Ok let's ramble!
TL;DR I'm working on a new project, watch this space :P
It's been a fair while since my last writing/manga project and to be fair I've been busy with stuff, not been lazy. But all the same I'm not where I'd like to be or liked to have been given my aspirations when I finished the last project (the post above). So after a general think which returned 0 results, I basically wondered if having a regular timed output (i.e. daily or weekly) for my writing would be a good thing as well. Something manageable but enough to be creative and get some skill moving forward.
Now I previously have stated that I would have liked to get my writing skill higher before working on a manga again , so my art and writing skills were more similar in ability. But that's not going to happen to be honest, at least not in a timescale that I approve of. So the only way I can imagine my writing improving is by doing the only successful project again, my prototype manga method.
I'm still working on paid commissions so my time isn't as free as I'd like, but I'm realizing that my productivity would be much higher if I used all the available time, and the only reason it isn't, is because I'm lazy. But having a solid project to get your teeth into is more motivational I think, as it has been in the past, as so I'm hoping that can push me into full productive mode, which I haven't seen for a couple of years now. Partly having the paid commissions causes a drop in productivity as that involves communication and more planning, and money isn't so great a motivator for me at the moment as I'm living well within my means, so it's harder to be 100% focused for that as the end goal, getting paid, lacks that life-or-death punch for me.
In the past 2 weeks, in sketch survival, I've done a sketch a day without almost any issue, despite having a heavy cold and other stuff that might have got in the way. So that shows the difference dedication can make, as well as reasonable goals. So all I have to do, is basically increase the daily workload by a small fraction to include the workload of a serial manga. I can easily estimate this based on previous works due to my meticulous timekeeping :P
Which equates to around 10 hours a week for a weekly output. Or 1.5 hours a day give or take. That's quite a bump up from the daily sketch, but I'm aiming at 3+ hours daily anyway, so it's definitely achievable.
My previous manga project held on rather admirably but ultimately failed near the end because my mindset wasn't strong enough to focus during difficult times when I was distracted by stress at work. As long as I keep my eye out to monitor any potential stress levels rising I can deal with it, but as the weeks go on it's likely that something will catch me unawares. I suppose to some extent that's just life, deal with it and then resume as fast as possible is the best option there.
So this opens up the "new project" mode.
How will this project compare to the previous one?
Writing-wise I'd like to plan further ahead to prevent plot holes appearing too early, with at least the setting being more clearly defined from the get-go, as well as any other necessary info such as a magic system etc. I wound up with far too many problems last time because I winged it too much, so I want a more stable plot this time.
I'd also like the quality of writing to be better. That's hard as I have little experience, but I can switch skill/roles to compensate and focus on specific tasks at a single time such as drafting,character writing, editing , polishing etc. And have a slot for each task so I don't miss something because of my noobiness. I think I'll also be more likely to research things to add some flesh to my story, get some more inspiration and ideas as well. I want to avoid standard cliches more than I did in the last story and properly evaluate scenes for keeping things realistic and believable. Keeping in mind the future plot should help me to steer the story in the right direction hopefully.
As long as the story quality is anything like the last lot, I think I'd be happy for now. With more skill in the future I can adjust the goals accordingly.
Art-wise I have some goals too. I can't afford the time to produce high quality art, but at the same time I want to work more on composition than I did previously, where I just threw the panels down on the page, but make the whole page coherent and "artistic". I want to regularly use more artistic elements such as effects and tones/colour so that the pages give off a rough but finished vibe. Regarding accuracy and precision, I'll be increasing the quality with an additional guideline stage, at the cost of the inking stage. While they are quite similar, the guideline stage is rougher but allows for a higher quality inking stage to be done afterwards (theoretically), and so is more in line with my final high quality manga workflow. It also keeps the time for the art on the lower side without sacrificing too much quality. I would also like to have perhaps one panel per chapter rendered fully to highest level. I can't afford a full page probably because a full render takes so much time, in fact I've not really ever attempted it because it also requires higher level skills which I barely have. I also want to improve the sound effects and range of fonts used, which I avoided completely last time by choice.
Project-wise I'd also like to address a major issue that happened previously where the project failed one week before the end. I also suspected that it failed precisely because it was so close to the end. If the project had been longer, then I think it would have been more resilient to issues. So this project I intend to last a full year (or more). By the time a full year passes I may already have better ideas or projects to shift to so I wont worry past a year for now. Ideally I dont want to miss a single week but stuff like holidays and other major events are likely to cause an issue there so I'll allow for some error, maybe even try to catch it up, we'll see. I'd like to see more careful planning happen with these stories rather than winging it, so characters and environments I'd like to plan more properly as well. And finally another major issue the last project had was that I didn't get the time to do my other art and this was also stressful because I like doing my normal art as well, and basically, I got sad :P so another goal on top of this project is to keep producing my standard art. I'm not sure exactly what that entails but the daily sketch is here to stay regardless, and ideally around an hours worth of standard art in total a day would be nice.
Finally, will I do more than one story?
The previous project managed 4 weekly serials, and that didn't work up too much of a sweat really, with my laziness causing most of the issues. But I'm not sure if I can handle the same again with my upgraded goals. So I think the best thing I can do is just go with the flow hahahahaha. I'd love to keep to 4 stories just because it keeps me on my toes with different genres and keeping organized, but as well, it suits my ridiculous overkill nature :P
So I'm aiming for 4 serial weekly mangas once again, but with a more than likely possibility of dropping it down if the workload is higher than predicted. I don't want it to drop to just one though, that would be sad :P
I'm going to spread each chapter workload out over several weeks to create a cascade where I plan far-future chapters as well as finalizing nearer ones. See
here for a fuller explanation. It has a couple of benefits, one being that in a week where I do no work, it affects a small part of many chapters rather than a massive part of just one chapter. And it also means I come to each chapter several times fresh which helps with finding issues and making improvements.
I had a 4-stage cascade last time and it frankly wasn't enough, so I'm going to try for a 6-stage one and we'll see if that helps. It will also help with project development as I get the project off the ground in the first few weeks.
I've fleshed out my task list mostly for my own benefit to reference back on. It ended up being 7 stages, I wasn't able to combine any stages together as some have to be separate for best practice. Ultimately it doesn't matter as I'll being doing each stage once a week anyway, it'll just be for a different chapter. Also new in this project are several distinct "quality control" steps. I've not outright used these before but I've seen the possible value of having them so I'll be trialling their usefulness as well.
Stage 1:Brainstorming & Ideas - Generating new ideas for characters and plot.
Plot Development - Taking the new approved ideas and placing them into a rough chronological order, expanding with more details.
Character & Environment Design v0 - any potential (main) characters or settings (vehicles etc) get a single rough draft sketch (and also headshot if a character) for future reference.
Chapter Synopsis - the overview of a specific chapter, 1/2 sentences
Stage 2:Chapter Outline - the scene-by-scene breakdown of the chapter, 10-15 sentences
Script v0 - a rough script draft. The speech content is mostly unrefined with generic/cliche phrasing
Character & Environment Design v1 - characters and settings relevant to the current chapter are fully drafted.
Stage 3:Script v1 - any missing parts are filled and the speech is adjusted to match the characters' personalities.
Character & Environment Design v2 - designs of characters and settings relevant to the current chapter are finalized.
Stage 4:Quality control - a careful read though, checking consistency and accuracy with regard to plot, speech etc.
Panelation - the script is split into sections which represent each panel of the manga. more details are added if needed to describe the shot.
Pagination - the script is split into page sections of average 5 panels each.
Blocking - a "name". A rough draft of the entire page
Stage 5:Quality control - a careful check of the draft pages to find obvious errors or improvements.
Guidelines v0 - the quality is improved with figures and BG guides
Panels - the panel borders are drawn
Speech Insertion - the script is copied onto the page at the right locations. The font and size are adjusted accordingly.
SFX Insertion - hand drawn SFX is added, with the style matching the mood where possible.
Speech Bubbles - square and oval (etc) speech bubbles added at the appropriate locations
Stage 6:Guidelines v1 Figures - the figures and main BG are redrawn to a higher accuracy
Guidelines v1 Details - additional details are added such as clothing, face, hair etc. rough quality.
Stage 7:Quality control - check for errors outside of allowance and adjust, cleanup any stray lines.
Effects & Tone & Rendering - colour, texture and shade is added, each in turn.
Quality control - final check - checking for obvious mistakes and errors outside the allowance, fix where necessary.
After typing all this out and running a simulation in my mind I recalled something I decided last project, which was that the highest productivity was when I was doing the same stage multiple times for different projects or different chapters, as I gained a momentum in that one area while working. So I'm aware that this regular output isn't the most efficient method available, but it's probably the best working one I have due to it's regularity - each week is the same workload. After working with this workflow for a while I'll see if I can upgrade it to take advantage of working with multiple chapters at once. An ideal workflow would be planning the entire plot of the story and all characters, and then drafting the entire thing, and then finally drawing all the chapters in one go. But I'm not confident I can stay motivated and at a high level of productivity without a regular measurable output. For now at least.
So finally, I've just got to decide the stories I'm doing. Since I'm not expecting too much from this project in terms of quality, I'm planning on picking a couple of random prompts and producing a range of ideas and then narrowing it down to a couple of story ideas I think I can do, as well as actually want to do. ideally a range of genres would be nice like last time. I would have liked to finish off this post by having already deiced the stories but I don't want to rush the very first step, as I'll be living with this project for quite a while. But all the same I'm hoping to narrow down the stories before the end of the week. They don't have to be special, just workable. I might also work from my favourite mangas I'm reading and reverse engineer them back to a synopsis and then come up with a new story that way.
And finally because of my other current projects and commitments I don't think I can actually start for a couple of weeks, but I'd definitely like to start before Easter.
So that ended up being even more rambling than I was expecting :P
At least I gave you fair warning :P
I'll probably make one more huge post because there's a bunch of other planning I didn't quite get to think about yet, targets, constraints, initial workflow and that sort of thing.
Thanks for listening :P
onwards and upwards, hopefully this'll be a good one
