Novel VS Manga VS Anime

[natsu]

Hi, its Natsu. I have a few questions for the manga artists on this board. You can answer one, some or all of them, as you please.

You can (but dont have to) read my opening post (just the OP is OK) in the Natsu Showdown topic of the gallery to get a feeling of what my artwork looks like. You can also read my introduction or my first published chapters of the manga Infernity to get more info on my background and overall skills.

First, whats your general page rate on a regular week of work? I mean a week working regularly on your (either one or many) projects.

Mine is around a page per hour (half an hour designing the layout and sketching, and another half an hour to ink it, scan and edit on the PC). Thats 28 pages a week working 4 hours a day, 42 drawing 6 and 84 drawing 12 a day.

Is this a good page rate?
Given my overall skills, would you spend 30 minutes more per page to get it colored?
Would you stop inking the pages and rather color the raw pencil sketches?
Would you stop inking and coloring and make the sketches more clean, so you can get production quality pages in half the time?

One of the dreams (i think) of any manga maker is to watch their characters moving on the screen.

Given this is not just a posibility, but rather a choice from the start, would you take on the quest of animating your works by working a little harder?
Or you think comics are superior?
Or you think anime is reserved to big studios and small teams and individuals should focus on comics?

I'm not talking on big animation products here.

Lets say i make a half manga, half anime product with the following traits:
Very limited animation only in the mouths / eyes / hair / clothing of the characters.
A few keyframes for the cool scenes, a single keyframe (static image) for most the others.
Fully colored.
No voices, just music and effects.
A cool 30 seconds opening.
8 to 12 minutes per episode.
Four episodes a week.

Would you watch it rather than reading a comic?
Given I can make a YT channel and publish to it regularly, yould you follow it?
Do you think the (potential) popularity of such animations would justify taking twice as long to advance the story than the equivalent manga?

Something i have found in this board and in life through contact with other manga artist is that some of them are better drawing than writting, some are the oposite, some dont even draw, and some cant even write the most basic plot.

I think i fall in the writes better than draws segment. This may seem weird but, i have listed more than 300 ideas for stories in my record files. Some are crazy good, some are weird and obscure, some are sexy tales. But all of them share a common trait: they fall in the slot of stories i like to read and write.

I have made basic math over these ideas estimate cost in time and i have come to a conclusion: it will take me at least 11.7 years of 12 pages a day to finish them all as manga.

In contrast, it will take me 2.9 years to finish them as ilustrated novels.

You can probably see where this goes.
Would you make those ilustrated novels even knowing that manga is a 10 times more popular choice?
Would you make those manga even knowing that anime is a 100 times more popular choice?

There are thousands of other little factors to consider when making these decisions, and thousands of more little questions that dont have an easy answer.

I will probably take the decisions by myself but i want to hear what fellow members have to say.

Your turn.

[Suuper-san]

I read manga more than I watch anime, and I read novels less than both. But I like all forms if they are done well.
As an artist myself I like reading manga because that is my target output so I appreciate the good quality even more and it's a nice reference for me as well.

Single-handedly doing animation is going to be the most time consuming medium choice, after all it's the only medium out of manga and novels and anime that require an entire studio to produce. If you want to try animation then doing test scenes will give you a good idea of your output rate. The specific animation style you mentioned is certainly less intense but still will require a lot of work, especially more than one episode per week. But the style itself is enjoyable, I've seen similar in the past as it was a good watch.

As for your speed I think 1 hour per page is fantastic!
Although your manga style is quite simple with minimal backgrounds so I think as you grow in experience you will want to add more details which will take more time, but that's down the line.
The issue is whether you can maintain that speed for 10+ hours a day (which is mad I must say) continuously to get through your story list as per your calculation.
I wouldn't bother comparing speeds with other artists (although I must admit I do the same!), because each person is different and will spend different amounts of time on each task. Just do the best you can do and you'll improve with time in everything
My manga project here took 30-45mins per page if you want to compare all the same XD
http://forums.mangaraiders.com/index.php/topic,20802.0.html

khahahaha 300 ideas? that's rookie numbers!! come back when you have 1000!!!!!!
just kidding!! Having a lot of ideas is what plagues a lot of creative types, although not many actually write their ideas down to keep a count. You might find that you can combine ideas together to reduce the overall story count as well. And having ideas that you yourself like I think is fairly common.

As for what medium is best, that depends on your motivation and targets.
Is this just a hobby thing or do you want fame and fortune?
For a hobby then just do whatever you enjoy the most, but if you're after making it a job then you've got to factor in what's popular with others.

[Ryan]

My own page rate (though i haven't drawn manga pages in a while), if i had to estimate from draft to finish, would be like 4 hours for the easier pages.

Anime is tough. Sound, music, and even just barebone animation is a lot more work. And you would want to get decent at all these aspects. But, leaving out voice acting is like leaving out one of the most important aspects of animation. It's like pizza without bread. So, for storytellers, I really think anime should be reserved for small teams at least like what this team on youtube is doing. Anime is great usually because it is such a large team endeavor, overall it is a very energy and time inefficient way to get your stories out there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvH6khNuFtg

I think most working mangaka today have enough stories to tell that they will pass away before being able to tell them all. Professional-level manga pages for a single person takes like 4 hours at least to draw and that's being generous. That's just the easier pages; some pages can take 5, 6, 7 hours depending on how complex the page is. Manga pages in general are just really jampacked. So realistically you see solo pro mangaka doing only a single 30 page chapter per month.

So as to why I told you that, I'm not sure completely but it seems as if you want to finish telling all your stories. But why? By the time you finish telling the stories you have now, you will have come up with more stories to tell, so you're never going to be done. Just putting that out there.

I think for you an illustrated novel dispersed with manga pages would be good. Just do manga pages for the key moments. A lot of manga take long to make because every moment needs to be drawn. Sometimes you can't just timeskip; it'll ruin the readers sense of time and attachment to the story. So illustrated novels (really, light novels) will let you tell your stories faster.

so tl;dr i honestly think manga or illustrated novels are your best bet. don't spread yourself too thin my man. with the anime you just give yourself way more you have to take care of and it'll slow you down. if your work is interesting and good then it will get readers if you share it at the right places.

[natsu]

Regarding animation, i think you're missing some points, because of my fault. I didn't give you guys some info:

I do have a background in 3D modelling and animation (good experience with blender), graphic design (designing logos and magazines), music composition (played guitar in a metalcore band in my 14 to 17, was the youngest of the band) and production (produced some dubstep and house music as a hobby) and most important i have mad skill with computer programming (i have to, because its my job IRL to make programming languages, low-level systems and the like).

This is a pic of a game i made at the age of 13. Did all the programming and animation from scratch:



This is more recent, a tetris made in my own programming language from scratch (all the graphics, sound and code made in less than 5 hours):



This is a skeleton animation (pivot animation) program im working on (a basic prototype)











I can draw 6 * 8 = 48 frames of animation in 6 hours (pencil + color).

I can compose and produce a set of OST in a day or two.

Do you want voice acting? I can use a MorphVox with a single actress to produce the voice of many different characters.

Do you want pro-looking backgrounds? I can model them in Blender in an evening.

The final result? An anime production by a studio of 1 person. 8 to 12 minutes per episode, 2 to 4 episodes a week.

Now, my calculations could be wrong. But they dont use to.

The real question is not if manga or anime takes more effort, is about if the extra effort of making the anime would payoff.

Your turn.

[natsu]

I think for you an illustrated novel dispersed with manga pages would be good. Just do manga pages for the key moments. A lot of manga take long to make because every moment needs to be drawn. Sometimes you can't just timeskip; it'll ruin the readers sense of time and attachment to the story. So illustrated novels (really, light novels) will let you tell your stories faster.

so tl;dr i honestly think manga or illustrated novels are your best bet. don't spread yourself too thin my man. with the anime you just give yourself way more you have to take care of and it'll slow you down. if your work is interesting and good then it will get readers if you share it at the right places.

I also think an ilustrated novel of sorts could work better for a few reasons. Storytelling would be much better, stories would be much more developed. Text can be edited as many times as you want, images cant. You can leave the ilustrations for the last, and youre not thinking of them when writting, what makes the process more flexible and less shallow.

But those are advantages for the writer, not the reader.

The format of spreading manga pages across the novel is not the best. First, the images have to be universal. You can split the ilustration page in panels and tell a little of a story but you cant place text on them or make them depend on the order of reading. A novel in japan gets read in reverse and so are the panels of a comic strip, you have to make the panel composition in vertical cascade so it can be read both ways.

Also, the ilustration rate is important. You can think of ilust as rewards to the reader and emotion pullers. They have to be in the rigth place and be frequent. I think a rate of a page each 600 to 1200 words would work.

What i dont like about novels is the emphasis of many writters in complex language, long sterile scenes and blurry narration. In a manga each page counts, the whole has to be interesting, but also must be the individual parts. A long sterile chapter, or sequence of them can cost you losing many readers to cancelation of a running series in a japanesse magazine.

@Suuper anime is not the only one, most pro mangaka in japan have two to six assistants working for them doing the BG, effects and details. I would say that counts as a studio :-P

[Suuper-san]

most light novels only have about 10-20 illustrations max in them per book, I don't know how many that is per word count but I wouldn't say more frequent makes much more of a difference - having any written blocks of text will automatically put off those who aren't after large amounts of reading, even if there is a high image payoff. Most people who read books would read them without a single illustration - that's the beauty of books is that you can use your imagination. Too many illustrations and you start to get locked into the writers view, which readers might not like very much. I dont read enough to say for sure though but that's my gut feel. I'd rather read a novel with no images, or a manga which is all images, than read a combined format of both.

As for manga studios, you're totally correct, however I meant it's more you can't (=extremely difficult) produce anime without a studio/team, but you can easily produce a manga on your own. I can only think of one or two very short anime that was produced by a single person and took forever to make, but there's countless manga of a good quality that are single-handedly produced.

Alright sounds like you know what you're talking about when it comes to animation, I think Ryan and myself were imagining fully hand drawn. If you're using animation tools to assist with the posing and composition, as well as 3d assets then that will make things easier. But the way you describe how easy you could do makes it sounds too good to be true. Not that I don't believe you of course! Given you think you could produce a couple of episodes a week, I think it would be worth a shot producing a single episode just to show us what it would look like. It'll only take a couple of days?

I might have missed it in your reply but I'm wondering what is your ultimate goal with producing animation/novels?
Are you just looking for a creative hobby/outlet, or are you aiming to go professional?
Because that will affect the advice you get quite heavily.

[natsu]

most light novels only have about 10-20 illustrations max in them per book, I don't know how many that is per word count but I wouldn't say more frequent makes much more of a difference - having any written blocks of text will automatically put off those who aren't after large amounts of reading, even if there is a high image payoff. Most people who read books would read them without a single illustration - that's the beauty of books is that you can use your imagination. Too many illustrations and you start to get locked into the writers view, which readers might not like very much. I dont read enough to say for sure though but that's my gut feel. I'd rather read a novel with no images, or a manga which is all images, than read a combined format of both.

As for manga studios, you're totally correct, however I meant it's more you can't (=extremely difficult) produce anime without a studio/team, but you can easily produce a manga on your own. I can only think of one or two very short anime that was produced by a single person and took forever to make, but there's countless manga of a good quality that are single-handedly produced.

Alright sounds like you know what you're talking about when it comes to animation, I think Ryan and myself were imagining fully hand drawn. If you're using animation tools to assist with the posing and composition, as well as 3d assets then that will make things easier. But the way you describe how easy you could do makes it sounds too good to be true. Not that I don't believe you of course! Given you think you could produce a couple of episodes a week, I think it would be worth a shot producing a single episode just to show us what it would look like. It'll only take a couple of days?

I might have missed it in your reply but I'm wondering what is your ultimate goal with producing animation/novels?
Are you just looking for a creative hobby/outlet, or are you aiming to go professional?
Because that will affect the advice you get quite heavily.

I like you :-P

Maybe its because of were imagining diferent things when it comes to animation. I have a friend who loves ghibli movies, he's the best at anime and background artwork of my circle. But we have very different ways of looking at things, he says anything with less than 24 FPS is not even worth the pain.

My calculations are just that: artifacts my mind creates to evaluate situations more or less acurately. I could miss a milimeter, or a whole ligth year.

A couple of days? Pheraps a couple of weeks. I dont know. But the experiment is interesting: i will make the first volume of Infernity into a single, unknown duration episode.

Meanwhile, lets take the morning coffee cup. It's 6 AM already.

[Suuper-san]

Ah right, when you said your calculations I thought maybe you had done some animation before which you were using as a reference, but in this case it's more of a target or goal?
Once you've done something tangible, that will serve as a good reference point to base your calculations off.
Looking very much forward to Infernity: The Animation!!

[natsu]

Ah right, when you said your calculations I thought maybe you had done some animation before which you were using as a reference, but in this case it's more of a target or goal?
Once you've done something tangible, that will serve as a good reference point to base your calculations off.
Looking very much forward to Infernity: The Animation!!

Well i did... When i was 12!

Should i keep you up to date in this same topic?

[Suuper-san]

Ahahaha I'm sure you've improved since you were 12 :P
I'd definitely like to see progress and behind the scenes
although which topic you use is up to you, it's a new project so you could make a new thread for that, maybe in the members manga section since we don't have a members animation section. Or carry on in this one if you prefer. I tend to keep all my work in the one main topic with the exception of actual manga stories. Then it functions like a diary I can look back through.

[natsu]

Ahahaha I'm sure you've improved since you were 12 :P
I'd definitely like to see progress and behind the scenes
although which topic you use is up to you, it's a new project so you could make a new thread for that, maybe in the members manga section since we don't have a members animation section. Or carry on in this one if you prefer. I tend to keep all my work in the one main topic with the exception of actual manga stories. Then it functions like a diary I can look back through.

Well, lets keep it here.

Sorry for you i will not be posting any artwork or behind the scenes TvT. Its better this way, you can watch the thing as a regular espectator and i can focus on working rather than chit-chatting.

Rigth now im coloring some character design pages, any ideas for the MMC hair? I thing keeping the dark gray of the manga but i also want something that catch the eye. We will see.

[Suuper-san]

awww too bad :) but yes that would be distracting I can see that :P

hmmmm I think the hair looks good and eye catching as you have drawn it in the manga. I'm not great with character design so can't offer much advice >_<

[natsu]

Ups :-z, a blackout.

The blackout started at 10 AM, its 12:30 PM now and the laptop has like 8% battery. Hopefully theres enough mobile network to send this post before the phone tower runs out of power.

Dont worry, blackouts are a regular thing over here.

The overall progress in the anime direction was poor. I have just found out that the heavy lift of animation is not (as it appears) drawing the frames or synching the voices: its making a proper storyboard.

I regularly do just the script of a manga and the page design and sketching are mostly straighforward. But anime is different in a few points.

My first idea was not even to draw a single frame. Since this is just a throwaway project anyway i though in coloring the manga pages and using them as base for the animation.

I did colored the full 38 pages of the first volume (some are incomplete, but they are in the latest part and i just needed the first part done anyway) and made a rudimentary storyboard by splitting the panels of the first 18 pages.

The idea was to make pans and zoom effects on the panels to get a rude anime, then placing the subs (like a fansubbed anime) and time them correctly. This part is done for the first four pages and i can already tell its not going to work.

Even if i get to the last step, wich is doing some fancy pivot animations with the hair / wings and some frames for the eyes and mouth of the characters, the result is not working.

Why?

Because a manga reads differently than an anime is watch. Many panels are too wide or tall to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen. Some panels are drawn overflowing other panels, and there's no easy way of redrawing them.

It could theoretically work (and at this rate, i could have finished at least the first 18 pages today). But the result is not what should be.

Coloring the pages was a really easy task, since my art style is so clean and has NO broken lines i just filled the pages with the color bucket and the result was inmediately good. The only extra work was drawing the contour of the eyes to fill them white. Some parts could not be fill because of parallel line shading, but i did them easily by adding a bottom layer and coloring under the line shades.

I will finish coloring the unfinished pages and re-upload them to the manga section. Im making this my official style of manga now.

So, it end here?

No way!

Tomorrow i will do a proper storyboard and try a new method i think could work, and if that fails, i can reuse the storyboard and do the final, but more tedious handdraw anime.

Keep the good vibes!
 

[Suuper-san]

well you took a good crack at it today! no time like the present after all :P
I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly, hopefully no more blackouts

[natsu]

Here is my conclusion.

Novels, comics, films. They are all great ways of telling a story. But for my particular skillset and goals the best of the three is... Videogames?

Anime is popular. Wildly popular. But also hard to do. I still think its possible for a one man studio to do anime. But pheraps not at the scale i was thinking. I have done it. I taugh my best childhood friend how to do it using Moviemaker and Flash and he also did it. Choose anime if youre after a larger casual audience.

Novels are fast to develop. They also offer higher quality storytelling and are easy to publish and mass produce. Be warned, you will have lesser but more loyal espectators.

Manga is less popular than anime, and harder to produce than novels. Its also harder to publish and market than both. Youre often after a specific pool of spectators, aim too wide and the shoot is likely to miss.

So whats my goal, after all? Its to have fun with whatever i do. And the one that i enjoy doing the most is manga. I did it non stop during many years, and i enjoy every single part of the process. The idea comes to me. I find myself developing it. I draw a sketch of the main character. And im so excited and involved i would not sleep for 20 hours straigh doing it, until i go to bed with my hands full of ink and thinking of the next amazing chapter i will do tomorrow.

I may or may not finish doing all of my story ideas in this life. I may enter the hall of fame of world manga or leave a bunch of pages rest in the deepest corner of the web. I may or may not sell a million copies of my works or even a single one.

But i could not care less. I just love manga.

@Super I'm sorry you will never watch Infernity: The Animation TvT