When it comes to starting your own manga, no doubt different people have different approaches, but while they may attack it from different angles, in the long term many of the elements are the same.
If you’ve read lots of manga (or seen tv shows/movies etc) you’ll no doubt have picked up many tips and ideas by studying your favourite characters, settings, storylines and genres etc and this may give you some idea of which direction you want to go with your own manga.
Once you have a general plot idea you’ll also need to come up with your characters, many may do this by spending time drawing different characters until they come up with just what they are looking for. For each character you’ll also want to come up with a profile for them (give them their own backstory, it may never appear in your finished product, but it can help when it comes to fleshing things out)
From there you’ll want to map out your settings including things like buildings and work on perspective etc. Some may choose this time to also layout their panels (a good tip is to draw your characters etc in normal size on a normal size piece of paper and then scan/resize it to fit your panels) Others may just start with rough sketches to get a feel what it will look like before actually fitting to panels and colouring etc.
One big thing to remember though, particularly for beginners, is that it will take time - be prepared to practice (spending some time just drawing different characters or settings etc away from your chosen storyline can be good practice) and patience.
But above all – have fun – whether you want to just write a story for now (and add the manga artwork down the track) or just play around with and learn how to draw manga if you enjoy doing it that’s the most important part – the rest will come.
Posted under Start A Manga