The Road to Manga - Motivation 101

1. About this course: Have you ever want to create your own manga? But when you were just about to depart on that exciting journey, you moderation suddenly vanished. Or are you in the middle of a project and trying to rekindle that spark that had brought us so far in the first place. Then this course is for you. My name is ago guys key from studio autograph. I have published manga professionally and I have been in love with Manga for many, many years. In this course, I wanted to teach you my techniques. I will try to help you find that spark of motivation that will help you in your manga journey. I can very well empathize with what you're going through. I have dealt with it many times. Drawing manga is not a sprint. It's a marathon. As much as one would wish unless you're doing a young comma. It's one of those four panel comics. I, you will not be able to draw a full monger in one sitting, which is why finding and maintaining your motivation is so crucial, whether it is your first time creating a manga, or whether you have done manga before, but they're currently stuck with an art block. I hope that this course will give you the push to get your project over the finish line. And it can be hard, especially during challenging times. At the best of times, life is full of distractions and surprises. So where to find the motivation and how to maintain it. 2. What is motivation?: What is motivation? Motivation, our needs, desires and wants that push you towards achieving a goal. It can be intrinsic, comic from inside yourself, where you are doing something because you are genuinely enjoy the activity. Or it can be extrinsic, coming from the outside where you are pursuing an external reward. In terms of manga creation, intrinsic motivation can mean that you are drawing among, uh, because you are genuinely enjoyed drawing and enjoy telling a story. While extrinsic motivation can be singular story published, having fans earning money from it, giving autographs, sessions and things like that. It is often said that intrinsic motivation is better than the extrinsic motivation, which would be drawing a mango for the sake of drawing a manga. But people drawing manga often run into the problem that when they are actively doing that, particularly under deadline pressure, beat for publisher or due to weapons shadow link, they discovered that the activity fills a lot less fun and the intrinsic motivation gets lost. Or maybe you like the idea of drawing a manga, but the reality of actually doing it is crushing your motivation. And now you wonder what happened. There are many reasons why one suddenly can face a lack of motivation when working on a long-term project, and it is perfectly normal. So why does something that we chose for ourselves becomes sour? Why do we burn to start a project one day? But after trying, it can become a chore. In an ideal world, you can work on a manga from start to finish and be super motivated. But the reality is different. I'm assuming that they are struggling with motivation, which is why you chose this class out of the thousands of other classes here. I hope that by the end of the class you can overcome whatever issues troubling you so that you can continue or start to pursue your dreams. So let's begin. 3. How does motivation work?: Let's first look at the three principles that drive the mind and behavior. They are called social incentives, immediate rewards, and progress monitoring. Let's look closer at each 1. First. Social incentives. We see what other people are doing and we want to do the same and do it better. In the context of manga, we see other people creating manga and we want to do the same. Maybe they're from the same age group, same country, or even the same social surplus you, what I mean is that they are not some unreachable professionals with decades of experience. They are people just like you publishing their manga, selling merch, giving interviews, going to conventions, living your dream. If they can do it, you can do it or do it even better. Sometimes surrounding yourselves with inspirational sources can trigger the social incentives and motivate you to pursue your goals. Too. Immediate rewards. But just by watching other people do awesome stuff is often not enough to motivate us to pull through. The problem is that we value rewards that we can get now more than the rewards that we can get in the future. It's called a temporal gap, or brain craves immediate rewards. It is so easy to get distracted by something that this inner, immediate grasp. Given the choice between a long-term goal and an immediate reward, the brain will choose the immediate reward if it's left to its own devices. And it makes sense in a way, by choosing the immediate reward, you are choosing something that I'm sure a goal that is in the future, like writing Amanda is more unsure. Even a short Mang of 20 pages can take months to create, particularly when it's a first one. So when you have worked and overwork yourself for days and maybe weeks, it is easy to do something that feels more fun at that exact moment. But you can trick your brain by combining immediate rewards with things that will benefit you in the future, figuring out what you like and use it while you're working on your manga or in the breaks between drawing sessions. In my case, I like to watch dramas or anime, and I will play my favorite ones while working in a manga or in-between working on manga pages. I reward myself with it. This also combines the act of working on a manga with immediate rewards for my brain. That way, you can bridge the temporal gap and do things now that will benefit you in the future. Three, progress monitoring, this is one of the most motivating steps in the long-term success of making your goal a reality. It's about tracking the progress that you have made in your manga project and celebrating it. For me, it is quite satisfactory to reach milestones and tick things off my to-do list. But the important thing is, do not torture yourself. If you did not reach all the milestones that you have set for yourself fast enough. We tend to expect too much from our self and new way. Be happy that you made progress and forget perfectionism. Getting something done is more important that it being perfect, perfectionist leg the horizon. The more you move towards it, the more it distances itself. You can control how you feel about your work. Instead of putting pressure on yourself, you can choose to appreciate it. Let you work, take you where it does. If you remove the pressure from yourself to constantly improve and just enjoy the creation process, chances are that you will improve through the experience from having fun with your work. Having a feeling of control of your own work is unimportant motivator. Fear induces inaction, while the thrill of the gain induces action. 4. Hurdles: Social reality. I know it's not something that people often talk about, but don't tell people about the project you're working on. Or if you tell, tell a few select ones. Thing is telling somebody your goal makes it less likely to happen. When you tell somebody your goal and their compliment you on it. The mind is tricked into feeling that the work has already been done. It's called the social reality because you felt that satisfaction, you are less likely to do the actual work involved. I have been part of many manga related groups on Facebook for years. And I have seen people announcement at times that they are starting to work on a project and deaths ultimately did not go over from there. What can you do about it? You could delay gratification that social acknowledgment brings by telling people later about it. And you can be aware that your mind plays tricks on you and mistakes. Talking for doing. This is also a reason why are thieves are taking pictures. They did not draw and prevent it as their own. The positive attention that get leads to the release of happy hormones to the brain. It doesn't matter whether it's real or fake. Praise feels good. That is, until the reality catches up with them and they get exposed in their costal of lies, crumbles to dust. Also remember that by telling others about your goals, it could place additional pressure on yourself, which could lead to an OD block. By delaying the announcement, it's more likely that we get the things done. And if you absolutely have to share your goal, shared with a small group of people who will support you. I get it. Drawing manga can be quite solitary work, even more so when you're working for a publisher, then you are contractually obligated to avoid talking about your project and public until it's announced. The work that you do is kept a secret. So it helps to have some trust that friend that you can talk to about to work. When I was working for publishers, I would have a few friends who were also drawing manga as a job. We often would help each other through deadlines, buys, cupping, while working on our own project, and sharing tips and provide to each other from falling asleep. Productive procrastination. There's a thing called productive procrastination. For instance, you could spend years doing world-building for your manga or creating designs and never get anywhere or forever collect materials that you will never use. Instead, concentrate on certain scenes and chapters. Like what characters will appear in that chapter or seen? What will they be wearing? What time of year or is it? Will there be other characters? Crowds? What types of backgrounds will be necessary? A town, a square, a field, a house, or room. Both. A bill, vehicles, will there be flowers? Will there be assess? We are. Concentrate on what you need at that exact moment in your project. Planning is great, but don't forget to move from thinking to doing as soon as possible. It helps to jump start the process by drawing scenes that are already fleshed out. 5. 11 Tips on how to stay motivated: Abandoned perfectionism, finished, not perfect. Remember, when you start a drawing and you would become happy when something turned out well, you were proud of it. You would see the good points in new art. But the better you got, the more you would concentrate on the mistakes and ignored the good points. If it's not perfect, it's not worth it, right? Forget it. Perfectionist, an illusion. If you search for perfection, you will never be satisfied. Chasing perfection will unnecessarily slow you down and prevent you from achieving your goals and give you an art block. Do you know that Leonardo da Vinci had completed our relatively small number of paintings in his considerably long life. He lived 67 years, but only 25 painting CEF survived. He was a perfectionist. And because of that, he had a terrible business record. When he was commissioned to paint. More often than not, he would not deliver the painting. Mona Lisa, his most famous painting was also a commission. Instead the finishing it and passing it onto the client, he would keep the paintings in, continue working on them until the end of his life. Either that or his commissions would be abandoned for one reason or the other. It went so far that is exasperated father, who was a lawyer, gotten involved and tried to set up a contract in a way that his son would finish his commission, but he did not succeed. On the other hand, his private notebooks where he kept his studies and drawings and compost 30 thousand pages. And at the end of his life, he was so fed up with painting that he couldn't stand the sight of a brush. But fortunately for him, his patron at that time, Francis the first, who was the king of France, was so very fond of him that he would let him pursue any interests that he wanted of which had many and supported him financially. So what does it have to do with Manga? A lot, actually, there isn't really a place for perfection when creating a manga. You need good enough drawings that can bring the story across instead of trying to create a masterpiece out of every page, settle for quality that you can hold on for a 160 or 200 pages or for mango volume, or 20 or 50 pages of a short story. So instead of creating 25 perfect paintings, creates 30 thousand manga pages that are okay. If you try for perfection on one page, you will have to do it for all pages or there will be a drop in quality. Readers will accept a good enough style that is consistent but will be put off by a quality drop. So give yourself a break and aim for good enough. It's that of perfect. Chances are, the reason you get an art block is because you are afraid of not meeting the standards of perfection that you imposed on yourself. Avoid feeling overwhelmed by starting out. Small. Changes are when it first started thinking about making a manga. You've inspired by one of those long-running Japanese manga with dozens of volumes. And to aim for doing the same, I get the appeal. When you have a lot of space to tell you a story, you have a lot of space for character development. But attempting to do such a project in the beginning will likely result in it being dropped. It takes quite a long time to draw even a short project. It takes time to gain experience and to develop a drawing speed that will allow you to produce a project more quickly. And when you are still in the process of developing your style, your writing and drawing skills, and your workflow. Doing a long project is not a good idea. You will get overwhelmed easily, get tangled up in plot lines, and it is likely that you will want to redraw the pages that you already did. Because we have grown and developed so much per page 100, let's face it, the Manga who published long projects did not do that as their first project. Before that, they did short projects in form of Georgia and chin one-shot. It's likely that the projects that inspire you was there fifth or tenth project or even later. So you can also do it like that. Start out small, the projects of about 20 pages and then move up to 40 to 50 pages. And from there 260 or 200 pages are short project of 20 pages, quite doable even as your first project and you want feel overwhelmed as you would with a long project. You will learn a lot from that project in the fact that you have completed it. Motivate you when you will be working on longer projects. Because the feeling of having completed the manga is absolutely exhilarating. Break big tasks into small, doable milestones and follow them step-by-step. Creating among assemble. Not saying that, that this easy, but deep down, it is a rather straightforward process. You write a story, you draw the character and background, the signs, you make, the soundness of the pages. You draw the pages and pencil than inkjet. Then you screen tons and then at lettering. After that, you either uploaded to the internet, send it to the publisher, or send it to the printing company for self-publishing, it's a series of milestones that can be followed step-by-step. When you feel overwhelmed for that task, break it down. I know the feeling of being overwhelmed when creating a manga. The idea for manga might sound good and you head, but how to get it out of your head and on paper, you know where you are and you almost get envision the finished product. But just what steps to take to get there among a project can be broken down into the following steps like preparation. There's the project information. For example, what is the genre of your manga? How long is it going to be? What audience are you targeting? Where do you want to publish it and in what form? Like print or online or both. What medium will you use? Like traditional or digital or both? Or what production specifics in terms of page size, resolution, delivery format will be there, or which publishers for your approach and switch research you have to do and in which languages you want to publish, stuff like that. And after you're done with that, there's the planning. After you have figured out the project information and before you have started writing, it is important to figure out the timeline of your story and the social map of your characters. Then comes the writing. You develop, the character biographies, write the story summary, then the story outline, and then the script. What does the difference between the summer with the outline and the script? Well, the story summary basically tells us what the story is about. It should not be longer than one page. The outline is more detailed description of the scenes in your story, but without the dialogue. And the script is a detailed page by page descriptions was panel for panel description and which also includes the dialogue. The script is a detailed page by page and panel by panel description of what happens in your manga, including the dialogue. And after you're done with that, then there's a design like here, is where you give the visuals for your story. It's where you create the character sheets, which is your characters depicted from the front, the side, the bag. When you create expression sheets for this characters, as well as the fashion sheets of the clothing that they are going to bear. And if there are certain assessors like armor or weapons, it has also, when you create those, you can also include color charts for future illustrations for each character. It is also here where you design locations and collect references for the things that you're going to need. If you want to have a better preparation. You can also do storyboards for your manga and create drawings of important scenes that will be used later on. You can even create 3D models of your character and backgrounds by using programs like Blender, viroid, or SketchUp, you can even start designing merge. And that is the preparation. I know it's a lot. Then comes the monger. It, the part where you actually begin with your manga. I know oftentimes you just want to jump into this and start directly withdrawing of manga pages. But I really would recommend to do the preparation first. That way, you don't have to abandon your project midway because you got lost. The creation of manga pages can be broken down into the following steps. Page some nails with panels and speech bubbles that fit the description and dialogue or in your script. Then come the clean pencil drawings of your pages. And then the effects and sound towards. And then come the inking of your pages, erasing and clean up of the ink mistakes, then screen tones, if applicable, coloring if applicable, and lettering. And after you're done with that, which will take a lot of time, you can do the business package. Because even after your pages are done. That does not mean that you will have all you need for your project. When you want to publish your project, there are a few other things that you will need. For example, the logo of your title, the cover for your project, the illustrations of your characters, cutouts of your characters that can be used for merge and promotional materials than the promotional materials themselves. Like banners, flyers, social media posts. It is also good to have a merchandise concept. What type of merchandise to you want to produce? Where can you produce it and how can you market it to your readers? And when you're done with that, then comes the publishing. Their different steps that might be necessary for that depending on which route you will take here to name a few. For example, researching the publishers and websites where you can upload. If you go the publishing route, we have to create a pitch deck for publishers than you have to contact them and to follow up with them. If you go the online publishing way, you have to upload your work to websites that you chose. Or if you want to self-publish, you have to research and use crowdfunding sites. You have also to create a pitch deck for crowdfunding and set up the crowdfunding campaign. These are all the milestones that you have to do when you want to publish a manga. But there are other tricks that you can use. For example, utilizing project management techniques, but planning ahead and tracking your progress. For more information, you can check out my class on project management, but I will adapt files that sums up all the milestones. You will find it in the attachments. Find your own motivational sources like motivation MAP, message to yourself. Bribing. Bribing works really well with tasks where there's a simple set of rules and a clear goal where the task is more mechanical. So this type of motivation can be applied at certain stages of the project. But you have to function instead of think rewards narrow or focus, but they also help concentrate demand on a goal. It's an extrinsic type of motivation, but having a reward helps perform a repeated function for many hours at a time. For instance, during such stages of projects, I would figure out what I wanted. A book are certain gadget or closes. There will not allow myself to buy it until the tasks have been completed. You can also create motivational maps. Dream big dreams. Do you want to achieve? Write it down on a big sheet of paper and place it where you can see it. And if you feel your motivation slipping away, look at that poster. It can also create a sort of talisman or a message to yourself. For instance, when Dan Brown, the crater of Da Vinci Code, was working on one of his books. He created a fake dusk jacket of the book and put it on another book. He would keep it close to him while he worked, trying to take the pressure away from his mind. Thinking that the book was actually done. He had only to write it down. He also created a copy of The New York Times bestseller list and put his book on the first place. I know it's silly, but for him it worked. Maybe it will work for you as well. Find your own routine only you know how you can work best. Sometimes you have to try things out in order to figure out how it can work best. For instance, some people like producing manga page by page, other's work best when they utilize an assembly line type of routine. In my case, I best use the assembly line routine. For instance, I will not do any inking until I have drawn all the pages from a chapter and pencil. This has also the advantage that should they want to make a last minute change, I want to have to redo full pages, but especially with inking at 10, two separate tasks in order to work faster. For instance, I will ink only faces for a whole chapter than only hair, than only the bodies, than the backgrounds. And then the effects. That way I can concentrate better on the task. And they also tend to work faster compared to going through all the steps for one page, repeatedly. Sleep, exercise, listen to your body. I cannot stress this enough. How important this almost everybody that then now who has been doing manga for a long time has developed some kind of health issue because of that. Muscle cramps and chronic back paints are common. I was in my mid-twenties when suddenly ahead issues, straightening my bag of the spending hours drawing. What helped me was to start training my muscles and not to work without clip for 30 to 50 or more hours. If you want to be able to draw manga four years, then you have to take care of your body. Allowed to enjoy yourself, churn plane to research. When you're working on a project. Don't forbid yourself having fun. Sometimes doing fun activities can be the key to solving plot holes and getting inspiration and motivation. You can turn play into research, whether it is manga or anemia or movies or games. It deals with characters, story's plot, designs, cliff hangers, and other things that can inspire and motivate you. So allow yourself to occasionally have fun doing other things and use them as your research for your own project. It can also be other sinks then media. For example, if your project deals with something that has to do with your town, go outside and make photos, research the history of the town. Look for funny anecdotes about the town. Talk to tour guides, get information from the tourism office. Maybe take a guided tour. Or if you're interested in a story about skiing or diving or other activities, you could try to do these things yourself if possible, of course. Or you can watch documentaries or read biographies of people who are professionals in that field. There are many things that you can do that don't directly have to do with the creation of manga, but still can benefit you in making your manga. Here are some techniques that I utilize, like using a stopwatch, using checklists, counting back. I often use these techniques when faced with the deadline, but they also work for me during normal times. Here, some of them stopwatch or timer when you don't have much time, but still have a lot of work to do. It is good to figure out just how much time you actually have for that. You divide the amount of hours that you have until the deadline by the amount of pages that you still have to do. Maybe subtract a few are so that we have a bit of our time buffer at the end. Then you use a stopwatch while working on that page. If you're faster than the stopwatch, you can rest the remaining amount of time or do something fun. If you're slower than the stopwatch in the Times runs out, it cuts into the time of the next page when there is no time limit, you can leisure really work on your project. But faced with a deadline, you can work more quickly. This stopwatch technique forces you to concentrate on the most important aspects and not to waste time on less important things. And it's not like the readers can tell the difference when seeing the finished results. However, this is not a technique that they will use long-term as it would be too stressful. Use it in short bursts when it is absolutely necessary. Checklist. I often use checklists when working on projects. That way, I don't have to remember all the steps that I need to complete, but I just can consult the checklist. It is also very satisfying. The check tasks of the list after completing them. They even do checklists for daily tasks because writing something down and having it on the list makes it more likely that I will actually do the thing on the list. Counting back. This is a technique similar to a stopwatch in the checklist, basically in it and make a tally of the sink that they have to do. Let's say the manga chapter I'm working on has a 112 panels. So I take a piece of paper and write a 112 on it. With every panel that I draw a count backwards. If the number of the whole chapters too intimidating as it can be. I can also use the number of pages that I have decided to work on that day. I usually work with double pages. Let's say it's two double pages, so it's four pages. There are 24 panels. Then I take a piece of paper and put 24 on it. I can also add a bit of time pressure by using a timer and giving myself certain minutes to draw it. So all in all, it would take 12 hours to draw all the panels under these circumstances cause not counting the brakes. However, you don't have to go over burden of a work yourself. See what fits you your schedule and lifestyle best. Maybe you will develop your own techniques that will work for you. Forgive yourself. There's no point in giving yourself a hard time. It's not like it will make yourself more productive or have better results. You can drive yourself into the ground for your yesterday or you can raise yourself up to meet your tomorrow if your choice. Imposter syndrome. I think that it is important to address this issue since so many people suffer from this and creatives in particular, the imposter syndrome means adopting your own skills and accomplishments even when there's no recent too. I think artists is has to do with that. Damn perfectionism. Does, no matter how good the pictures in your head, you can't get it to look exactly like that on paper, which is why we are rarely satisfied with what we create. And it drains on motivation, even being consciously aware of it and actively fighting against it. It's still creeps up on you. I think that creating among can increase the feeling of imposter syndrome even more because so many disciplines are involved. And there are so many areas where you can't be perfect and you give yourself health or it, even when you're really don't need to. There's also a thing that a lot of manga artists experience, which can be described as mental drain or mental fatigue. Which means the longer you have spent with our project, the less you can judge how good it actually is. The more tired you are, the more sleep deprived you are, the less good of a judge you are to your own creations. It is easier with illustrations. But when you are creating among you not only have to think about how the reader reads it, how you set up the atmosphere, how you portray the feelings, what composition you choose, what your character say, what nonverbal cues and hence you give to the reader. There are so many things. I know a lot of artists who are trying to create a manga but ended up not progressing because they are constantly reversing it. But page certainly they don't like the beginning, so they scrap everything and redraw it only to have the same experience again. Thus, this vicious cycle continues and nothing gets finished. Throwback to awhile ago after finished doing the paneling for short story of 42 pages, I was so mentally exhausted that they questioned the whole thing. Does the story makes sense that the characters behave consistently? Is that even interesting? Like what am I even do? Things like what the I then realized what was going on. It's the imposter syndrome. I then looked outside. It was already 20 AM in the morning and I saw the stars. I spent half an hour lying on the bench near my house, staring at the stars and decompressing. I also saw a few shooting stars. After that I went straight to bed. I did have a few weird dreams, but whenever cup I woke up refreshed and with a different perspective. I think because of the imposter syndrome and the mental drain that are manga artists can experience during a project, it is good to have all your planning done before you start working on your manga pages. Do the planning while you still fresh for that it can lay there, just concentrate on the purely mechanical execution. It certainly helped me. When you're exhausted, you just have to trust your judgment from the time that you are still sane enough to plan ahead. Give you tired self, our blueprint that it can follow and be kind to yourself. Take breaks, stretcher regularly, sleep, find your own way of decompressing, and trust yourself that you knew what you were doing when you started the whole adventure. And remember that perfection is like the horizon. No matter how much you walk towards it, you will never reach it. And good enough is good enough. 6. Class Project: For the class project, I want you to think about what motivates you. Write it down. You can even create a mind map that you can attach above your drawing space so that you can look at it. When you need a boost of maturation. You can even make a collage. I remember working on a particularly stressful but lucrative project. So in order to motivate myself and made a collage of the things that they wanted to get with the money I would earn from the project. And they put this collage above my desk. It certainly did help me to stay on track and during the hardest time of the project. But they also want you to look at your situation and your needs. Are you getting enough sleep? I read, eating well, how do you feel? There's not much point about trying to find motivation when you are running on fumes and are close to burn out. If you can take some time off unless you have a subcontract, manga can wait. Worry first about your well-being. Even with a contract, it is generally possible to negotiate deadline extensions when you need them, things happen and good clients and publishers tend to take unexpected events into account when they calculate the deadlines. So there's often a Tom buffer available. So before you collapse from overwork, ask for an extension. I also want you to think about enjoyable activities that you can reward yourself when you finish a certain milestone. It is better for your body and psyche to work in short bursts and getting some movement in between than being glued to your desk for days or weeks or months or years. Do not forget to get some movement, stretch, rest. The way to be able to create manga long-term is to learn how to take care of yourself. Sure, there will be moments when you will have to soldiers through in order to finish a project, but do take at least small breaks. Recently when I suddenly feel tired, I will set a timer for 10 minutes and take a short nap and have to say, it is quite refreshing. It's short but effective and afterwards or produce much better results than when I was trying to work through exhaustion. 7. Conclusion: There's quite a lengthy quote that always puts me at peace in this pirates me and that I wanted to start with. Many people feel small because the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from. So stars, there is a level of connectivity that is really what you want in life. You want to feel connected, want to feel relevant. Want to feel like you are a participant in goings of activities and events around you. That's precisely what we are just by being alive. And I don't know about you, but this always resonates with me. According to scientists, your odds of being born at the moment in time you were born to the parents that your burn too with the DNA structure that you have, is one in 400 trillion. How amazing is that? On top of that, you have the skills to create manga, to tell a story that only you can tell, that can touch the lives of other people, might even change the lives of other people. If you have that passion burning and you remember that feeling, conjure it when you need it. When self-doubts creep up on you, screws the self-doubts. You have already won the lottery of existence. So what are the few challenges along the way to achieve the goal that you really truly want to achieve. So what's stopping you from doing it? Fear of failure. Seek success instead of trying to avoid failure. Successes often built on a mountain of failure. But instead of failure, call it experience. Call it progress. With every morsel of skill you pick up that every word that you ride with, every line of drawing that you make, you are getting closer to reaching your goal. You can do it. You will succeed. Reach for your dreams.