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« on: March 10, 2024, 08:54:20 AM »
Unfortunately amongst other things I had to work overtime several days and also had a 1 day holiday so I got delayed quite heavily with this project, especially since I haven't started it yet it will take some time to get the momentum going.
So I'm sort of going to ramble a little and then clarify the goals and targets for this project, and hopefully it'll be achievable.
The primary goal of this project is to gain skill and experience, both in general writing and art areas, but also in project management and long term consistency. So I'm aiming at running a weekly manga for at least a year or until a new project supersedes it. I need to keep in mind that this project WILL be a failure in some way or another. And so I can't get caught up when things don't go how I want, or when I notice plot holes etc, I've just got to keep moving forward and focus on the skill I'm gaining which I'll use for the next project.
My previous weekly manga project only ran for about 4 months and showed that it was definitely possible to generate weekly content despite various schedule issues, and I think generating a lot of content daily/weekly is the key to gaining skill the fastest. I'm hoping to speed-run grinding my remaining lack of skill for the rest of this year, and depending on how far I get, next year as well. But full steam ahead really.
The last project didn't have too many quality control steps due to time constraints, and I think I'll be in a similar boat this time, despite only doing 1 weekly manga instead of 4, I have a lot more life responsibilities now that the covid period is over.
I want to add some specific goals to each chapter of manga that I produce, to force my content to be more varied and ambitious than it would be naturally. So both individual pages will have targets but also the script and the chapters in general. I haven't fully filled out the list but this is how it stands currently:
Goals for this project
(These goals are generic and could apply to any manga that I work on)
Plot
-Each main character has a clear motive/direction in life (which will help to guide the plot as well)
-Each character has specific strengths and weaknesses in both personality and ability, which are made clear in the story.
-Each character will experience character growth to overcome their weaknesses etc.
Script
-Each character will have a specific way of talking and their dialogue should reflect this.
Chapter Script
-Each chapter must end on a cliff-hanger/must not cut the story at a strange place.
Character Design
-The main character's outfits/design should be reasonably detailed and intricate (buttons/cuffs etc)
-The main characters's outfits/design should have a range of colour including some areas of solid black.
-Any character which appears for more than a single panel gets at least one reference sketch, and the more screen-time they get, the more detailed design they get.
-The overall cast should be quite varied in age/height/build etc. Where fantasy elements are included these should also be varied.
-Background characters can be generic but each one should be different to the next.
Page Art
Each page (or two pages...?) must have (at least):
-One panel with a full BG
-One panel with a patterned BG
-One panel whose content breaks the panel borders
-One panel with full shading/rendering
-Full tone for the main characters.
-A rest(?) panel where there is either no dialogue, or the focus is something else while someone speaks.
So something like that? There's still a couple of constraints missing that I can't remember at the moment but I'll fill those in later. I know that some of the page goals are not balanced, in that e.g. you can't always fit a silent panel into every single double page, but I can't risk not doing it at all and then never gaining that skill. So the focus is on gaining skill, NOT producing something that's good.
One concern that I had was making sure the project doesn't take too much time each week, but at the same time I don't want to curb my ambition and fall short. So I figured a decent work-around - placing time limits on certain tasks. Such as, "Only spend 1 hour adding tones". That way I don't get bogged down with a difficult chapter, I can stop once the time is up and the rest of the pages don't get tone. So I can practice the skill without it taking over the project.
So a lot of the steps will have time limits on them, especially the art side. I'm not sure how to apportion my time on each task yet but it'll be similar to the previous manga project, so around 10-12 hours per chapter.
I'd like to have a few higher quality goals such as inking pages to a higher quality until the time is up, and then the rest are sketchy, something like that.
Quality control steps will also be time restricted to not get bogged down e.g. analysing my script for hours to find plot holes, but at the same time I don't want to not look at all.
I also had the idea from the last project, to re-release the pages at a super high quality, but at a slower rate, so I'll be aiming at 1 fully rendered (re-written) page per week as well, with occasional script changes where I spotted mistakes etc.
My favourite part of this project is the staggered stage workflow, in which each week I will be:
-planning far ahead
-writing next weeks script
-drawing this weeks pages.
The offset allows for weeks in which I have no time, to just produce the final pages, and chapters which are more complex the workload will be split over several weeks.
I think around 4-6 stages will work well, I think it was 5 last time but I might need another stage for the final page or more quality control etc. So while it might take a while to fully get started, once I do, it'll be weekly content without too much pressure. And I know that works really well, at least for me.
I'll be posting again, possibly tonight with the actual basic story breakdown as well as the timeline for the next few weeks to make sure I don't spend forever in the planning stages.