Product Description
Get real! Open this book and step inside the “real world” of creating professional-looking, publishable comics.
Since landing her first professional gig at age 15, superstar cartoonist Colleen Doran has accumulated more than 500 credits to her name as an artist, writer and designer. In this book, she shares the firsthand lessons she’s learned along the way, giving you a genuine, real-world understanding of how to create polished, publishable manga comics and graphic novels using the same methods the pros use!
This is the kind of valuable insider information you won’t find in other how-to books … stuff that Colleen wishes she knew when she was starting out, including how to:
- Develop stories in the Japanese manga style versus a traditional Western style of comics.
- Turn your everyday experiences and observations into viable characters and plots.
- Use backgrounds to enhance characters’ thoughts and actions.
- Perfect the art of lettering and word balloons.
- Convert a script into a comic or graphic novel, step by step
- Lay out dramatic and expressive pages.
- Create a cover for your manga.
- Submit a book package to a publisher.
- Explore alternative publishing options, such as self-publishing, blogs, fanzines and mini-comics.
With step-by-step instruction and “assignments” throughout, this book will help you tailor classic techniques to suit your own unique style, and guide you toward your creative destiny.
About the Author
In the top 10 for every major category of Comics Buyer’s Guide?s fan poll, Doran gives better instruction than anyone because she knows both Japanese and American manga better than anyone, having worked in all aspects of the industry. She has consulted with many Japanese companies for US marketing such as Bandai (properties include popular TV shows and manga like Sailor Moon and presently hot Naruto on Cartoon Network). She has 100s of credits with all the major American comics publishers?Marvel, DC, Image, etc. She is the author of IMPACT?s Girl to Grrrl Manga that has been well received by buyers. Her artwork has appeared in some of Watson-Guptill?s bestselling art instruction books.
I just got into drawing manga about half a year ago, so you can imagine that I’ve looked up and bought quite a few “how to” books and so on to see if any of them could give me a better understanding of Creating impressive comics and to improve my drawing skills in general. This book definately fits the bill! It covers everything from the basic tools needed to create good pieces of art work, coloring and Perspective, to characters, story design, and my favorite, comic page design. This book has it all. the thing I love the most about this book is the fact that it shows each comic page being created step by step, and for me, being able to see what other books just explain in writing, makes a BIG difference. So if your looking for a book that can advise you in all of the afore mentioned areas, this is Definately your book!
Let me just start saying that this is a good introductory or reference book about making manga, and in this context, it deserves five stars.
The first time I saw this book, it was in a bookstore at the beginning of 2008. I wondered how it was possible to put everything I may need to know about making manga in only 128 pages? I browsed the book and I thought it was interesting. However, since I was looking for a do-it-all book, I passed on it.
Every time I walked into that bookstore, I would take time to browse the book a little bit more. And every time I passed on it. However, later on that week, I would always have a question about making manga that I knew it was answered in this book.
Well, after almost a year, I finally bought it. After browsing it so many times, I can now quickly find the stuff I want to recall. It will be only a brief one or two pages explanation or demonstration, but it will be there.
Of course, there is not such thing as a do-it-all book for creating manga. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels comes close, and you can find a lot of interesting details there. However, Manga Pro is the one I use as a quick reference.