I want to be a mangaka!
I think that's the best way to describe how I got into manga and anime. It was a shameless beautiful love story of seeing something and immediately wanting to create something in the same image.
So far so good.
But then I got old and 'got wiser' and my fire, my ambition got toned down.
I had many good excuses for it too: I'm not ready, yet. I need to fix this anatomical problem. I dont think this is good enough. Honestly this is just a rip-off. Nah, I don't want to start until I'm really good.
And that is the moment I lost.
I even stopped calling my sequential art manga. All in the interests of being as mature, adult and correct as possible as my art. The only shameless innocent enjoyment of manga and anime that remains in my heart these days is drawing big anime eyes, and even that has come under doubt.
I think writing and drawing manga can be a much better experience. Right now the way I feel?
1. Copy, copy, copy forever!
I wish I did more fanart in the beginning of my manga/anime career. I wish I'd tried to draw more Bleach screenshots or copied more manga pages. I wish I did that a lot and faithfully in fact.
The reason is right now I've fallen into that false narrative of becoming some sort of Da Vinci Level artist who can spawn ideas from nothing and needs to study art from zero. A preposition that in of itself is false because Da Vinci more than anyone studied things around him to learn his craft.
Drawing an apple in your house and carefully breaking down a pen into a cylinder and a cone may be the 'right' way to learn to draw and see the world, but as far as I'm concerned as someone who loves manga and anime, I say start by drawing exactly the hero you find cool, exactly the scene you find cool. Regular, boring repetitive excercise is the name of the game, but that will never happen if you don't start by following what you're interested in.
Copy the greats. Copy the anime and manga that have inspired you. Keep it to yourself, but copy, copy copy. I don't even need to say the next step because you'll get there on your own.
2. Just Do It
No need to go deeper than that, but I've found that drawing is really as simple as looking up a wikihow article on 'how to draw an anime girl'.
You follow that step by step on the crappiest paper in the world and I swear you're that one drawing better than all the great thinkers and philosophers in the world who are too worried about how their work will look to even put a pencil on paper (not to say that writers/artist block doesn't exist. Not at all. I suffer it ALL the time!)
3. There is a healthier way to experience critique
The mangaraiders I landed in carried me to the highest heavens with every post I made. I am eternally thankful for that. In fact? Sometimes I think I've been a better critic to myself than anything anyone could ever say.
Knowing that you suck happens naturally. It happens after you have time to draw enough with others to know you're lagging behind a little or not. It happens when your first attempt at drawing your own art after copying your inspiration turns out really bad. It will happen. That's why I think people should appreciate the difference between information and a constructive critique.
Oh God, of course my hands are bad. Of course the waist is skewed. I can tell a man has a limp within fractions of a second. Of course I know my drawing is off. It's not your obligation and you can be as 'direct' as you want, but if your intention is communicating the hope that I approve then send a lifeline, some link, some message, some super specific small constructive thing that I could do to improve my art.
And accept that I will decide on whether to act on that or not
4. Bad and Good does exist
I notice it every time I binge read comics while waiting for my weeklys' to update. I'm sorry/not-sorry but there are standards to art and writing. They exist. Yes: Bad art exists. Good art exists. Bad comics exist, good comics exist. Forget about the funky gray zone: Everyone judges a story. To be honest as an artist and writer I should never, ever, ever ever judge the Full Metal Alchemist movie because I could never make CGI like that or even edit or cut a movie like that... But I hate its guts.
This will also happen on the professional manga anime level
And even on the amateur level. It's automatic. It can't be controlled. It's actually a good thing in the long run because 1. You can argue constructively against someones' opinions and 2. You can find what is closer to your heart when it comes to the medium.
This is also helpful to realize as a writer/artist because you should know that only one thing will satisfy you artistically in the end:
The pile of papers you have in your closet at the end.
Yeah, getting serialized, getting a commission and winning are very very very cool things,
but the only thing you can only ever win in is this: Did you draw? Did you write?
Because I swear you can change your art style all you want. You can cry, bleed, sweat, scream, laugh, twist, change yourself in every way possible to meet every demand of the helpful critic or the audience. You can try to meet those needs. In fact, some people are more fulfilled chasing after that dream.
But when all is said and done I think personally no one will ever satisfy everyone with how they draw or write, and that's the beauty of it all , everyone's different, everyones' got an intepretation, everyones' got a certain why they hold a pen, a way they spin words.
Bad art and good art exists. BUT FOCUS ON YOUR ART.
P.S Critique would be muchly appreciated