. Yes, creating a
really nice theme and a story is really
important too. But your characters are the most important
thing in your story because they are the reason why the reader is even
reading your story. If readers cannot relate
to your characters and really understand and resonate with the things that
they are doing, then your manga will be boring, no matter how interesting the plot or the theme
is interesting to them. Now the question is, how do we actually create
good characters? It may sound complicated, but you have to understand the psychological characteristic
of your protagonist. You have to understand
them as you would understand a
real friend of yours. Let's create your characters. The first thing that
you need to do is to download the first
template I made for you, which is the character
profile template. You can find that in the
project and resources section, so go ahead and download it. People are interested
in characters that has a similar
age or work as them. This will be the type of readers you are mostly
going to reach. But also the reader
could be even more interested if the characters
are completely different. Which is why
fictional characters, such as superheroes,
are always liked. For example, let's say
that your character is at 28 years detective. It is important to know your
character's background. You can explain why they are, who they are at the moment. For example, the 28
detectives grew up in a small town and always had fascinations with
solving puzzles. This led her to pursue her
career in law enforcement. What is the purpose of your
character in the story? Does they want to
protect something, create something, or
maybe become something? It just have to be something valuable to the character
that you are making. An example here would be
that the detective is determined to solve a cold case of her missing childhood friend, Sarah, who disappeared
without a trace. Things, does the character
think are important, like family, or money,
or maybe religion? But your character can also have some values like honesty,
courage or kindness. The detective we have
here could value justice, loyalty, and maybe honesty. Knowing the weaknesses
of your character will make the reader
relate way more to them. This is a really important part when it comes to the
strength of your character. Don't just write that
they are strong or smart, but try to be a
bit specific here. What does make them
smart and what does make them
strong, and so on. Our detective could
tend to be overly self reliant and struggles
with trust issues. The deeper you understand and
describe your characters, the better and more your
reader will understand them. Now this is very important. How are your characters
at the beginning of the story and how
are they at the end? This is the growth
that will happen to characters and what will make the reader interested
in continuing reading. The growth have to do
with something like a skill or mindset,
or even values. If the story is longer, your characters do
not have to grow immediately or achieve
their purpose immediately. But if you are
making a one shot, the characters needs to
achieve their purpose. To give an example,
at the beginning, the detective could
be dedicated, but somewhat a close
off detective, consumed by the unsolved mystery of Sarah's disappearance. And at the end,
through her journey, the detective learns to trust others and discovers
more about her strength. And maybe if this
story was a one shot, the mystery of her best friend's disappearance
gets solved. All what you are writing about the character is just
purely for yourself. Until now, you can
decide which sides to show and when to the reader
when making the script, which we will be talking
about in the next class. But before that we should talk about the character design. You should express the
inner characteristic of your characters
and their appearance. Describe how tall they are, what kind of clothes they have, and if they carry
something with them. Anything that helps the reader understand more about them. Having some character designs or character sheets like those
is very important to be able to draw your characters in the same way every single time I really recommend
designing your characters before actually starting
to draw the manga, you cannot know who you are
dealing with while sketching. You can find some
character design examples in the project and
resources section. Just try to replicate
something similar. You don't have to do it now, but it would be smart to do it before starting the storyboard.
9. Character class project: This is the first
thing that you will be uploading in the
project section. I want you to use the
template that you can find in the resources section and make your own characters
as a little practice. Once you're done with that, you can upload it to the
project section. Just go to Project and
Resources and click right here. Give your project a
name like the name of your character or just
manga, Masterclass Project. And click on Image to upload your character as an
image so I can read it. If you already draw
your character, upload that as a cover
image right here. If you do that, I will
personally give you feedback on your characters and give you some tips to
improve as well. I can't wait to see all of
your creative characters.
10. Making the Script: I see a lot of people these days skipping this step and start writing the script while making the paneling
and storyboard, which can be okay too. But honestly, if you're starting out or you are not
working alone, maybe you are a writer
working with an artist. My advice to you is
to make a script. It will save you a lot of
unnecessary editing in the storyboard phase because you know exactly what
is going to happen. Now, how do we actually
start writing the script? First, you download the script template
that I made for you. You can find that in the
resources section again as well, and it should look
something like this. When writing the script, we divide every chapter
into scenes, and every scene consists
of one or multiple pages. Just write the scene number
and the pages number here. Now there are two types
of writing things. The first one is the
description type. Here, no one of
your characters is actually talking and
you should describe what the characters
are doing or what is basically happening
while no one is talking. You can also use this
for the narration. Make sure to include
these square brackets so you know later that no one
is actually talking here. The second type of
writing is when your characters are
actually talking here, you basically write
the character's name and write down what
they are saying. Everything that you type here is included in the speech
bubbles and that's it process until the scene is done and then you
start another scene. And you keep going
like that until the chapter or the
one shot is finished. Now, most people know
about this stuff, but let me tell you about the important things that most
people do not know about. Please, when you are
writing your script, do not write what you would say. Write what your
characters would say. Know your characters. Think
about their personality. How would they act in
specific situations and make it feel natural? What that basically mean is that you need
to become an actor while writing and put yourself in the positions
of your characters. Otherwise your characters
will feel all the same And it will be very boring to the reader
to read your story. Give every single dialogue and sentence you
write in the script a lot of purpose
that adds more to the story and make
the reader engaged. Every line should have a reason and should not be random at all. So make sure to go over your
script multiple times before drawing to see if you can cut things out that are
not as important, where you feel
like the story can continue without them
with no problem. The protagonist does not
have to say everything. You can show stuff or
just add a narrator. The main reason why you
are making a manga and not a novel is because you can show the people
what is happening. Make sure to balance the
things that you make your characters say and
the things that you show. It's always better
to show people when you have the chance
to. Let me ask you this. If you wanted me to teach you how to draw
right now, right? Would you prefer me sending you a text about it or actually making a whole video and explaining stuff to
you with visuals. You get the idea. So when you have the
opportunity to show, do it for the page number. I would recommend not adding more than six lines of
dialogue every page. It can definitely change later while making
the storyboard, but it's just a
rule of thumb that you can use while
making the script. There will be pages
with no dialogue at all or only two lines. Just make what fits
for your story. Get immediate feedback from someone that is not your friend. Because let's be honest. Your friend will be saying that your script is the
next one piece. What you need is
constructive feedback, and this is the only way
to improve your script. Take the notes from the person
who gave you the feedback and go back to your script and edit what should be changed. You can also show
the script to people who have no idea about manga. You can see how normal
people would react to it, and then you can make more changes and
improvement from there. Make sure to get feedback from different points of view
and different people. This might take a
while, but trust me, it is very important for your manga and it will really
take it to the next level. Remember, the main reason
why people are reading your manga is because of the
story and your characters. So make sure that
this is interesting. Now that your script is done, it's time to make
the storyboard.
11. Making the Storyboard: For this step, I have made
you another template that you can download and use for
making your storyboards. You can find it in
the resource section. Again, I personally use
this template because it makes everything easier
to edit and change. If I want to change anything
later in this template, there are 20 pages. But if you want to
add more simply, go to Edit and then click
on Change Canvas Size. You can make it bigger
and then add more pages. Just copy one or two pages and then add them
just like that. And if you have a
double page spread, just make two pages close
to each other like that. Once you have the amount
of pages you desire, you are ready to start
making the storyboard. This is one of the best
parts in creating manga and also the most important one because you can
be very creative. And this is actually the part of the story that the
people will read. But there is one
thing that you need to do before actually starting. Remember when I told you at the beginning
of the class that you need to search for mangas that are in the
same genre as you. Now it's time to use them again. First, you should
give them a read again before starting
to get in the mood of these kind of mangas
and already see how the pros are making the
paneling and storyboarding. After that, I want you
to read your script and start imagining the scenes that are happening in your head. And while you're
doing that, just start doodling on your
storyboard pages. You don't need any artistic
skills at this point yet, just use stick mans or
whatever you want to get the ideas from your head
into the storyboard. But make them as clear as possible so you can
understand them later when you're drawing or if
you're planning on showing it to someone else
to get some feedback. Now, since you wrote
everything very clear in your script and everything
was described perfectly, this should not be very hard. Just let your creativity play and see what happens.
But here's the thing. If you want to make your
pages look professional, the paneling needs to be
very professional as well, which is the topic that we will be talking about
in the next class. This topic is by far one
of the important ones. So make sure to watch it
with full concentration, since this is the thing
that will actually difference you from 90%
of Mangakas out there.
12. Paneling: Before actually going to clip studio and starting
to panel the page. Here are the most important
things that you should keep in mind while you are
drawing your storyboard. Specifically, while you
are paneling the page, every page you have
should be very clear in which direction
the reader should read it. In manga, it is from right
to left and top to bottom. If any of your pages
break this rule, you will never have page
flow in your manga, and the reader will
be very confused. To make the reading
direction clear, you can use speech bubbles
to guide the reader's eye. Your speech bubbles and
what is happening in the panels should create
a clear line like that. Mostly it's Z shape. If the line is very complicated, then you should probably
redo the paneling. But speaking of speech bubbles, one thing that I always
tell my students is, is that speech bubbles
should never be placed randomly and rather have
a purpose in the page. Make the reading of your
page feel absolutely effortless by placing the bubbles in the
reading direction. I will teach you more about
the advanced stuff of speech bubbles in some
of the classes later, you are the camera
man in your story. And one thing that you
should definitely do is to constantly change
the camera angle. If you are always drawing your characters from
the front angle, the reader will
be very bored and your manga will not
feel dynamic at all. Showing the characters from different angles
could help a lot. With that, you can
take a look at the manga that you are
referencing and see how the angles and the
camera shots change depending on the actions
that are happening. You don't have to do some
crazy perspective scenes, just make sure to
have a variety of shot types like close up shot, medium or white shot, and so on. Your Manga pages should normally
have three main spaces. No matter how the panels are divided and structured
in these three spaces. Sometimes you will
only have two spaces, or sometimes you will draw one illustration
for the whole page. But to keep things simple, just don't go over three
main spaces for now. If you're starting
out, too many details could damage your manga. If you don't know what
you're actually doing, I recommend seeing how
many spaces they are in the Manga that you
are referencing and try to replicate it, because it's already working and you cannot go
wrong with that. You should always keep the
paneling line straight in normal scenes where
the characters are just talking, for example. But if you're drawing any
kind of action or movement, then tilting the panels and
making them more dynamic, we'll make your manga
looks way better, but only when there is movement. Otherwise it will be useless. And again, the manga
that you are referencing will have a lot of similar
things to what you are doing. And you can see if the
mangaka is drawing a lot of straight lines
or using tilted lines. But one thing I can tell you
is that you can never go wrong with using a lot
of horizontal panels. They are very easy to
follow along and to understand and you can make a whole page out of
them with no problem. Break objects out of the panel when you
want to focus on them. When you want to put the focus on a character or an object, showing them outside of
the panel border like that is going to make the
reader look at it immediately. Which is a great tactic
to focus the reader eye on something very important
a character has to say. When you change a scene, make sure to add a
somewhat big panel to show the location that you are at to make the reader understand where everything
is taking place. Even if you don't draw a
lot of backgrounds later, the reader would still
know where you are at because of the
first panel you made. Since you are making a
manga and not a novel, it's very important to have scenes that show
what is happening. No one have to talk or say anything but just pure drawings. If you did it right in
the script section, then you would exactly know
when to include these scenes. When it comes to what things you should include in the panels. One tip that I have for you, which is going to
make your manga and characters stand out from other people and
is going to make your Manga levels above average, is giving your characters
something to do while talking. Instead of drawing a face and putting a speech
bubble next to it. Make the characters do something that has to do with the scene. Maybe they are drinking tea or holding something
in their hand. Maybe they are doing
something with their hair. This will make your
characters feel way more natural and relatable.
13. Pacing: How you panel the
pages of your manga will play a huge
role of your pacing. One thing that will help
you a lot with that is to balance the amount of
action and reaction. This basically means that when something happens
in your story, your characters are going to
have some reaction to that. Let's say something
happened in one big panel. Having another one big
panel where you show the reaction will make
the pacing better. Or having two panels
that together are as big as the action
panel works as well. Just try to balance the
actions that are happening and the reactions that are
coming out of your characters. One example I can give you
here is in sports mangas, you always see the player
playing, which is the action. But you also see important
characters reaction in the crowd and also the reaction of the team against our players. So it's split it
between the action, which is the playing
and reaction, which is the talking
and analyzing. If you've ever watch
a sport anime, you will get the
point immediately. One thing that will help
you a lot with your pacing as well is the compression
and release technique. This means that your
panels are getting smaller and smaller before
a big action happens. No matter what the
action actually is. You just have to be
something important that the reader needs to
remember in your story. And once the release comes, the panel gets bigger.
14. Flipping the page: Making the reader want
to flip the page is a very important thing that
you want to keep in mind. One way to improve
that is to always have something important
waiting in the next. Or just making the reader
having a question before finishing the page to make
them flip to the next page. If you do it consistently, the readers will read and read, and before they know, the
whole chapter will be over, which is our goal here. You can use the compression
and release technique to make the reader
flip the page as well. Just put the compression in
the page that comes before flipping the page and the release after the
page gets flipped. As I already said, referencing the manga
that you got is by far the best thing that
you can do while paneling. I really encourage
you to do that because it will make
a huge difference.
15. Making your first Page: Now that you know a lot about paneling and also
that your storyboard, it's time to actually start
building the actual pages. For this step, I have another template that you can download, which is basically a
clip studio page with the perfect industry size and also perfect for
printing as well. If you are thinking
about printing a physical copy
out of your manga, then it's really important to have the page size
and everything. So make sure to download it. With that being said though, I will still go over everything that has to do with
setting up the page. Just if you want to do that
yourself in the future. When you open up Clip Studio,
you will see this window. I want you to go to this
little icon right there, which is for making comics. And just copy all the
settings I have here. These are the
industry standards. And you should definitely set up your page like that
before starting. I only have the Pro
version of Clip Studio, but if you have the X version, then here are some
extra settings that you can add as well. Now when you open up the page, it will look
something like this. First thing you want
to do is to copy a storyboard page you made before and paste
it into the page. Make sure to make it as big as the page and reduce the opacity. So you can draw over it. Then you want to go to this
little icon right here. Or you can hit the
shortcut twice. So you can create.
Before you draw it, make sure to follow these
settings on the left. Also, make sure to have
the options snapped to ruler and special ruler
selected there as well. After you add the panel, now you want to cut it
like in your storyboard. Make sure that the vertical
and horizontal gutters have the size right here. These are, as I said,
the industry standards. And it will help for
better reading of the panels and everything
will look more organized. What you have to do
now is to just cut the panels according
to the storyboard. Now, while cutting,
you have two options, divide frame folder and
divide frame boarder. Divide frame folder means that every time you cut a panel, it will create another folder that is separated from the rest. And everything you draw inside this panel stay in this folder. If you choose dividing
the frame by border, it's going to cut the panel, but it will still have the
same folder and layer. Sometimes you want
to use the border, but sticking with
the folder cut is going to make your
manga more organized. After you cut your panels, make sure to rename them, giving them the panel number. Do not get lost
while trying to find the panel that you want to draw on in the drawing section. Now if you click on
this frame folder, you will see all anchor points. If you want a panel
to go to the edge, just click this arrow right here and it will
spread like that. You can also just
edit the panels in general using
these blue circles. Now once the page is set
up and it is all done, it's time to add the text.
16. Lettering your manga page: A lot of people make
this mistake of leaving the text until the
end, including myself. So I am here to tell you
that this is not how it should be before drawing
anything on your page. The first thing that
you want to add is only the text, not
the speech bubble. Yet, add the text to know how big the speech
bubble actually will be. This way when you add the
speech bubbles later, it becomes way easier to
know how big they should be. When it comes to the font, I personally use
Manga Master BB. You can also use
Wild Words or Anime as all of these are used in
most mangas that you read. Choose the one that
you like the most, but make sure to not
use comic sense because it's very ugly and no
one actually uses it. The size of the
text can variate, but I recommend you
to never go under 10.0 because it will
not be readable at all. Also, make sure to check
this option right here to make your text not look
ugly while scaling them. When adding the speech bubbles, I just keep it simple. And I use the pre made speech bubbles that
Clip studio has. In the material section, you
can play with the thickness, Make sure to make it thick. My brush for that is
mostly 15 and yeah, from there you just start adding the speech bubbles in every
place you wrote any text. Make sure to not cover
a lot when adding the speech bubbles to be able
to show more of your art. And if you are doing
a whole chapter, make sure to do all of
these steps we talked about before for all the pages before actually
starting to draw, at least adding the text if you don't want to add the
speech bubbles yet, because sometimes it makes more sense to do it
after the drawing part.
17. Sketching: See, usually pro manga Cas don't even have the
time for this step, but they are pros and
also have a lot of experience for us
aspiring manga kas. We should probably do a sketch
before starting to ink. I know it will take more time, but since we don't have to
put out weekly chapters, it's okay to take more time to make the manga look better. When it comes to sketching, there are two things
to keep in mind. The line that you draw, don't have to be clean all the time. It's a sketch, which means
that you should be sketch. So just draw without really
thinking about the lines. And don't be scared of
sketching multiple times for one panel until you get the result that you
are looking for. The second thing is to use a lot of references at
this stage to make sure that you are
not drawing anything wrong and to help you with
the process in general. A lot of artists
sleep on this because they are too busy drawing
their own things. But trust me, it will make
your art look way better. And even the pros use
references all the time, so it's absolutely not cheating. This is probably the
most time consuming task since it requires
your drawing skills. And it's really
hard sometimes to be satisfied with the drawings. And to that I say, don't try
to be perfect all the time. You are going to make a lot
of mangas in your life. They are definitely going
to be better than this one. Just give your best and you
will improve with time. Now again, what I recommend
you to do here is to draw the sketches for the whole
manga before starting to ink. Just to make sure that everything
is the way you want it to be and to be able to
change stuff before inking. Because once the inking starts, there is no going back, because you will be
starting to make the final product that
the people will see.
18. Your Art: Imagine you spent
hours working on a piece of art or just
among a page in general. And you think to
yourself that this one is going to be great. But then you take a step
back and look at it again. And think to yourself,
it looks like crap everyone who makes art
go through this scenario. And even though
sometimes there are one or two drawings that you think that they
actually look decent, for the most part,
you just think that almost everything you
produce is basically trap. You start to ask yourself, am I doing something wrong? Is there something
wrong with me? Maybe I'm just not
meant for this. But guess what. There's
nothing wrong with you. And every great artist out there has already gone through what you're going
through right now. Actually, it's the
complete opposite. If you don't feel like this,
something is probably wrong. Let me explain. Drawing is
a skill that you can learn, just like any other skills only gets better with
time and practice. Right now, maybe it feels like you're stuck and not
improving at all. But if you actually
zoom out a bit, you realize that no
matter how slow it is, you're actually
always improving. But here's the thing,
drawing is incredibly hard. You want to learn how to
draw stuff while applying 50 different principles and get the anatomy right while trying to tell a story
at the same time. Something that takes
a lot of time and I'm not talking weeks or months. This will take you years
and even decades to master. If you have been drawing
for like two years, and think to yourself that you cannot draw everything
perfectly yet, then this is completely okay. Your art is going to
suck for a while. And it's going to be
worse than the art of the artists that
you always look up to, since this will take a
lot of time to master. You will be a student
for a long time. But here's the thing. This
does not mean that your art is worthless until you're
not a student anymore. And until everything
looks perfect, even though your art
could have some issues, it can still look good. But it just means that until you get to the point
that you want to get to, you need to practice a lot. And I know walking around
all day knowing that your art sucks, negative
and demotivating. But here's the point
of this class, which is to tell you that you don't have to feel
like this at all. It is completely
normal to not be already amazing at something
that you are learning. Going through a bad phase of drawing is just a
part of the process. If you always remember and
view yourself as a student, and notice that
students can make mistakes and they don't do
everything perfectly yet. You will actually start getting better at drawing because
you don't have to make the perfect art pieces or the perfect manga pages anymore. Because at the end you
are still a student. Here's a pampat along the way. The first word of
my pen name is Gx, which means a
student in Japanese. And it's there to
remind me that I'm always going to be a
student who can make mistakes and is always learning once you realize that there is no
end goal in art, and that it is all about the journey that
does not really end, it will all make sense. We are all constantly
improving and growing. And if we ever stop doing that, it's not because we
already reached our goal, but it's because we stop
trying to improve ourselves. No matter how good
you already are, the drawings can
always look better, Which means that it's not
like you will only be happy after you reach your goal that basically
does not exist, but more like you enjoy
the journey all the way, even though your art does
not look like the art of the artists that you are
constantly looking up to. Very easy to forget that
nowadays because we are getting exposed to a lot of
amazing artists out there, especially with social media, which can be a good thing too, but it's also very
overwhelming sometimes. Have you ever
finished a drawing? And we're very proud of it. And then went on to
Instagram to realize that every drawing looks so
much better than yours. I think every one of us
has, at least I did. But the thing is the artists
that you always see on Instagram probably have years of experience more than you. Of course, they are
going to be better. But these people didn't
start like this. They started from
zero, just like you. It's just that they have
been practicing for longer, so when you see other artists on Instagram that
are better than you, it's not that they
are more talented, it's just that they have been
practicing art for longer. There isn't really a
point of feeling upset or negative about your
art when you see theirs. If you want to become
as good as them, just focus on yourself and stop comparing yourself to them. Just practice more and more, and at some point you
will be just like these artists that you
admire or even better. And until then, just trust the process and enjoy the
journey as much as you can. Even if your drawings are bad, you should find some kind of
enjoyment in creating them, since this is the reason why we all started in
the first place, which is to have fun
and enjoy our time. So remember, being
a bad at drawing is just a temporary stage that
everyone has to go through, so just trust the process
and have some fun.
19. Inking: When it comes to inking, it all comes down to
how much you practice. The more you ink, the better
inking you will have. But here are some tips that I needed when I was starting out. You should always variate
the line thickness. Your drawings are going
to be very stiff and boring if you're using the
same thickness all the time. And there's actually
a simple formula that you can follow
to start out. Now you have to know that all of this have to do with
the inking style. But since we are going for a traditional Japanese
manga inking look, it's really important
to give the outline of your characters lines
to make them pop a bit. The line for the outline
of your characters should be thicker than what you are drawing in
the background. Also, make the upper eye lashes
for your characters a bit thicker to give them
that Manga look is always a good rule of thumb. Things that are
in the foreground should always be thicker. The more your objects or characters are closer
to the camera, the thicker the line should be. Now this is a pro tip, but if you know where the
light is coming from, always thicken the areas
where there's no light to give it that three D a look without even
adding the shadow. But of course, it depends on the style that
you are going for. If there's something really important that you are drawing, making that thicker is usually a good idea to make the reader look and
notice it immediately. All the details in your
drawing should be thin. A great example for that is
the folds on the clothes, the details on the
hair, and so on. Also as the outline
should be thick, everything inside should be a little bit thinner in general. Now talking about the
prote from before, it's always better to make
the lines where the light is hitting your characters
thinner than usual. Also, your background
should be very thin too, so they don't blend in
with your characters. That's basically it. These were the basics of
inking that you can use to make your
drawings look less stiff and more
interesting to look at. One last thing I can tell you is to use inking
references as well. Just search for some cool images and try to replicate their ink. Trying to learn from prose is always better than
learning by your own, so keep that in mind.
20. Inking class project: For this class project, I have uploaded three sketches that you can use to
practice your inking. You can choose the
inking reference yourself and completely ink the drawing and then upload it in the class
project section. Simply click on this edit icon and add more images
to your project. If you do that, I will give you a complete feedback
on your inking and also give you some
personalized tips that will help you
a lot to improve. Don't miss this chance of getting help from
me, personally. I can't wait to see all
of your inking styles.
22. Screentones: Screen tones is one
of the things that will give your manga
that professional look. I know there are
some mangakas who don't use a lot of screen tones, but they have other
techniques that are a bit advanced that make the drawing
still look good for you. Using screen tones is going to help you a lot
at the beginning. Thankfully, clip studio paint has made this process
for us very easy. But when it comes
to screen tones, there are people who use
it for the manga colors, so to fill in the clothes
hairs, et cetera. And there are also people who use the screen
tones for shading. And there are
people who do both, just like me for example,
which is very common. I will be using this
drawing to show you how to add screen tones to make
things a bit easier. Go to layer, new
layer, and then tone. Now here you can play
with the settings, but they are actually
pretty straightforward. First, let's talk about
the type of screen tones. There are a lot of
types of screen tones, but I usually just stick with circles and sometimes
I use cross. Both are pretty common in manga, but you can try out
the rest and see what works for you
for the angle. It's not really
important in my opinion, because it will not make a
huge difference at the end. I always stick with zero. But now to the important
stuff first, the frequency, which means how many circles, lines or crosses or
whatever you are using as a type are in
a specific area. If it's slow, you will see
a small amount of circles, but therefore there
will be bigger. And this is usually
used in comedy manga. But I'm not really
making a comedy manga. I always stick with
85 since it's the highest and works the best
for detailed drawings. Second, we have the density, which means how thick or closed the circles
are to each other. The closer and thicker, the darker the tone will be. Once you choose what you
want, you just click Okay. And it will create a whole layer of the specific tone
that you choose. If you are not happy
with the tone, you can always change the frequency and
density from here. What I always do first
is raise everything and then start filling the
tone in the areas that I want. But here's the thing, I always need multiple screen
tones for one drawing. I basically create
more layers with different densities to not
having to do that yourself. In the manga page
template I made for you, you will find a screen
tones folder which has six different densities that you can play with and change. I would advise you to change
the name of the layers to know which tone you will be using for whatever
you are doing. Hair, clothes or
skin for example. And also one for
the shadow as well. After I finish filling up the
tones in the places I want, I start adding the shadow, which is a
straightforward task if you know where the
light is coming from, you can always look up for
light references if it's too hard for you and just
try to replicate them. Don't worry about it too much. If it's too hard right now, it will come with time and practice just like
all the other skills.
23. Mindset: Now, I know that, especially
in our time right now, you are constantly
comparing yourself to all these amazing
artists around the world. Which can cause a lot of lack of confidence that
you are feeling. You are looking at
them with a lot of jealousy and thinking that
your art is really bad, which is very understandable. But here's a little mindset
shift that will change your whole perspective on
drawing and art in general. Instead of looking at
every other artist out there as your enemy, try to look at them
with a look of inspiration And say to yourself
that if they can do it, then of course I can. What does any of all the
successful artists that you aspire have more than
you? Absolutely nothing. You are probably smarter
than a lot of them too. So here's a step
by step on how you can build your
confidence as an artist. I believe that confidence is built through the things that
you achieve in your life. But let's be more
specific on art. What is achieving things
in art looks like? This is a very simple
question. You know why? Because the answer for that
is clear for everyone. Achieving things in art means basically being better
than yesterday. The only one who you
should be comparing yourself to is
your younger self. So let's say that you
draw something today. Your mission for tomorrow
is to make something a little bit better than
what you did yesterday. And here's where the confidence will come from when you see yourself improving more
and more every single day, even though the change
is not significant. If you keep improving
a little bit over a long amount of time, you will suddenly realize
that you are way better. Nothing in life is easy and so is drawing or making Mongo. So improving by 1% every day is so much better
than not improving at all. Because you think that
you can never reach the level of the amazing
artist out there. So keep improving
every single day. And the confidence you're lacking will come
day by day for sure. And one day you will wake
up and realize that you are just like the artist that you aspired a couple of years ago. Trust me, whatever
you do in life, it will definitely have a sense
of competitiveness to it. Whatever you do, everything
that is great to achieve, you will see a lot of people
trying to reach for it too, which is completely normal. But it does not matter here, because let me tell you that
you are only using this fact as an excuse to not work as
hard as you actually should. If you want to achieve
something great in life, like becoming a Mangaka, you have to work hard for it, just like all of these
amazing Manga artists did. And if you are not
willing to do it, then it might be a
good idea here to think if you really want to
do this in the first place. In everyone's our journey, there will be a point where
you will get some kind of criticism maybe online
or in real life. And I know it might
be harsh sometimes, especially if it's
from the wrong people. But accepting criticism
and feedback is a very important
skill as an artist, which will improve with every
time you share your art. So make sure to listen to
the feedback and criticism with an open mind because this is how you will
actually improve. Getting feedback is the best
way to improve in anything. So don't be scared of it,
because it might be hard. Sometimes in three
months from now, you are going to be
very grateful for it because it improved
your art a lot. Now this is just for
the people who want to do art or Manga for
living in the future. I had to go through
this myself and it's a very
uncomfortable situation. So let me tell you how to actually deal with
this. Now I get it. Manga and art is
your passion and this is maybe the only thing
that you want to pursue. But your art on manga is not going to pay the bill
at the beginning. And it's going to take some time and a lot of hard work to achieve before having a lot of arguments or discussions
with your parents. Make sure to have something that will make them believe you. If they see you waking up early every day to
work on something, they are more likely
to be more supportive. If they see that you made
some kind of money from commissions or that you
won a manga contest, they might believe
that making manga with art is actually
not impossible. Just make sure to have
some kind of proof before actually having a
big conversation about it. And until then, just take art as a hobby while you're actually working hard to achieve
something with it.
24. Procrastination: The blank page, the
unfinished drawing, or the uncompleted manga. Whenever we sit down
to do something creative like making
manga, for example, or just to improve
our art in general, we often feel a force
stopping us from starting or finishing what
we have already started. Now probably a lot
of you are thinking, what does procrastinating
have to do with manga? Well, making manga
is not like drawing an illustration that will maybe take you a couple
of hours to finish. Making manga usually takes weeks to months and even years. And because of that, a lot
of people seem to start making manga and give up
the project after a while, or just start another
manga project, and they will never
actually finish anything. Now if you really want to
get somewhere with manga, which I really assume since you watch all of these
classes until here, make sure to watch this
class until the end. Because I'm making this
class about procrastinating. Because I feel like
without beating procrastination you will never really get anywhere
with making manga. With that being said, here are
some concepts that help me overcome procrastination
and more productive. Eat the frog basically
means that you have to do the hardest thing that
you need to do in the day first thing
in the morning. Because the hardest
thing in the day is usually what we
procrastinate the most. If you're struggling with
finding motivation for drawing or you don't seem to start working on a
certain project, I really recommend you doing it first thing in the morning. This way you will have the
whole day ahead of you and you have already finished the task that you
are most afraid of. A deep work session is
usually 60-90 minutes, where your brain is completely
focused on one task. And usually in Debourg
sessions you can achieve ten times more
things than usual. But there's one condition
to achieving that, which is no distractions. That means throwing away
your phone to the next room, telling the people
that you live with to not interrupt you for
the next hour or so. Turning off all the notification that you could get
in your computer, which means that no discord, no Twitter, no
Instagram, nothing. Just you and the task
that you have to do for being able to get
in the zone where the only thing that
you are thinking of is the task in front of you. You have to fight
against your brain for a bit whilst you're
doing your pork session, a lot of thoughts will
come to your brain. You should do
something else because the task feels so
hard right now. But exactly in these moments, you have to fight
your brain the most. Just tell yourself to focus and keep sitting on that chair. And after fighting these
thoughts for 50 times or so, after like 15 to 20 minutes, you will start to have no
thoughts in your mind and you will be completely melting in the task that you are doing. That is why I don't think that the pomodoro technique
actually works. Because you stop doing
whatever you're doing after 25 minutes and you stop
all of the momentum. And now you have to
start everything with your brain over
and over again, and you will never
really get in the zone. Now here is an advanced
three step formula that will make you beat
procrastination forever. Your enemy is the hidden
force that never really stops you from watching a
movie or playing video games. But it rather stops you from
working on something that means a lot to you and
requires a lot of hard work. It gives you the fear that if you work on these
things right now, you will feel a
sense of discomfort. What our brain does is this. It never tells you that you're never going
to do the task, but it tells you
that you will do it, but you will start tomorrow. And this process gets
repeated over and over again. So one thing that you can
keep in mind is the more scared or overwhelmed you
feel when a work is calling, the more sure you can be
that you have to do it. The more resistance
you experience, the more important
your manga art, whatever you're working
on, is for you. So now that you know
who your enemy is, which is their resistance
and hidden force, you feel that stops you
from doing something. Here is exactly how
to deal with it. For that, you have to understand the concept of an
amateur and a pro. If you are an amateur, you only work when
the motivation strikes or when you
are in the right mood. You are not really committed. And your goal here is focused on things like fun or money. But if you are a pro, your
work is your priority. You are committed to succeed. And your goal is focused
on your passion itself. To be a Pro means that you
have to show up daily, no matter what, and even
if you don't feel like it. And that sometimes there
will be things that you are scared of doing that
you have to do anyway. You have to realize that facing this resistance is
your daily battle. Now, being a professional
does not mean that you have to work 8 hours
a day on something, especially if it's a hobby. In fact, this will make
your hobby not fun anymore. This also does not mean that you have to monetize your hobby. It is just recognizing
that there will be days where you don't
feel like doing anything. Or days that you feel
that strong resistance to not do anything but
still doing it anyway. Still fighting against that
force that you are fighting against every day and beating it to achieve what
you actually want. Don't focus on
outcome based goals that are out of your control. Like you want your manga
to get this amount of use, or you want to win
this manga contest and rather put goals that are
completely in your control. For example, I am going to be participating in three
manga contests this year. This way, the
resistance that you feel before doing the work is way less because everything that you are doing
is in your control. Just make the best Manga
that you can make right now. And don't think about
any outside factors. That is also why you should be not trying to make everything perfect so people would like your manga more or that
it will more likely win. Just focus on putting
your work out there and these results
will come along.
25. Before you go: I am really happy that
you completed this class. This shows me a lot about your character and also
the kind of person you are since 90% of people quit
after two or three classes. So I'm really proud of you. Making manga is really hard, and I hope that I was able to simplify some things for you. Now after you're finished here, your task now is
to go out there to the real world and start
implementing the things that you learned here and
add more things to them from your experience that
you will gain along the way. This course was just the
start and now it's your turn. Go out there and share
what you are capable of. You can leave a review on
this class if you want. And don't forget to
post your mangas in the project section
so I can take a look at them and give
you some feedback. I wish you nothing but the
best on your manga Journey. Take care.
Gakusei Muto, Mangaka - Youtuber
