Forum - View topicMy new manga!
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Cyborg 009
 Posts: 214 |
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I'm not the kind of guy who is part of a big manga company. In fact, I'm not even out of high school yet. But, I am making a manga with my friend. He is better than me at drawing poses, but I am better at character design, storyline, and faces (especially the eyes).
We recently decided to draw our own manga. We even decided to make it right to left (to maintain the authenticity of the manga). We are hoping a company will see this (possibly Shonen Jump USA), and publish it. But we can't get our hopes to high. We would like some ideas of what to write about. Our basic idea is of two evil armies, each headed by a cool overlord, trying to gain control of the eastern portion of the world. The only one to stop is a 19 year old boy who, when he was 14, tried to wield his father's posessed sword, and was infused with a skeletal demon creature (similar to the Tales video game series Sword Dancer). When has enough energy, he can sprout skeletal wings from his back. Tell me what you think, and keep an eye out for any changes I make to the novel idea. (chuckle) |
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Nagisa
Moderator
 Posts: 6128 Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh |
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Here's the thing. If you want an industry representative to take you seriously, you need the story completely, fully, 100% planned out in advance. You can't just do like you're doing here and go "well we kinda have part of an idea but please buy it it'll be REALLY COOL once we figure out just what we might wanna possibly kinda do maybe," because you will be rejected outright. Also, pitching your story on an anime forum is not how you get someone like TokyoPop or Viz to recognize you. Find their mailing addresses (not e-mail, but mail mail) and send them professionally-assembled portfolios of your work. A competent story pitch with maybe a fully inked and printed sample chapter, character sheets, stuff like that (and I stress, professionally done...a couple ballpoint pen sketches on notebook paper will not fly here in a million years). That's really the only way you'll get taken seriously.
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Steventheeunuch
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First you've got to realise that it's technically not a Manga. A Manga is simply a comic book made by the Japanese. Unless your work was submitted under a Japanese pen name to a Japanese publishing company, it isn't Anime.
Also, where is the plot? What is the purpose? Why must you use tired cliches like big armies and cool overlords and super possesed swords that fathers use and all of that junk? When describing one of the central characters, you have us three points or so, and one of them was based off a video game. Give it a rethink. People don't get comics/manga legitimatly produced when they're in highschool. |
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Cyborg 009
Posts: 214 |
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Here's the thing: we're still inthe planning stage. We weren't planning on trying to go to a company until we got the okay on everything. Everything has to be perfect. We plan on making a layout of each chapter, and how it all comes together. I do know how to make a professional business lettere, and I don't plan to send one to Viz or Tokyopop until evrything is planned. This topic was for ideas of what we should add. By the way, what video game had a posessed sword? I came up with that from a random drawing I had. |
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Steventheeunuch
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Every second video game in the fantasy/sci-fi genre :p Anyway really, if you're still in the planning stage, you should be using your own ideas/working on it yourself, not asking what the internet should add. Otherwise, it just seems lazy 
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Efan
 Posts: 340 |
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And then suddenly Hitler rises from the dead with a thirst for revenge, and the only one who can stop him and his army of zombie Nazi's is an anime-loving Biologest by the name of Dormcat, who must use his home-made-super-human cyborgs, who posses the ability to spout random comments at others and make their heads explode and take everything out of context to destroy the army of undead german soldiers and crush Adolf Hitler once and for all, but really his plan is to take over the world and make us all his slaves for eternity!!.... Inside joke Ok, I got a little carried away, but I couldn't resist. |
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Nagisa
Moderator
Posts: 6128 Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh |
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Random question, given that video games haven't come up once in this thread. All the same, it's obvious someone's been playing a lot of Soul Calibur and lying about it.  Not to mention, perhaps watching a wee too much Twelve Kingdoms, Inu-Yasha, pretty much half of all generic fantasy anime...
Please. In all honesty, there's nothing about your concept that's unique or original in the least. Which, if you can pull it off, isn't necessarily a bad thing, but stop trying to claim any of the concepts presented are all new or were first invented by you, because it's just going to destroy your credibility. |
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Efan
Posts: 340 |
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I agree 100% with Nagi, unless you make some kind of attempt at hiding the fact that your ideas are not even close to origional, people are going to turn down your ideas left, right and from behind. You should go back to the drawing board, I recommend you start with a specific moral, and build on it by starting with characters before the plot, then make a plot, slowly building on it over time. You wont be past the drawing board with an origional idea for quite some time, and if you come up with all 3 of those things in 1 day, you know you didn't put enough thought into it. Lastly, try to be as origional as you can, don't base ANY of your ideas on previous ideas unless it's unavoidable. Try that, you should have a pretty decent story working for you by the time your done, and don't worry if you don't like it the first time, theres no deadlines so TAKE YOUR TIME. |
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Coffeeman
Posts: 298 |
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Why plan for it to be right-to-left to keep it Authentic?
Authentic to Japanese, which you aren't, never will be, and won't be working in? |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Yeah, I must agree with that, especially with the current trend in OEL manga, going right-to-left really seems to me like a bad attempt to be Japanese when you're not, thus making it the absolute opposite of being "authentic". |
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Cyborg 009
Posts: 214 |
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My gosh! Doesn't anybody know what the topic of this thread is? I know that it isn't very original. And as a matter of fact, if you are talking about Nightmare's sword, it is NOT posessed! The story uses the idea as a BASE! I started the thread for people to give me ideas, and how to jazz it up, not to criticize me. And yes, if you've ever seen Clash of the Titans, the guy's sword IS posessed. I got the idea of a posessed sword after drawing a picture based on the movie!
Now please, will somebody give me an idea to seriously help me (and it can't be about hitler rising from the dead). I want to know what people want to see in a manga. I'm not even sure that the BASE I made is even going to be in it! |
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Vash_the_Stamp3d3
 Posts: 154 |
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Well its almost like the South Park episode where Butter keeps coming up with the ideas and he keeps finding out the Simpsons did it. Coming up with an original manga or should I say comic concept will be very hard, if almost impossible, but just because it has similar things to what other people have done dont really matter. As long as you have interesting characters, plot, settings and conflicts you will find an audience for your comic.
Its nice to be ambitious and being a sucessful comic creator is very ambitious. That is a very hard job, sometimes I wonder how they make it in such little time. I hope your wrist is ready. You should post some of your concept art, it will be better to rate your abilities and critique your designs that way. For reference material or ideas just look up what manga are selling the most and buy them. Look through them and find out what they are doing that makes the viewer want to read on. You will also find numerous ideas for your own comic. Good luck. |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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Your idea is just a basic fantasy story, it has nothing to do with being a manga. Now if you go to Japan and get it published there, then it's a manga (should anybody take it). Your only thing is that you have to then translate it into Japanese.
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.Sy
Posts: 1266 |
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Well, I would definitely recommend going to college and taking several courses on animation, making comics, and such. These courses are all unneccesary to win the Rising Stars of Manga, TokyoPop's manga contest, but if you have hopes for creating manga that people will be buying in volumes, it's going to take a lot of work. So to answer your question, practice, practice, practice. Make several short comics on different story lines and see which one goes best. Also, there are a lot of asian comics about two sides and some evil overlord who has a really cool character design, but there aren't very many OEL's like that, so I dunno. It could be a miss because the plot is, from your very brief description, cliched. I'm not trying to debase you or anything, but it would help to know that there needs to be something that catches a North American company's eye with a plot like that. The company most likely to publish it would be TokyoPop, because they do actively promote OEL's. Shonen Jump will most certainly not publish it, because they only do Japanese manga from Sheisha or Shogakukan. The parent company VIZ might, but it's highly unlikely that they will be getting into OEL's anytime soon. So to sum my needlessly long post up, go to college, practice drawing (especially backgrounds, poses, action scenes that illustrate movement, etc), and don't get ahead of yourself. Writing a comic is also something you don't do in your free time, it's a full time job and can be tiring. My biggest concern with your plan is that the plot is well...there are a lot of manga with a similar story line, so you better make it better pop out at people. Make sure you and your friend can draw really well, nothing ruins a good story more than an artist who has issues drawing certain things or doesn't put a background in.
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Coffeeman
Posts: 298 |
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In a manga... I want to see developed, interesting characters, interesting situations, memorable dialogue, and cute girls who wear glasses. And I want all of these planned, drawn, and dialogued by Japanese people. And then translated into English and re-printed. If it ain't Japanese, it ain't manga. Last edited by Coffeeman on Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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