Crater – Ambitious Manga project
I always wanted to create a manga, but to get there I first need to get better at drawing. That was my thought process when I first began making this project. So, let the training arc begin! You can find the rough draft of the manga here: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/882b1387fb.html
Some time ago I started drawing, I was down on my luck and I needed something to keep me distracted. So I started drawing. I have been a fan of anime and manga for a long time already and when I continued drawing my goals started to get bigger and bigger. So when this project came along I immediately knew what to do.
It was an ambitious project since I wasn’t all that good at drawing just yet, but it served as an opportunity to get better so I have a lot of learning pages. The project was not just about creating manga, but the road to being able to make one. I have spent a lot of hours watching YouTube videos and practicing and almost everyday I started drawing.
Practise
These are just some of the practise pages, to place them all the whole site would overload.
Even when creating the manga I messed around with different design ideas and in general how to get better. I tried to figure draw everyday or at least pick up the pencil every single day.
There are also pages with me just trying to practice certain skills like bodies, hands, eyes and expressions. I spent a lot of time on perspective. I got way better at them now!
The manga is not ready without some character designs so I made some and they went through some updates the longer the project went on. Until I eventually had to choose the final designs.
Designs
For these characters I also had to write some backstories to make their characters make sense in the story. Also the world that they live in. Important groups and why the story is happening. I spent time on researching how stories typically go and brainstormed on cool ideas for stories and after some time I can summarize the story into this:
Crater Plot Idea:
The story will follow Usagi a Moon-bunny that got transfered into a human due to malfunctions in technology. They would get picked up by the military in the future, because their nose is able to pickup the scent of the meteors they are trying to research. Together with Maud and Johnny they will research the meteors and run into different groups of survivors in this artic wasteland destroyed by meteors. Usagi hopes to find their owner. Neil Armstrong. Johnny will search for the first meteor to honor his lost daughter and Maud will finally know what happend to her family while protecting the family that she gained in the military.
Groups:
There are various groups in this world.
- Komitet po sderzhivaniyu i obrazovaniyu (K.S.O). A secret russian military group that tries to protect things that come inside the meteors.
- Aerospace Research Centre (A.R.C). The underfunded research group Usagi and crew belongs to.
- Church of the coming. A Religion that worships the meteors and has a wide following. Johnny originally belongs to this group.
These groups are the main groups that have a lot of effect on the story.
The story will follow Usagi and their adventures in this new world. It’s far from finished, but when I get even better at drawing I will finish this project with a higher quality! In a short amount of time I also got way better at drawing so I am looking forward to how the future of my drawings look.
(vha)
Idea:
I wanted to make a manga or at least the first few pages of manga, but I knew I had to first get better at art to make that happen. So I wanted it to become training to eventually finish something cool!
Process:
I started with drawing just for the sake of drawing, just to get me into a rythm. While I was doing that I also took the rest of the time to sketch a story and a world around it. I also was thinking about the characters and what the characters should be like and think about how they got to this point. I showed my friends and some people online my process to get some feedback and then I adjusted myself and the stories to the feedback. Once I had done that I would start beginning character designs that would fit the stories. This as well I showed to people to get feedback and implimented it. In the end I came up with 3 character designs. Which I am still not happy with but I had to continue otherwise I’ll be too much of a perfectionist. While I was doing that I also made a quick storyboard for the manga and how things should go. After that It was time to start drawing the manga. I quickly noticed I still wasn’t good enough to draw in a consitant way. So I was losing motivation for the project. I kept going against my will, because still a perfectionistic part of me wanted something better and then I would need more time to improve.
I asked around for what I could do to battle this and the answers gave me some motivation, however now I had the feeling I couldn’t get the quality like the first panel at all. So I asked for what I should do for that and it gave me more room to breathe and actually have fun with this project.
Learnings:
- I learned how to learn art in a more streamlined way
- I learned the basics of character design
- I learned how to make manga panels and the idea behind them
- I Learned that I can ask people for feedback when I want
End Product and my reflection upon it:
In the end I think the project was a success and failure at the same time. I didn’t get the product to the end stages that I wanted, but I did achieve the goal of being better at art. I also found a lot of inspiration in and I definitely want to get better at drawing. Even on the road that the world is heading right now with the rise of A.I. I just had a lot of fun drawing in general. I wish the manga was a bit more polished and in general way better with the panelling, but I still can make some much new stuff that eventually I want to redraw it with a better story. For that I need to get even better. With this I at least have a basis for the future.