Manga Why do you draw manga?

[klinanime1]

I was just wondering about all you artists out there: exactly what is your incentive to draw manga? Fame and recognition? To get your ideas out there? I'd like it if you were as honest as possible and really think about it before blindly answering, "because I like to draw." I dunno, I just want to get a perspective on the talent and commitment the manga market could potentially be flooded with.

Personally, my incentive to draw is because I like it, but my incentive to draw manga is to get my thoughts out there for critiques and I suppose, sadly enough, for praise.

[Kassandra]

I started drawing manga, like most people because I liked reading it. Drawing manga is very enjoyable to me, and I just love making up characters with their own personalities and their looks. I don't show mine to anybody, and I usually just keep my drawings and such to myself, for some reason I don't like showing it to others that much. Maybe I'm just scared that people won't like it, but I also don't like it when people compliment me a lot. I never know what to say, heh. So yeah, I don't do it for praise or anything it's just something fun to do. One day I'll probably show it to people more, when I get more confident.

[SilverCyclone]

I guess its the only way I can keep my imagination from exploding on me. I have literally at least fifty different ideas for mangas, but I rarely get very far on many. I enjoy coming up with the plots, the personalities, the different weapons. So, in a way, I can kind of escape from my life into a world of my own creations. Im kind of pathetic that way I guess...I thinks its one of the few things Im good at. I dont have many skills. I just enjoy doing it and it lets me get my ideas out of my head and onto something more permanent :p . I just wish I could get half of my ideas off the planning board and into an actual story.

[Captain Iuno]

I just like drawing, except the real-life drawing. That's something I'm really bad at. That's when I discovered manga. I love it because of the big amount of details you can draw in your characters ^_^
And I'm getting better ^____^

[sakura18]

I like drawing manga because i like to hang on to the fact that someday, i'm gonna get noticed for this!! Basically it's all i have for me in my future. I'm not very athletic and not very smart, but i can draw like there's no tomorrow. ^-^

[lil kitsune boy]

I draw 'cause it helps me get ideas across, and I can use it to propagate my twisted views of the world... Well, not so much the second thing. I also think it's kewl when people like what I've drawn, or the story/idea that those drawing express.

Now I have a question, why is this ' :ball: ' here?

[Beorhun]

Well, I draw Manga because I really like to see my ideas and thoughts put down on paper. I'm not at all good at manga, but I'm steadily improving. However, there really isn't a 'why' to my manga, I just draw it because its something I like and I want other people to have a semi-clear idea of how I think and what my visions are like (hope that didn't sound overdramatic.) Oh, yeah, and I'm really bad at every other kind of art. :) Well, I don't suppose there's much else to be said.

[asian_tofu]

Well, I actually started out on drawing real-life...then I realized I had a particular weakness for drawing noses. I was in a DBZ phase back then, and noticed how they illustrated noses minimally. Of course, that's only a small perk of manga. I love drawing it because I love the style and the stories that come from it.

--BLUE

P.S. Jay avatar on the way! :D

[Epsilon]

[COLOR=SlateGray][SIZE=1]Nice question.

Personally, I don't really know. I'd like to think that I draw and make ups mangas during my time by boredom. Or seeing how far my skills in art and different techniques can go. I find that manga is a good way to test your self drawing vise. Due to the level of commitment and creativity. But saying this, I'd probably be lying.

In one of my art classes, we need to draw a manga/comic/graphical story every two months. To prove a few things within our teacher's eyes. [i]1.)[/i] Level of commitment. [i]2.)[/i] How well we do under pressure to get something that one could spend years on. And have it done right. [i]3.)[/i] Creativity, both in plot and drawing styles and techniques.

I'm, mainly, a BG and effects artist. I practice drawing manga more then I have to due to this. It also me to practice at something I'm good at and something I'm terrible at. I'll draw even when I hate the concept, due to wanting to get better.

I'd guess, that I like drawing manga to try and improve my self in certain artistic areas. Plot and character development, angles/mathematics, arrangements of characters, trying new and different styles, etc.[/SIZE]
[/COLOR]

[klinanime1]

A lot of "'cause I like to"s out there, and it reassures me that the next generation of mangaka will show as much dedication as the present. There's also a lot of "manga as last artistic hope"s, which commends the artistic talent out there. (hope that made sense... dead tired here)

btw, BLUE--- look at your avi and tell me you aren't obsessed.

[asian_tofu]

[QUOTE=klinanime1]A lot of "'cause I like to"s out there, and it reassures me that the next generation of mangaka will show as much dedication as the present. There's also a lot of "manga as last artistic hope"s, which commends the artistic talent out there. (hope that made sense... dead tired here)

btw, BLUE--- look at your avi and tell me you aren't obsessed.[/QUOTE]

Ok then, here's a tough one. [b]Why do you like to (Other than the fact that you like anime and manga)?[/b] Or, why do you like anime ('course, that would be a different thread altogether). It's all about the conveniences in drawing animanga that I don't get in real-life. Everything's much more simplified.

--BLUE

P.S. Klin, look at my sig. That is total proof I am not obsessed. :rolleyes:

[Mage_Rikku]

I like to draw because...I like making my own characters and designing their weapons ,etc..
I usually make a manga with my friends that way we can have our own characters, it's always a good thing to have extra help with drawing so many backgrounds and weapons.

[klinanime1]

Um. BLUE... I'm confused. Are you asking me, or are you asking people in general, because if it's people in general, that's the topic of this thread. What's your incentive to draw manga. INCENTIVE. Your innermost reason, selfish or otherwise, for drawing manga. That's what I was hoping to get at. (And the Psych course doesn't begin until next semester...) Yeah...
If you were asking me:
[QUOTE]Personally, my incentive to draw is because I like it, but my incentive to draw manga is to get my thoughts out there for critiques and I suppose, sadly enough, for praise.[/QUOTE] In other words, hope for a reputation to get a job I won't tear my eyes out in. In more words, fame towards a blissful future. (ouch, sounded shallow...)
Rubs head... I didn't think I had anything insulting in that last post, did I? What was the "okay, then" for? I think that's what really confused me.

[asian_tofu]

The "OK then" is just a choice of words of mine. I don't think the wording was correct in my question either...ehehe. Must have been because I'd just finished my math homework then; never one of my favorite subjects. :flaming: Stupid...math...

[ahem] Then there's also the fact that I draw because I have the smallest amount of talent in that category. I like to make any found talent of mine "flourish," so to speak. Thoughts or ideas of mine are usually snatched away by the writing muse...*sigh*


--BLUE

P.S. If I'm not making sense again, blame it on 5 hours of sleep and stunted growth. :sleep:

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

I draw manga because I'm one of those pathetic Americans who thinks he'll be more Japanese or something by emulating the easiest-to-emulate artwork out there. No, just kidding. I draw a tiny bit of it, but yeah mostly because it's easy. Seriously.

Manga is easy-as-heck to draw, for the most part (the exception being that the backgrounds are often as detailed as anywhere, and then there's Oh My Goddess! which is overall very intricately detailed). That's why people do it so much. There's "entertainment-purpose" art out there that is hundreds, thousands of times better. But it's friggin hardcore awesome art, the product of true professionalism.

Little kids draw Naruto or Goku or that damn rat Pikachu all the time nowadays. A decade ago kids drew the then-popular and easy-to-draw character, Bart Simpson, all over the place.

I think that once kids reach a certain age, they realize their own artistic limitations. Kids stop drawing Batman, animals, etc. because they notice that the pros do it spectacularly and they'll never measure up. But something like anime or manga, well, there's a formulaic approach to the style that is very easy to grasp. That's a good part of the reason the style was so universally adopted by Japanese professional artists who had to pump out tons of material non-stop. The faces are doll-like and static, and easy to draw over and over consistently. (I'm not saying professional manga and anime artists are bad; you can tell most of them are really good; but they draw in a style that is easy and quick and of course they know it.)

So basically--and I'm not saying this is true of everyone, but of a lot of people who might not even realize it or admit it--people here draw manga so much [i]because they can[/i]. That's why you'll find that most of the truly GOOD artists in the crowd go ahead and draw more difficult standalone art rather than copy pictures from manga (...which I did, lol, and I guess I'm saying I'm not a good artist, but then again that's true). They might occasionally draw an anime character they like, but they'll do a damn fine job of it for one thing, and then they'll go back to designing cars or painting fantasy art or drawing John Lennon's portrait or something.

[CrimsonDreamer]

[QUOTE=ScirosDarkblade]I draw manga because I'm one of those pathetic Americans who thinks he'll be more Japanese or something by emulating the easiest-to-emulate artwork out there. No, just kidding. I draw a tiny bit of it, but yeah mostly because it's easy. Seriously.

Manga is easy-as-heck to draw, for the most part (the exception being that the backgrounds are often as detailed as anywhere, and then there's Oh My Goddess! which is overall very intricately detailed). That's why people do it so much. There's "entertainment-purpose" art out there that is hundreds, thousands of times better. But it's friggin hardcore awesome art, the product of true professionalism.[/QUOTE]


I personally draw manga because of the story. Like any good story-teller of any era, they feel a drive, a compelling to tell a story that is trapped inside of them. I feel the manga style is formatted perfectly for these kinds of stories. It expresses a characters emotions in a way that American comics simply don't do. Most of the comic work that goes on nowadays that is the most dynamic is either cartoon/Disney based,though more realistically done (i.e. the new Spiderman), or done in at least a semi-anime style (ie, Mike Weringo, of Torch and Fantastic Four fame). I also think that manga has better design qualities and panelling than almost any other form of comic art (with the obvious exception of manhwa and mangwha, Chinese and Korean manga that is obviously based off of the style.).

But GOOD manga is in NO WAY easy to draw. Manga, unlike any other comic, is like a collection of carefully integrated graphic designs. Right down to the panelling. Bad art is far easier to come by nowadays, but anyone reading lesser known manga like Under that Glass Moon and Les Bijoux, or even popular CLAMP novels like X/1999 or Tokyo Babtlon, is essentially reading a story within the confines of a carefully plotted graphic layout. This is the reason that in Manga panels, the speech bubbles are drawn in along with the frame, because to do so afterwards would add a previously unrelated design element that could offset the balance, a balance that is all to easily shifted and makes the page look "funny."

As for being quick and easy, it may take the average comic book artist a day to finish a single page and get it ready and off to print ( from concept, to sketch, to ink, color and copy...) but good manga artists may take weeks to deisgn a singel page, hours upon hours to do a single panel (from concept, to sketch, to ink, to copy, to tone, to set, to copy), and in good mang it shows. There are grades of manga just as there are grades of comics. Some suck, some don't. Lumping all manga into the "quick and easy" categaory is wrong and very unfair to the artist that carefuly craft each panel for information as well as emetion and mood.

After three combined years of art school (and three left till graduating with two degrees...) at two different universities in two different states, experimenting with hundreds of different styles, I find that I cannot wholly get rid of the anime/manga influence in my work. But that does not bother me. Because I know WHY manga is so appealing, I also know why I do WANT to get rid of that influence. No matter how much I do with Modern, Post Modern, Sci-Fi/Fantasy or even Portrait Art, I still come back to manga because it is the some of the most graphically stunning works I have ever seen.

Not to say that every other form of comic in the work is inferior, but it's like comparing pointilism to realism...it's no less beautiful, just different.

[hitokiri battosai]

I've always loved to read manga. About four years ago I started drawing all the time. It was my favorite thing to do. One day I just decided that I would try to make my own manga.

The first manga I ever drew was so horrible I didn't show it to anyone. It was like that for the first few times. I kept practicing and eventually I got pretty good at it

I guess I just kept drawing because I love it

[vegeta rocker]

Drawing manga is easy? :laugh:

Maybe drawing bad manga.

ScirosDarkblade i have never heard you make such disregarding remarks about something as important as this. if you think drawing manga is easy i would love to see some of your artwork. I haven't but if you have some posted let me know.

The paneling in some manga is simply gorgeous and i just can't fathom why you would even bring this up. Some manga has bad paneling but a lot has great design behind it. Like Mars by Fuuyumi Soryo, that manga has gorgeous paneling and great design. That obviously took awhile.

Your post just dumbfounded me.

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

[quote name='vegeta rocker']...Maybe drawing bad manga.[/quote]
I was speaking in relative terms. The reason the anime style was developed was because it allowed for simple replication. It was borrowed from Disney cartoons, after all. The style IS formulaic, as far as drawing people goes. I consider Oh My Goddess! to be one of the best-drawn manga out there, and even there the characters are only somewhat challenging to draw because of their intricate hair.

[QUOTE]ScirosDarkblade i have never heard you make such disregarding remarks about something as important as this. if you think drawing manga is easy i would love to see some of your artwork. I haven't but if you have some posted let me know.[/QUOTE]
There isn't much, but there's some at my [URL=http://www.sciros.net][COLOR=blue]website[/COLOR][/URL]. Now, I suppose I should clear some things up. When I talk about manga being easy to draw, I mean the characters. After all, when someone asks, "why do you draw manga," well, most "fans" that do simply draw the characters. As far as backgrounds go, I already mentioned that they're as detailed as anywhere else (meaning just as hard/easy to draw, depending on how you look at it). And paneling, well, that's tough for some people and not for others. It's not something I would make any generalizing statement about. And to be honest, a lot of shounen and cross-gender manga uses very simple paneling, actually.

[QUOTE]The paneling in some manga is simply gorgeous and i just can't fathom why you would even bring this up. Some manga has bad paneling but a lot has great design behind it. Like Mars by Fuuyumi Soryo, that manga has gorgeous paneling and great design. That obviously took awhile. [/QUOTE]
How long it took doesn't matter. Drawing a cartoon takes a while, but it might be as dirt-simple as DBZ when it comes to the actual drawing involved. I agree that sometimes panel arrangement is a tricky business, but that's not what I was talking about when I said drawing manga was easy.

And, relatively speaking, I still hold that drawing manga is easy. Even if you compare it to American comics, it doesn't stand out as anything more difficult. Panel arrangement is not disregarded on this side of the Pacific, after all. Compared to the "best" of American comics, such as Alex Ross's and Christopher Moeller's work, I can't think of a single manga that compares in overall quality (except writing, heh).

But I wasn't even comparing manga to comics. I was comparing it to the whole of "entertainment purpose" art. And manga is definitely on the "easy to draw" side of that spectrum; I can't understand how you would deny that. Do you have an easy-as-pie time emulating Greg and Tim Hildebrandt's work but trouble drawing manga?

EDIT: As a final note, I'd like you to mention to me what you believe to be a "top grade" manga, artwork-wise. I would also like you to tell me whether you see too many people that would respond to "why do you draw manga?" on these boards drawing such manga themselves. Maybe they do, I don't know.

[CrimsonDreamer]

[quote name='ScirosDarkblade']I was speaking in relative terms. The reason the anime style was developed was because it allowed for simple replication. It was borrowed from Disney cartoons, after all. The style IS formulaic, as far as drawing people goes. I consider Oh My Goddess! to be one of the best-drawn manga out there, and even there the characters are only somewhat challenging to draw because of their intricate hair.[/quote]

You might wanna take a history lesson here, because manga was developed as a teaching aid way back after the end of Wold War II because much of the populace had an educational level that made complex manuals and systems materials hard to fathom. The impending recession and rebuilding called for skilled workers that could get the job done qickly and porperly, and the best was was to make illustrated manuals. Many humourous mangas started as workplace humour meant to lighten the spirits of people too poor to afford things like TVs. These were four panel strips that eventually got compiled into miniature mangas, much like our modern day funny strips.


That said, Lumping all manga into a single category is simply wrong. Saying it is formulaic is just as bad. Saying that all manga characters look alike or seem alike is understandable, because that STYLE has been ingranged into the culture. The same is true for American comics. All American comics could be categorized under hyper-sexuality. We feel the extreme need to display hyper-masulinity and hyper femininity in the form of big boobs and huge hips, and torsos on male body that are not anatomically possible. Take a look at Superman lately? His pectoril muscle is bigger than his head.

As for the crack at Disney, did you watch, oh, Treasure Planet? Or Titan A.E. (A don Bluthe Film)? Each of those full length features was most definitely manga/anime influenced. American most certainly is taking back from an evolving art. Even lesser known cartoon that may be brought to light would be Warriors of Luna or Molly, Star Chaser, two beatiful pieces done in France.

And if you STILL think that drawing manga is easy, take a look at ANYTHING done by CLAMP. Their character designs (true character designs before simplifacation for the televsion) are as complex and beautiful as they are needed. Each character's wardrobe is specifically suited to their personality. The shoulders on more masculine characters are precisely three heads wide (despite not being of human properties, are consistenet and look strange whenever they are done wrong). All characters have standard porportional legs for fashion design (20% longer in length) and all of which are carefully crafted for effect. If any one of these elements are done wrong, the characters are no longer their characters. Think of all the character elements that have gone into Ghost in the Shell. Have you taken a look at the characters designs for Masume Shirow's Bullistics, or Intron Depot.

You cannot base your judgment of an entire artform just off of a few popular series (AKA Pokemon and DBZ) and yes, even Oh My Goddess is realatively popular.

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

[quote name='CrimsonDreamer']You might wanna take a history lesson here, because manga was developed as a teaching aid way back after the end of Wold War II because much of the populace had an educational level that made complex manuals and systems materials hard to fathom. The impending recession and rebuilding called for skilled workers that could get the job done qickly and porperly, and the best was was to make illustrated manuals. Many humourous mangas started as workplace humour meant to lighten the spirits of people too poor to afford things like TVs. These were four panel strips that eventually got compiled into miniature mangas, much like our modern day funny strips.[/quote]
Thanks for that one, as if I didn't know it and as if it makes any difference in this discussion. We're talking about the development of the artform, not how it was applied throughout its history.

[QUOTE]That said, Lumping all manga into a single category is simply wrong. Saying it is formulaic is just as bad. Saying that all manga characters look alike or seem alike is understandable, because that STYLE has been ingranged into the culture. The same is true for American comics. All American comics could be categorized under hyper-sexuality. We feel the extreme need to display hyper-masulinity and hyper femininity in the form of big boobs and huge hips, and torsos on male body that are not anatomically possible. Take a look at Superman lately? His pectoril muscle is bigger than his head.[/QUOTE]
Hypersexuality does not make the drawing process itself formulaic, and this whole discussion is about drawing. And you must have misread my posts, because here I'm talking about drawing manga characters, to which there is definitely a formulaic approach in manga. It's not a bad thing, but it's not something you can deny. The term "formulaic" is not derogatory, it simply describes the process. And it this sense, drawing any comic book character becomes formulaic to a degree, although I think it is more so in manga, because in American comics consistency as far as character appearance goes is a big problem. As for your hypersexuality comments, you probably shouldn't have brought them up. For one, you can't group every American comic under hyper-sexuality. You're falling into the same hole you accuse me of falling into if you do that. Secondly, you can't even do that with Superman comics, heh, because while certain Superman titles do drawn him very disproportionately, Ross does not.

[QUOTE]As for the crack at Disney, did you watch, oh, Treasure Planet? Or Titan A.E. (A don Bluthe Film)? Each of those full length features was most definitely manga/anime influenced. American most certainly is taking back from an evolving art. Even lesser known cartoon that may be brought to light would be Warriors of Luna or Molly, Star Chaser, two beatiful pieces done in France.[/QUOTE]
I didn't take a crack at Disney. I said Disney originally influenced the manga art style, which is actually common knowledge. Sure, at this point everyone borrows from everyone (as it should be), but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by pointing that out.

[QUOTE]And if you STILL think that drawing manga is easy, take a look at ANYTHING done by CLAMP. Their character designs (true character designs before simplifacation for the televsion) are as complex and beautiful as they are needed. Each character's wardrobe is specifically suited to their personality. The shoulders on more masculine characters are precisely three heads wide (despite not being of human properties, are consistenet and look strange whenever they are done wrong). All characters have standard porportional legs for fashion design (20% longer in length) and all of which are carefully crafted for effect. If any one of these elements are done wrong, the characters are no longer their characters. Think of all the character elements that have gone into Ghost in the Shell. Have you taken a look at the characters designs for Masume Shirow's Bullistics, or Intron Depot. [/QUOTE]
Why does character-specific costume design suddenly mean drawing the characters is difficult? It doesn't. As for describing the very ...formulaic... approach they use in their body design, well I'm not sure what you were trying to tell me there. And believe me, I've seen plenty of CLAMP's work, and I wasn't particularly impressed. I think Oh My Goddess! is far better done. As for Ballistics and so forth, well if you're talking about the full-color collections, then sure those are good and difficult to create. Same goes for Sadamoto's and Fujishima's and a bunch of others' color works. But here you're talking about exceptions, basically. Certainly exceptions when it comes to what manga fans draw. You didn't answer my question in my last post, about the kind of artwork you think is good and whether too many manga fans emulate it. How many images from Der Monde do you see in the MyOtaku fanart section?

[QUOTE]You cannot base your judgment of an entire artform just off of a few popular series (AKA Pokemon and DBZ) and yes, even Oh My Goddess is realatively popular.[/QUOTE]
I never said I was. You assume that just because I mention well-known series in my posts. And the reason I mentioned a number of them was to point out what most manga fans draw.

[Dielover]

I suppose I draw/ write manga because it gives me a way to express myself. My friend thinks I should go and be a prol because of the money, but I don't want to be a manga artist because of the money I want to be a manga artist because I could do the two things I love to do most of all as my job. Writing and drawing. ;)

[sakurasuka]

[B][SIZE=1][COLOR=DarkGreen][FONT=Franklin Gothic Medium]You know, Sciros does make a compelling arguement, I know 'cause I tried drawing real true-to-life portraits and things (My mom's a great artist and I wanted to be like her ^^) But I always liked Manga-style more, and it always came more naturally and easier for me. I do believe it takes loads of talent and patience to be a Manga artist, no, I re-phrase that, it takes loads of talent and patience to be a good artist, Manga or otherwise.

I enjoy drawing in general. Manga though, is something I want to pursue rather than any other art. I'd much rather draw a Manga-style comic than any other style of art 'cause I like it more. Super simple.

And I, for one, have a certain amount of dislike for most American comics, (Superman, Batman, etc.) mostly because they portray everyone in thier own 'perfection' through the artist's eyes.(As CrimsonDreamer said.) Nothing against the comix themselves, just sayin' there's enough in this world to make people feel self-concious and those kinds of art styles don't help.[/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE][/B]

[AnimeForever198]

[FONT=Arial Black]It's not just drawing because you love to draw, drawing Anime is a passion the few people hold. It's another way to express your love towards Anime. So what if you can't draw good and are very ashamed of that crappy hand or foot you just drew. It's what you think.
Wow. I'm very emtional today. Usually I'd be like this: :D :wigout: :devil: :laugh: :p So. You get the point. [/FONT] [COLOR=Lime]undefined[/COLOR

[xmystic_silverx]

I guess there is not really a reason for 'why' I draw manga. I just really enjoy it and it's just something to do in my spare time.

Recently, I've been drawing because people want me to draw for them and I do it because I'm not too bad it.

Besides, I gotta be good at something. Everything can do something that someone else can't and drawing is what I'm good at when it comes to my friends, or so they say.