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That's right, as many of you have noticed, rising stars of manga 8 has officially launched with a deadline of january 11th, 2008. Now, I love rising stars of manga, I really do, I think it gives a great chance to we striving manga-kas and really does help the manga revolution here in the U.S.. I've been entering rising stars of manga for the past two years, both of the entries lacked in originality and were as about cliche as orphans in an RPG, and the art was attrocious at best, deadly at worst. Even knowing that while illustrating my entry, I still strived for that 20-page goal. Usually I would wait till december break to start on my entry and would find myself extremely stressed, however, this year, I've learned from my mistakes.
I guess the most fitting thing to do now is to tell how I've improved. 1. My story this year is killer, quite litterally. It's a horror/mystery with plenty of suspense and brutality to make your mother's head spin. However, It's not that easy to create a horror story with the ill-defined not-so-gruesome-violence rule. So, needless to say, I'm walking a fine line with this one. 2.My art has improved dramatically. Last year I was working with photoshop elements 3.0, the one I got with my tablet. It took forever to lay out pages and even longer to draw the art with a great line quality. This year, I've upgraded. Not only did I get a new laptop (windows vista sucks a**, just as a side note), but I also got manga studio 3 debut. It has made panelling 10x easier at least, and with all the toner/pen options, I could die from satisfaction alone. It has made my computer-generated art step up a level to a point where the line-quality is, if I say so myself, professional-grade. (that's not saying anything about the art, but with the line quality and general neatness) 3. I'm prepared and starting early. Like I've previously stated, last year, I waited till a little less than a month before, however, this year, I'm starting well, about 2 weeks ago. I'm already about 60% completed and am taking my time. Why did I start so early? That brings me to my fourth point. 4. I'm creating multiple stories, each with a stunning plot and ending, if I do say so myself, and am putting my best foot foreward for this competition. I have, so far, a horror/mystery, a horror/action, and a drama/romance/action story lined up thus far, and am playing around with an action/mystery/horror story, too. That's right, I plan to at least complete 3 stories and choose the best of them.
What is this all for? Well, this is the most anyone here has heard about me, so to give the low-down on this subject, here's another paragraph. I really have aspired to become a manga-ka since, well, freshman year in high school. I was a still-life artist who was told that I would never be able to master the sequential arts by one of my friends, who was worse than I at still life, but better than I at sequential art. So, I took her up on that would-be challenge. I fell in love instantly, it combined two of my loves: art, and writing. Since then I've been striving my best to become a manga-ka, hell I even started writing my would-be full-length story, in case the chance ever came to pitch it to a publisher. I've been working on it for about 4 years now and would love nothing more than to see it get published. That same friend later told me about this competition, so I looked into it and started drawing an entry each year... and here I am.
I'm drawing 3 entries this year so I have some extra sequential art for my portfolio and so that next year, come san diego comic con, I can have some of the Tpop editors review said portfolio and give me helpful hints.
So, there you have it. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, just ask me. I plan on entering more blogs, so feel free to keep up with them.
 haruki_jitsunin · Sun Aug 19, 2007 @ 09:33am · 0 Comments |
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