Manga Making!

[Baqly]

HI! Welcome to this thread! I wanted to make this thread to give a way for the people interested in making their own comic or manga to talk about them, and the general sharing of resources and etc.​

Well then, let's start?​

I've generally have been reading manga for quite some time now, I think my earliest memories are from 2016, I remember I registered on this site around when batoto died, not necessarily I used batoto, but because a manga I was reading in an aggregator site talked about this place.​

I have some experience doing art, and through my journey of reading manga, I've had some ideas of things I'd like to see, but didn't necessarily felt ready to make them.

Be it from a harem manga focusing on the "mc" childhood friend and how absurd she finds the situation, and at the end giving up and becoming his wingman. The comic would obviously make up of harem tropes but it would still try to make the characters likeable you know, anyway.

Another concept that I came up with is called SpiritWave, the main gig of the comic would have been the main characters podcasting together but one of them is a ghost.

Of course that's a mayor simplification of the idea, but there is some concepts I'd like to explore with it. Be it exploring isolation of both characters, and the more supernatural aspects of day to day life, I'm probably going to come back to this concept some day.

So, what are your comic/ manga ideas? Do you have any resources you'd like to share, or some critique for your fellow artist? If you are interested please post something bellow! Thank you for your time!!

 

[Tamerlane]

I've had a few ideas, but I haven't had time to do any of them because of schooling.

I tend to focus more on the writing aspect though I do have backgrounds in art and specifically adobe illustrator.

One of the mangas I've really wanted to write is about a childhood friend tsundere and her crush.

Spoiler

The story starts out like your typical slice of life manga, but over the course of the first few chapters we get insights into the male lead and it's clear that he's not what he appears to be on the surface. Gradually we see him become more distant and his dialogue hints at darker undertones and thoughts subtly throughout until at one point, the tsundere goes too far in insulting him and beating him and he doesn't show up to school. Feeling guilty, she volunteers to take his homework to him. His door is already unlocked and slightly open, as if someone had recently been there. When she arrives to his house, it's dark and there's empty beer bottles everywhere presumably that had been there awhile. The TV is static whitenoise and the entire place is filthy. We never see his parents in his house, though we see photos with smashed glass on them and similar, as well as their bedroom in similar mess. Eventually the tsundere goes into his room,

Spoiler

we see him attempting to hang himself, with the noose already around his neck and having just kicked the chair over. She rushes over to lift him up to prevent him from choking and the scene cuts to the her waiting outside his hospital room.

The rest of the manga is the tsundere realizing her mistakes and that she doesn't know as much about him as she thought, and gradually the both of them trying to mend their relationship and reform.

I have other ideas for oneshots, though. Like a Medusa girl who falls in love with an autistic boy who can't look her in the eyes, or a Tomboy Oni who's visited by a young boy who asks to be a sacrifice, but she takes him in and as he grows up, she gradually falls in love with him.

A more comedic idea I have would be a harem manga where the MC is sick of the infighting and the harem has to agree to all share him and work together, or none of them will get with him, leading to a situation that is very similar to a shared custody battle between the girls trying to "woo" him.

@Baqly

I'd be interested to see what the central conflict is in Spirtwave. Is it more about them building up a podcast from the ground up and running into issues as they hit things like creative blocks? Or do they have to run a podcast but they keep running into issues because of the platform's strict policy and creative clashes? I'd also want to see how the ghost gimmick translates into the story itself and how that affects the plot.

 

[Richman]

This is tangential to the conversation but some times I end up imagining action scenes of characters that don't exist, suddenly come up with an idea and such. Since I can't write or draw or animate (rip that hobby), they are just flashes that come and go.

 

[Baqly]

@Richman hey its always good to write those concepts down, even if you don't have confidence in creative topics, writing your ideas down and making them physical, makes the creative process a lot easier and kind of less intimidating! so don't worry!

@Tamerlane Well Spiritwave would be a Slice of life/Drama with some shounen aspects of it, The concept was first brought up around uh the beginning of this year when webtoon hosted a webcomic competition, and this was the idea that stick out the most to me, I didn't get around making the comic sadly, which is something I regret, but I'm glad I got the concept out of it.
For the plot

Spoiler

Basically one of the main themes of the story would be isolation and the continuous passage of time, it would focus on the isolation both characters have felt throughout their life, be it growing up without a mother for the girl, and being alone in the school for years for the ghost. The main overarching story for it would be of growth, how both of them grow as people and how they fulfill the whole each other had (no romance).
The main goal for them at least is to get the podcast popular. The podcast would be a sci-fi podcast that tells stories and talks about the supernatural, etc.

I don't really have planned out the day to day occurrences, but if I consider it, probably in the long format, what you suggested could be some good starting point on the minor conflicts within the story, although I don't really want to get cliche with it.
oh yeah and if its made, there will definitely be more supernatural stuff.

 

[Teddy]

Honestly I have a few ideas for stories but dont have the skills to execute them

 

[ReeeMam]

Bad, thighs not thick enough. Doesn’t make pee pee go boing

 

[Baqly]

NOOOOOOOOOOOO (dont worry if i ever make it, the fanservice most likely would come from other characters, not her)

 

[Cruggle]

Looking forward to this,seems good

 

[Flanker_Su27]

I'm looking forwards to it, too! And I got another problem when drawing my own manga: I have LOTS of ideas for LOTS of stories, but barely enough time for one of them...

 

[Baqly]

man thats relatable, for me i have a lot of ideas of projects but right now i already have one currently going on and i don't want to undertake any more much to my dismay

 

[AlchemistJay]

I was able to kick off a printed book on Amazon KDP - deff low-cost approach to getting self-published if you want to go that physical copy route.

This is my process - using CP Studio, Figma, and Affinity