Dolls Nest: ORPHANS - Ch. 2.1 - A Scavenger and a Pilgrim

[MangaDex]

 

[nutjob]

@Argroh
Typo on page 33:
svacenging > scavenging

 

[Argroh]

@Argroh
Typo on page 33:
svacenging > scavenging

Scanlator's working on it, should be fixed by the morrow or so.

 

[Captival]

Is this just BLAME but with lolis? Artist is really good at those dark massive backgrounds.

 

[zetsuravez]

The art is great... Interesting story...

 

[chickenstalker]

The art is great... Interesting story...

Agreed. But a bit stilted between action scenes, like it's missing some panels. Bookmarked because I'm a sucker for any modern scifi that's non-isekai.

 

[dual5678]

Is this just BLAME but with lolis? Artist is really good at those dark massive backgrounds.

Its based on the Dolls nest videogame. Most of the game takes place in a megastructure, but the characters are mecha musume. Gameplay wise its like old Armored Core, with map design of Dark Souls.

Story telling is pretty sparse with most of the world building and lore in flavor text of items/weapons/frames. Its actually refreshing to see whats happening between the other factions.

 

[totallytotally]

Neat, the art is fantastic, if a bit disjointed. I played the game to death, so thanks for the release.

 

[Junomano]

Agreed. But a bit stilted between action scenes, like it's missing some panels. Bookmarked because I'm a sucker for any modern scifi that's non-isekai.

the fantasy fatigue, i also like scifi more because of that fatigue

 

[Black_Percher]

Just wanna say I recommend the game if you are into BLAME! but with mecha-musume. Genuinely lots of megalophobia moments.

 

[Saswitz]

Sadly (or gladly, as its already running low on performance and adding gib and blood particles would literally kill it) the original game lacks all this gore-porn manga has. But the story and lore is lovely.

 

[Mangamoz]

Blame but boobs.

Yes please.

 

[silentstryker35]

wow... this steam game got a manga?? neat

 

[Udooky]

Tell your typesetters to learn basic typesetting etiquette.

Come on, there are literal guides on this website itself.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/323f09fd-8e16-4c82-887b-25903e28ffef/1

 

[Saswitz]

Tell your typesetters to learn basic typesetting etiquette.

Come on, there are literal guides on this website itself.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/323f09fd-8e16-4c82-887b-25903e28ffef/1

thank you! This is my first ever manga translation i worked on. i generally try to get the shapes right but when it comes to bubble-less text most of the times im only worried to properly cover the areas that i haven managed to clear good enough.

 

[Udooky]

thank you! This is my first ever manga translation i worked on. i generally try to get the shapes right but when it comes to bubble-less text most of the times im only worried to properly cover the areas that i haven managed to clear good enough.

Which program to use, font selection and stylistic touches are more subjective, so there's no hard rule on those but the following rules are practically non-negotiable.

1. Center your text shapes. Don't leave them indented to either left or right. There are fringe cases when you're typesetting something like a letter or message, so some kind formalized indented format is utilized. But for most speech/dialogue/thought text cases, it needs to be centered.
2. Do not ever crowd a speech bubble. Find a reasonable space. Don't do paragraph breaks in the same bubble too. Text in a bubble generally much preferred to be one consistent shape with the speech bubble itself. Take a look at Western Comics, Official Manga translation (or experienced scanlations) or even the raws. The text blurb is one shape and give decent breathing space between the blurb itself and the bubble. Your chapter 1 where the Seedling is talking to the terminal and the page where Hati does an exposition dump is rather painful to look at. I know that the Comic Walker raws are tiny as shit and so the massive info dump is hard to squeeze in there (this is a reason why groups generally prefer getting higher resolution raws to work with first as the bigger pages are easier to work with on top of the higher quality in the first place), but if you're really resolved to use the current available raws, then find a proper sweet spot between still maintainng text readibility and not making things look horrible. Do word breaks, or find ways to rephrase and choose words to still deliver the same message while keeping the same clean looking bubbles.

And this is me being old fashioned and coming from the old guard of 100% anonymous scanlations, but put your group/credit page as the last page. The star of a manga should always be the manga first and foremost. If you click a chapter and the first thing you see is something that isn't the manga, then that leaves a bad taste. If you ask me, credit/group pages shouldn't be there in the first place. But I won't fault people for wanting credit, appreciation or advertisement for stuff they do. So if you really gotta do it, keep it to the last page.

im only worried to properly cover the areas that i haven managed to clear good enough.

Here's a cheeky little cheat that's old as time. Just do the text overlay first for bubble-less text. And then specifically place them over the parts that's the biggest pain in the ass to redraw (as long as it's not wholly different from the way the original Japanese text is positioned). Then just redraw/clone tool over the parts in the background that's sticking out from behind the text.

 

[Saswitz]

Which program to use, font selection and stylistic touches are more subjective, so there's no hard rule on those but the following rules are practically non-negotiable.

1. Center your text shapes. Don't leave them indented to either left or right. There are fringe cases when you're typesetting something like a letter or message, so some kind formalized indented format is utilized. But for most speech/dialogue/thought text cases, it needs to be centered.
2. Do not ever crowd a speech bubble. Find a reasonable space. Don't do paragraph breaks in the same bubble too. Text in a bubble generally much preferred to be one consistent shape with the speech bubble itself. Take a look at Western Comics, Official Manga translation (or experienced scanlations) or even the raws. The text blurb is one shape and give decent breathing space between the blurb itself and the bubble. Your chapter 1 where the Seedling is talking to the terminal and the page where Hati does an exposition dump is rather painful to look at. I know that the Comic Walker raws are tiny as shit and so the massive info dump is hard to squeeze in there (this is a reason why groups generally prefer getting higher resolution raws to work with first as the bigger pages are easier to work with on top of the higher quality in the first place), but if you're really resolved to use the current available raws, then find a proper sweet spot between still maintainng text readibility and not making things look horrible. Do word breaks, or find ways to rephrase and choose words to still deliver the same message while keeping the same clean looking bubbles.

And this is me being old fashioned and coming from the old guard of 100% anonymous scanlations, but put your group/credit page as the last page. The star of a manga should always be the manga first and foremost. If you click a chapter and the first thing you see is something that isn't the manga, then that leaves a bad taste. If you ask me, credit/group pages shouldn't be there in the first place. But I won't fault people for wanting credit, appreciation or advertisement for stuff they do. So if you really gotta do it, keep it to the last page.


Here's a cheeky little cheat that's old as time. Just do the text overlay first for bubble-less text. And then specifically place them over the parts that's the biggest pain in the ass to redraw (as long as it's not wholly different from the way the original Japanese text is positioned). Then just redraw/clone tool over the parts in the background that's sticking out from behind the text.

yeaaahhh, fitting text right gonna be a pain in the ass, as it often just dont want to assemble into a coherent shape. in russian i at least have a getaway wildcard being able to split words and transfer them on the next line however i want. as far as i understand, its not a thing in english.

 

[Tomzai]

It's peak
Buy Dolls Nest

 

[Udooky]

being able to split words and transfer them on the next line however i want. as far as i understand, its not a thing in english.

Normally no. Word line break hyphenations happen very rarely in non-Japanese comics because they have free reign on how to create the bubble in the first place, but it does still happen sometimes in the event of constrained space. Though it's rather common in western translations of manga since manga was made with vertical Japanese text in mind, so bubbles are thinner than usual (and it's a problem quite commonly encountered in 4koma style manga too) and people have to make compromises.

Spoiler

Some examples from an old English comic, Fan Translation of a 4koma manga and official translation of a manga.

Ideally, situations like these are to be avoided as much as possible. Hence the suggestion to switch up words or rephrase things. But when push comes to shove and space is scant, word breaks can't be avoided.
Also in the official English Translation example, here's an interesting use case of playing with the "no paragraph breaks in the same bubble" rule. It seems that it broke the rule, but actually it didn't because it's actually technically three different bubbles fused together. Space is at a premium here, so you can see how they attempted to work with the space they're given with and still tried their best to make the bubble look clean.

 

[Saswitz]

Normally no. Word line break hyphenations happen very rarely in non-Japanese comics because they have free reign on how to create the bubble in the first place, but it does still happen sometimes in the event of constrained space. Though it's rather common in western translations of manga since manga was made with vertical Japanese text in mind, so bubbles are thinner than usual (and it's a problem quite commonly encountered in 4koma style manga too) and people have to make compromises.

Spoiler

Some examples from an old English comic, Fan Translation of a 4koma manga and official translation of a manga.

Ideally, situations like these are to be avoided as much as possible. Hence the suggestion to switch up words or rephrase things. But when push comes to shove and space is scant, word breaks can't be avoided.
Also in the official English Translation example, here's an interesting use case of playing with the "no paragraph breaks in the same bubble" rule. It seems that it broke the rule, but actually it didn't because it's actually technically three different bubbles fused together. Space is at a premium here, so you can see how they attempted to work with the space they're given with and still tried their best to make the bubble look clean.

Thank you a lot!