Drawing paper

Manga paper

This paper is always used by manga-ka to produce their art work. It has blue panels printed on it. The purpose of them is to make it easier to divide the panels. This paper has high absorbency characteristic to absorb inks. This paper is also suitable for ink pen, marker pen and screentone.



Textured paper

This paper has texture on its surface. It is good to be use by those who want to make some effect in their drawing.

Coated paper

This paper has two surfaces – one is slippy and the other is dim. That’s why this paper is more expensive compare to other paper. The slippy surface is suitable for inking while the dim surface is suitable for pencil drawing.

Simili paper

Simili paper is the same as the ordinary A4 paper. Its ink’s absorbency depends on the thickness of the paper.

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Shadow

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Mangaka often use shadow in their drawing. Shadow is the result of illumination light or sunlight.
Other than that, shadow was also used to create a 3-D effect. To create shadow, a mangaka needs to determine the direction of light. Then the shadow must be applied to the opposite side where is covered from light.

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Drawing a figure's action

Action needs impact and energy to show the character movement. Actually, a normal human's movement will not be so much energetic. But in order to give more satisfaction to the reader, the action can be overly drawn so that the character will look lively. The important element is the reader can see the effect from the action.

Normal punching action



Excessive punching action


Other example:

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How to draw a figure's posture

Usually figure's postures are consist of daily activities like walking, running, sitting, eating, standing and so on. Some of us may think that it is easy to draw the posture but actually it's hard and need more determination. If it's not drawn with cautious, the movement will look unrealistic.

The pose must be near or base on the actual life. This is more difficult compare to when drawing character's action. Sometimes you can also draw simple habit for your character as a trademark. As an example is L's action in the Deathnote manga. It is a trademark that were always remembered by the fans.



You must also draw according to your character's attitude. Understand your character first. Every character has their own attitude that influenced their posture. With that, the differences of character's attitude can be shown obviously.

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Screentones Tutorial

Screentone is very useful in manga because it can save manga-ka time and it also improve the quality of manga. Doujinshi-ka can also use screentones to make an interesting artwork. Screentones can be divided into line action, special effect, shading, and background. Line action is the screentone that can be use to make effect and impact from the movement of character or object in manga. While special effect is use for effect like cloth’s texture, emotion effect, exploding effect and many more. Shading is use to make a shadow effect or to make a dark surrounding like at sunset or night. While background is use to make a complex background and repeating background. Screentone can be bought from bookstore but its price is expensive. If doujinshi-ka know how to use graphic software, it can be made using Adobe Photoshop.

Steps to make simple screentones using Adobe Photoshop

1. Open a new file in Adobe Photoshop with size of 8x8 pixel in JPEG/JPG format and white background. Don’t use bitmap/bmp format because we will use the Layer function in the next step.

2. Zoom in to the maximum available.

3. Then go to the Tool Bar and choose Pencil Tool. Next, right click on Paintbrush Tool, Pencil Tool is below the category.

4. After that, open a new Layer. Use Pencil Tool to draw 2 point on your file. Both point must be aligned at 45 degree. To ease your work, think like this:

Your file size is 8x8 pixel. If your first point coordinate is (3,3) then your second coordinate should be located at (7,7).

5. Next, open a new Layer and repeat step 4. But this time redraw both points on the same position, and make them bigger and reshape it according to yourself. Repeat this step until you get a variety of shape in different sizes.

6. Now go to Select > Select All, then choose the first layer that has points on them (not the empty layer). Go to Edit > Define Pattern and name your screentone.

Repeat this step for every Layer. All Layer that have been saved will exist in Pattern category for your use.

Congratulations! Now your screentones have being made successfully.

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Planning the plot for doujinshi

1. Pre-sketching

First, determine the story that will be made, such as adventures, romances, friendships, or others. Then analyse the plot theme and the messages that want to be delivered. Next, determine the location/setting plot and the characters that will be involved. Make the sketching for location images and the characters. Finally, begin to plan the plot structure in details. This step is so important to distribute the share of pages and to determine the overall balancing of doujinshi that will be made.

2. Set up the plot plan

Plot is usually being made of four level:

a) Introduction

This level is to introduce the characters, especially the hero and heroin characters. The details for each characters like name, age, short description of their background and characteristic must be included so that reader will recognized them.

b) Conflict

Conflict is divided into two parts, the beginning conflict and the middle conflict.
The beginning conflict is usually the introduction of antagonis character. If there is no antagonis, then it will be the starting problem for the hero/heroin. This part is very important because if it was not arrange properly, it will disturb the overall plot. The details must be reveal carefully, don’t reveal all the important details in the beginning conflict. The middle conflict is the chapter where hero/heroin tries to solve the conflict. In this part, the hero/heroin will discover more details of the problems arise.

c) Climax

Climax is a critical moment where the hero will fight the antagonis leader and facing the most difficult problem. All questions wil be answered in this part.

d) Ending

Ending part will shows the scenario after the conflict had been solved, either it will be peace or sad. It will also be the clue for the next episode (for continue series).

Tips: The share of pages for one-shot (8-12 pages) usually use the 1:3:2:1 ratio (intro:conflict:climax:ending).

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Drawing Tools – Pencil

Pencil have four grades:

1. H Grade

H means hardness. It start from 2H to 9H. This grade has a hard graphite and make a clear tone. But it must be use softly to avoid marks being left on the paper.

2. F Grade

F means fine. It has a moderate graphite in hardness and tone. Usually it will be use to make a basic sketching in drawing.

3. HB Grade

HB means medium. It almost the same as the F Grade, but it is darker. This pencil usually being used as a writing pencil.

4. B Grade

B means blackness. It has a soft graphite and can make a darker tone. The more bigger the number, the more darker it will be; it start from 2B to 9B.

The most usual pencil being used by doujinshi-ka:

1. Grade B pencil

Grade B has a darker tone and easy to erase compare to Grade H. It’s suitable for pencil drawing that use a variety of tones.

2. Mechanical pencil

Usually mechanical pencil has 2 tip size, 0.5 & 0.7 and using special 2B graphite lead. The lead is refillable, so using only one pencil is enough. It can be use to a drawing that needs inking work because the line that has been made is soft and accurate.

3. Blue Pencil

Blue pencil is use in sketching because its marks can be erase easily and will not be seen after photostat or scanning process to a computer. It’s suitable for those who have untidy drawing style. Besides regular pencil, blue pencil is also available for mechanical pencil that use a special blue lead.

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Publishing a doujinshi

1. Digital Printing

Digital printing is a kind of publishing that needs a lot of money, depending on the pages of the doujinshi and the colour scheme that was choosen. The price will be more expensive if the printing is in colour. Black & White printing is less expensive. The advantage of digital printing is the printing quality is more clear. It will be wise to publish in a large quantity to get price discount.


2. Photostat

This kind of printing is more cheaper than the digital way. But it has some disadvantages. The quality is poor, usually depend on the type of machine that was used. If the machine use harblur toner, the printing will be easy to fade especially when in contact with water. Printing from machine that use liquid toner is more resistance from fading but the cost will be higher. Colour printing is more expensive using photostat machine and the quality is not as good as digital printing. So this kind of printing is suitable only for Black & White printing.

3. Online Publishing

Using today technology, doujinshi-ka can sell their doujinshi with minimum costs by publishing them on the internet. Even though this method is still new, many doujinshi-ka have used this method to sell their artworks. There are two method to sell doujinshi using internet.
First by subscription; the doujinshi-ka has to get a web site that can support the subscription activities. This is to make sure that only subscribers can read the doujinshi. Besides that, the doujinshi-ka also needs to get Paypal account or online banking service to make customer’s payment become easy.
Second by previewing the artwork on the group’s web site first. After customer paid the payment, the doujinshi will be send to the customer by e-mail. This method also need a Paypal account or online banking service.

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Doujinshi : Amateur manga

What is doujinshi? Doujinshi is a manga that was made by amateur artists, either by using their original idea or by using materials from other popular anime, manga or games. The artwork result will depend on their credibility and drawing technique, some of them can even match the artwork of professional mangakas.Doujinshi is usually being made because of desire and not to make profit. All costs to produce doujinshi will be endured by doujinshi-ka themselves, and the selling price will depend on the producing cost. Because doujinshi was published in limited edition, the price usually will be higher than manga in market.

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