Page 132 – Redux
I originally planned to have a rant against some animoo artists here today, but I changed my mind – instead it’ll be about art quality. Lately, Sarah Ellerton over at Phoenix Requiem told me that it is possible that some charitable readers will throw money at any webcomic as long as they think it’ll go somewhere worthwhile if the artist needs it. For instance, webcomics like Flipside.
Haven’t seen that happen yet, heh. My site’s being hosted for free over at ToonZone/Cartoons,Dammit! and financially I’m struggling. I’m still debating on that question of whether or not I should solict donations from my audience. Maybe as soon as the forums are up, I’ll see if the audience is willing to discuss the issue.
Hit the jump to read my rant.
As I write this, I’m gearing up for a broadcast on uStream this morning, so when I was reviewing my original planned rant for this update, I thought that I was perhaps being a bit too harsh in picking out Tom Fischbach of TwoKinds as my verbal punching bag. One of the factors in my original decision to write the rant was mainly in the fact that he had a 30-minute operation to correct his eyesight, which was clearly expensive and was a quality-of-life decision on his part, and the fact that he also picked up a Wacom Cintiq 12WX.
Not only that, but his art style was distinctly a mimic of the popular japanese anime/manga. I will grant him that he has had practice with anatomy and such, but I feel that TwoKinds could have benefited from a more advanced art style than the simple anime style. Mainly because Tom is updating only once a week. I also concede to the fact that he is in college, restricting his time at the drawing board – the argument is, his art style is relatively simple that he should be capable of producing at least three pages a week.
But I did say I wouldn’t thump on Tom, so moving on – the main reason I brought TwoKinds up as part of this subject matter is because I feel a lot of artists are relying on the more mainstream anime and manga style with the big beady eyes, pointed chins and other classic hallmarks of Japanese manga to compete in the crowded field of webcomics. They usually end up at the bottom of the chain and stay there for quite a while.
We have a lot of comics all over the place. Hit up BuzzComix or TopWebComics and you’ll notice that many of the top 100 sites are heavily oriented towards anime/manga/otaku audiences. The flipside of it is that many of these are actually quite well-done, with a good story or plot arc, and they all range between different genres like drama, manga, comedy, adventure and so on.
However, there are those that have questionable quality, such as Sailor Ranko, Mystic Revolution, and Project Rol. I don’t mean to be harsh, but these make me want to puke on the internet. There is a clear lack of skill when it comes to artistic presentation of a story. There are several skills you need to know before you jump into the world of comics, they are:
- Sequential Illustration
- Anatomy (Unless you’re intentionally trying to confuse your reader)
- Creative Writing
- Understanding of Relationship Dynamics (optional, if you’re gunning for comedy/drama)
- World Building (optional)
Without sufficient skills in these areas, you end up creating a product that becomes equally confusing, disorienting and inconsistent. Anatomy and Sequential Illustration are especially important if you want to achieve a quality product that tells a story you wish to tell. Let us take Sarah Ellerton’s The Phoenix Requiem for example. She has had a great deal of experience behind her, and is well aware of what she is doing with her story. She has a script written out, outlining what path the story will take the reader through as we follow Jonas and Anya through a mystical story of mystery, intrigue and drama. Not to mention humor at all the right times.
Other webcomics I found interesting and were of quality in terms of art presentation were: Girl Genius, with its tongue-in-cheek humor and offbeat situations; Strays, a story following Feral, a bounty hunting Lupian with a young pup named Meela – also with an overdose of situational humor and visual style. Another that manages to pop out at me is Flipside, a genuine attempt in a manga style by Brian Foulke, with a great deal of twisting plot turns combined with an art style that is distinctly his – yet appears to be a huge nod to some of the old-school styles that once reigned in the Japanese mangasphere.
These artists and webcomics make a serious effort to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack with their experience in art presentation, storytelling and humor/drama. More importantly, some of these stories actually have depth thanks to their efforts in building and developing the setting the stories are set in.
The bottom line is, if you’re going to make a webcomic, make it your own distinct style as much as you can, while avoiding the universal knee-jerk eye-rolling and a muttering under the breath of “Great, another animoo webcomic dredged up from the depths of the internet.” I actually have a serious problem with webcomics that classify themselves as “manga” because they believe it is – the sad truth is, it only can end up being classified as a “poser-wannabe manga” created by a Westerner that wants to become the impossible: a manga-ka.
In my perspective, manga-ka have Japanese blood in their veins, and create their works with a Japanese line of thinking. It is foolish for Westerners to believe they can “think and draw” like a Japanese. I live in Seattle, I was born in the Netherlands to American parents – I’m a Western artist. On the other side of the coin, my art style could be very well compared to that of Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita: Last Order and Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist. However, I refuse to classify my work as “manga”, because I chose to do it this way for financial reasons – it is not a “manga” because I am not Japanese. It is a foolish delusion to call myself a manga-ka.
It’s far cheaper to print your books in monochrome, and it also offers the benefit of producing your pages at a much faster pace that will allow you to continually update your site. Additionally, I use traditional American comic art boards (11×17″) over the more favored Japanese manga art boards (10″x 14 1/4″, B4) because I feel that it is a possibility that Fantasia Arks may end up being colored in a “special edition” that would require a resize to the more traditional comic book format.
So my final say is this: If you want to be a real “manga-ka” if you really think there is such a thing as a western Manga-Ka…I suggest getting off your ass, delete those copious amounts of anime and hentai you’ve got sitting on your hard drive that you use as references, and go to a life drawing class.
Then we’ll see if you’ve got skills.
-NK