How To Be Successful As A Manga Artist

[IndigoGirl59]

How can I become successful as a manga artist and is it possible to make a career out of being a manga artist here in The United States.

[Forlorn Serpent]

This is if you want to be a mangaka and not just a manga artist. When you say manga artist, I just see a person who illustrates for other people but will charge like $100+ a page. So you are selling a service and have lined up clients that like how you draw.

So famous mangaka how to.
This is the only way I think it will work without being bought out by some publisher which will own your manga and control your editing decisions.

Get political. You have to align yourself to a cause. Think tumblr comics and such. You need to be something that the Huffpost will talk about to get attention. Be controversial, but in a good way. Your manga has to be an uphill battle for change. It also helps if you are a girl. Or trans. Or someone of color.

How to get political? Start a YouTube channel and discuss topics. Be on the losing side so you sound like you care. I think people who like manga are not conservative and align themselves to progressives. Just think about that and see if you agree. Don't post you speed drawings or tutorials of your characters. They have to be of popular characters so people will view.

So basically become a YouTube critic and eventually say you also have a manga. Sell your manga that way after you have 20,000 subscribers. But know only like 1% actually will help you financially by actively supporting your content through payments like Patreon. Don't open up a Patreon unless you have already people suggesting to open up a patreon. Sell shirts and hats. I think people are prone to bying merch then actual manga.

If you just want to see money from illustrating manga pages. Get good at it where you can pop out manga pages relatively quickly. Say you can do 3 pages a day for 30+ USD each. That's 90 USD a day. Times that by for each work day and for a bi weekly pay chart, you can make just as much or more then getting a 9-5 job.

[Nomena :)]

Step 1: Get yourself a good drawing skill:  anatomy, background, objects, from every angles

Step 2: Get yourself a good story telling ability: dialogues, storyboards, effects depends on the type of manga you are drawing.

Step 3: Make short one shot manga 20-50 pages

Step 4: From my experience, self publishing or online publishing is the fastest and easiest way to get yourself out there...But try out publishing companies if you are not afraid of strict rules.

Step 5 : Repeat Step 3 and 4 until you get successful with the readers (promote your work a lot) ... I think it would take more than 1 or 2 try ... I have seen some manga artist making more than 10 one shots of high quality artwork before getting enough following and finally start to serialise stories.

Good luck to you!  and oh! don't forget to be happy no matter what happens 

[MahluaandMilk]

Being successful can and will sometimes be harder than that.
1. If you don't like something in your work or in yourself, change it.
2. When you want to give up, push harder.
3. If you feel inadequate, practice a thousand more times. Not an exaggeration.
4. When you inevitably find yourself up in the middle of the night scared to death and wondering if it's worth it, remind yourself that this is the choice you made and it's your responsibility to see it through.
5. Network yourself, promote yourself, get to know people, etc. No one can make it big alone. Get yourself a support net. (Most of us raiders will be on your side if you need us.)
6. When you fail, because there is no such thing as perfection and it is human nature to fail, take it for what it is and start over from the top.

All that is easy-peasy for me to say, of course, but a helluva lot harder to put into practice. If you can put it into practice and at least do these things half the time, you can have the makings of a successful mangaka or anything in you.

[Faramous]

Being successful can and will sometimes be harder than that.
1. If you don't like something in your work or in yourself, change it.
2. When you want to give up, push harder.
3. If you feel inadequate, practice a thousand more times. Not an exaggeration.
4. When you inevitably find yourself up in the middle of the night scared to death and wondering if it's worth it, remind yourself that this is the choice you made and it's your responsibility to see it through.
5. Network yourself, promote yourself, get to know people, etc. No one can make it big alone. Get yourself a support net. (Most of us raiders will be on your side if you need us.)
6. When you fail, because there is no such thing as perfection and it is human nature to fail, take it for what it is and start over from the top.

All that is easy-peasy for me to say, of course, but a helluva lot harder to put into practice. If you can put it into practice and at least do these things half the time, you can have the makings of a successful mangaka or anything in you.

I totally agree. The consistent message from all highly successful people (the likes of Elon Musk, Conor McGregor, Usain Bolt, Neil Gaiman - to name only a few...) is that it takes consistent hard work and perseverance. It's within your potential to achieve the things that you want to achieve, you just need to keep pushing your skills to the next level. Find mentors, whether online, in books or in person, to inspire you and take your skills higher. A lot of people talk about Mark Crilley as an excellent source of knowledge, and that's even more appropriate given he broke in to the Japanese market from the West. Always remember that it's easy to work hard when you feel the passion for it and it's hardest when you doubt yourself, but it's the latter that presents the most important time to knuckle down and put in the hard work. If it were easy then everyone would do it!
Keep getting better and don't let emotion, such as doubt in yourself, hold you back. Instead, use these things as fuel for the fire of progression. A personal challenge to beat down any emotion that gets in your way.

The fact that you've posted on this forum seeking advice means that you've already started walking the right path. Please do keep it up!

Regards,
Faramous

[Forlorn Serpent]

@mahluandmilk + Faramous

Cliche answer guys. We are are talking about immediate "U.S." styled results 

If reaction videos can get 20,000 + subscribers, a talented reviewer/ actual content creator can make a name for themselves. Here is what I have noticed, if you talk about what people want, you will get a following. Right now it's Anti-SJW. So, make your story Anti-SJW.

[Faramous]

@mahluandmilk + Faramous

Cliche answer guys. We are are talking about immediate "U.S." styled results 

If reaction videos can get 20,000 + subscribers, a talented reviewer/ actual content creator can make a name for themselves. Here is what I have noticed, if you talk about what people want, you will get a following. Right now it's Anti-SJW. So, make your story Anti-SJW.

I disagree. Cliché states that the thought is unoriginal or excessively used. The question was pertaining to being successful, as well as making it a career in the United States. There is no "quick win" solution. Even pumping out YouTube content requires time and effort, even if you do tailor to the buzz theme of the time.

I mean if there is empirical and objective evidence to suggest there is an instant-win solution then I'm game, so please point me to where it's worked before!

To be honest, the methods you stated in your post earlier do have some merit to them. I think that it's important for a person to understand that there is no one shot win option though. There are other avenues that need to be considered too before embarking on a journey of such magnitude. Pierce Brown, for example, didn't achieve success by building a following and then mentioning he's an author. He suffered lots of rejection before finally getting somewhere with his work, and is now talking about movie deals as a result!

Regards,
Faramous

[Forlorn Serpent]

@Faramous. I noticed you couldn't tell I was being facetious and shallow with my response. I assume you were being cheeky with your request for "empirical and objective evidence... [for an] instant-win solution" since who would give out a 100% success rate formula for free?

this has nothing to do with Manga or story telling but there is this guy, Mr. Happy, as they call him, and he pumps out episode clips of American cartoons. Each gets like 50,000+ views. He puts ads on them and makes money off doing that. It's estimated he makes 5000 USD a month alone just doing that. Knowing this, it kind of makes me bummed out.

To go back on topic. Of course "keep on keeping on" until you can't "keep on keeping on," but if you reach that point just  "keep on keeping on."

P.S. Mayweather is going to knock out Conor McGregor first round 

[Faramous]

@Faramous. I noticed you couldn't tell I was being facetious and shallow with my response. I assume you were being cheeky with your request for "empirical and objective evidence... [for an] instant-win solution" since who would give out a 100% success rate formula for free?

this has nothing to do with Manga or story telling but there is this guy, Mr. Happy, as they call him, and he pumps out episode clips of American cartoons. Each gets like 50,000+ views. He puts ads on them and makes money off doing that. It's estimated he makes 5000 USD a month alone just doing that. Knowing this, it kind of makes me bummed out.

To go back on topic. Of course "keep on keeping on" until you can't "keep on keeping on," but if you reach that point just  "keep on keeping on."

P.S. Mayweather is going to knock out Conor McGregor first round 

You're right, I couldn't tell! And I was definitely being cheeky with my request

Yeah I've seen a few channels like that. The ones that make you wish you'd thought of that idea!! Fair play to them for finding something like that to tap in to. I remember the real Mr. Happy from when I was a kid.

Re: Mayweather knocking McGregor out first round... I will be so disappointed if you're right. August 27th I need to remember to come back to this thread to review
You know, the odds are against him, but I'm holding out hope for McGregor Those guys are so rich.....

[Walter B]

A fantastic blog on success in general: http://calebjonesblog.com/ It is mostly for men, we even have a community where we help each other with advice: https://alpha20.ning.com/forum

One thing you have to be aware off: Being a good artist is just half of it. You also have to be a good marketer. If anything, marketing is more important. A crappy artist that relentestly markets his work may actually end up being more succesfull than a good artist who never markets it.