Dark Strike

[Suuper-san]

I have finished my project, almost on time!!!!

For an in depth rant discussion on this project, click HERE

Also apologies if all you writers already know this or it sounds nooby, but it's a first for me :P

The main drive for this project was wanting to gain some manga writing experience on my own personal projects rather than gaining it working on a collaboration project. A petty reason to be sure, but there you go.

So I was thinking that I wanted to make a one-shot manga, but I wasn't sure how to go about it, and so I just started drawing pages with random prompts as I have been doing previously, but this time I was using a new method (I mentioned this on the writers log thread) that could work with planning multiple pages. Up until this point I have only really planned the plot as I drew the page, and never thought about connecting pages, or working with a larger plot.

And I kid you not, the first page I did with this new method spawned this story. I wasn't putting any extra effort into it at all, it was literally a random page, that grew and grew massively. I'll talk about that method separately.

And so I suddenly in the space of 15 minutes, I had the basic beginning, middle and end of the story. Since my drive was high to create a manga, I immediately decided that this was the one, and started to work out how to make it into the final product. HERE is the step-by-step tutorial of how I made this manga.

And so with a method in place and a plot to work with, I started cracking away at the workload in good old iterative bulk fashion. My timescale was to finish in 2-4 weeks, and to work at a page rate similar to professional weekly manga artists. With an obvious drop in quality of course :P

And despite a few not great days, I managed to finish in 23 days from the project start on Feb 1st, producing 72 panelled pages and 76 Pages overall. Basically all targets met, and a new high point in my art career, as this is the largest project that I have successfully undertaken.

Any and all feedback welcome.
Despite my overall joy on completion I am aware nonetheless that my writing is awful and so the story itself also suffers quite a bit. But it is done, and I move on.

Also needless to say I printed and stapled a real life copy


Enjoy.
Reads right to left like all good manga.

You can read the PDF on google drive if that suits you better
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VEWcPXYA_D3l29HC3tdGTcBfGK46MQZF/view?usp=sharing

Spoiler

[legomaestro]

Nothing else would satisfy hahahaha. Dude this is dialogue. This is character development and this was interesting as heck to read. (Also Sam is my spirit animal haha. Wish I could be as precise and friendly as him). Seeing your long report about your dissatisfaction with quality made me expect some wonky pages but tbh the only thought that came to me (at least 4 times) was: I wish he could submit this to an editor in Japan and recieve his honest opinion.
 
I know you're aiming for higher heights and hell yes do that, but dude as far as I'm concerned you're already in the realm of pros. This is a big thing, and not only big, it's entertaining. And somehow prompted by a random page? Howwwwww.

Moaaaaaaaaar plz.

Props suuper! Great work

[Suuper-san]

Ahaha many thanks :P

Well yes I always have the target of like pro pro mangaka, if you look at some of their dynamic panels and the way they draw emotion, not just some of the time, but ALL of the time, it makes me realise that I'm still a bit of a far way off. But not quite as far as I used to be, this time round I've gained quite a bit of confidence in my general ability, and I just need sepcific ability (proportions/dialigue etc) to level up now and I can pull off a lot better next time I hope.

And somehow prompted by a random page? Howwwwww.

Well basically I just kept extrapolating the scene both forwards (and backwards) until I had the person in the river and then it was quick fire answering questions like "who is he", "why is he in the river" etc. I already wanted to make more fantasy themed stories so I threw in some generic plot elements, actually the entire story is one mass of generic elements :P

I honestly dont know how it came together so well, so I am suspicious whether I could do it again as quickly or easily. I suspect a few other "unknown" factors played a part, such as the pressure to create the story in the first place.

I wish he could submit this to an editor in Japan and recieve his honest opinion.

awwww too kind :)

This is character development and this was interesting as heck to read

Many thanks again, it's a bit of a new realm for me, but I'm glad I managed to make something passable :P

Moaaaaaaaaar plz.

We'll see
I have a couple of serialisations planned as "throwaway" projects, to gain experience, but at the same time I dont want them to be rubbish because of the massive time I'll put into them, so I'm sort of conflicted about how to start them. I'm working on getting results very soon, so stay tuned :P

[MK]

Ok I did a a few pages of critiques, let me know if you want me to do the entire series.

Spoiler

Cover Page: I put this in black and white so you can see the values that you have. The biggest thing is the lighting really makes the cover flatter than normal in the composition.  In this case you needed to make the shadows darker and choose a light source, different light sources will have different effects but it is very important.  Also you should add a non white background for anything with color, even if it is gray then it will rest the eyes a bit.  Make sure to check your values with a black and white filter:
I do this by making a new layer on top of all my layers, fill the whole layer to black, then i set the layer setting to hue, saturation or color.  Once that is set up then i can toggle on and off the layer.

This is your cover in black and white

This is a cover with more contrast


Page 1:  Even with having the text read right to left, you can still direct the eyes down.  Have it so it flows with the eyes instead of skipping.  I also moved the top so it isn't right side heavy.


Page 2:  Don't get overly specific on the exact location unless it is extremely important later like in a thriller/mystery.  Always look to simplify the sentences, long sentences with extra fluff in the very beginning can be a turn off for readers.  Remember it is not a novel but more about illustrations and more direct as you can describe things without words


Page 3/4:  It's mostly grammar and finding ways to shorten it into more casual conversation.  Let me know if you want to see all the dialogue changes.  I could probably change quite a bit throughout the story but it's pretty much the same idea as before.

Page 5:  This page can be split in half.  The top half would need maybe a few extra panels (can split the dialogue for this).  The bottom half is your punch of excitement so it should be with a page turn and pop out at the reader.


Page 6:  This page would have another split as you are forcing the previous panels into it.  It's fine to have a page turn change of scene.  If you really want then you could put a text box starting "House/home/etc"


Page 7:  This page is where you can add suspense and surprise.  Again because of the page split it forces the previous panels into it.  It actually works in your favor as you can stretch out the lightning.  Something I noticed is that you save the black fill in between panels for flashbacks but that really limits the effects you can do.  Generally artists use a dark gray instead and sometimes gray over the panels to signify a flashback.
Page 7.5:  I would make the bottom half it's own page and add an extra transition panel of putting the jacket on just to fill extra space.


Page 7 Example:


Page 8:  It's dark outside, make sure the zoomed out views are darker as there is more atmosphere between the camera and the foreground/background.  Also to make the character pop out, it is ok to make it seem like there is a bit of brightness coming from them.  This is also a trick if you have a crowd and want to focus on one character (another is to put more detail on the character in the crowd and less detail on the crowd characters as our eyes are more drawn to detail).  Compare with the original version as I have darkened this one as an example.

Another thing i noticed is that you never go to the edge of the page and that you have no panel-less characters.
Example of a panel-less character:

Spoiler

As you can tell, this character does not have a panel but you can choose whether or not to put hit head above or below a panel.  Generally you don't want to clip the heads of panel-less characters as it usually comes off as lazy or confusing to the reader.  These can be placed anywhere on the page (if you have it in the middle or top of a page then usually the panel below can crop out the bottom portion)

It's fine to go to the edge, especially with scenes you want to emphasize.  Rules of going to the edge are:  No important details near the edge and no text on the edge unless you have predetermined the page numbers.  Easiest way to know what page is to go:
 Cover page (front) Blank (back) Chapter page (front), Page flip, 1 (back), 2 (front), page flip. That will flip the page on evens.
Alternate:
Cover page (front) Blank (back), Blank (front), Chapter page (back), Page flip, 1 (front), page flip, 2 (back). That will flip the page on odds.
Adding a blank page is a common trick when dealing with different series or combining multiple chapters in book where the author wants flips on odds or evens in different chapters.

Let me know if you want me to do the rest of the story, i'm going to go to sleep in a bit but i wanted to post some stuff since I came back from my trip.

[Suuper-san]

@MK
thanks so much for the detailed feedback!
It's really given me a lot to go on.

If you would be willing, I would very much appreciate feedback on each page as you have done so far, but given the size, as much as you want to do I'll be happy with!

Script feedback I would be very interested in as that's a part of writing that I have minimal experience in, so I would love to know how I could have changed the speech to make it better.

I definitely have a tendency to compress the pages with lots of panels, I'm not sure why that is but I'll try and use less panels per page and draw the readers focus to the things that are more important. I dont think it's something I'll be able to learn straight away but I'll give it a shot.

Regarding off the edge panels and panel-less characters, that was a deliberate style choice for this project, as I had some design limitations and this was one of the ways I could speed things up (it was really a quick project). Moving forward I will definitely go to the edge for some things, although I'm not sure when it would look good or not yet.

For the moment I'm not worrying about evens and odds pages as I dont intend to do double spreads or "official" book binding at the moment (just to save the number of things I'm focusing on at one time), but eventually I'll also be considering that in my designs as well.

[Coryn]

Congrats on finishing this project Suuper! I'll give it a good review (the writing that is) once I get some time!

[Suuper-san]

thanks Coryn!
a review on the writing would be fantastic, as that's what I struggle with the most :P