F =============== A =================== Q

A:  mayshing.deviantart.com/journa…


0f: I'm an aspiring student, do you have advice for webcomic/animation?
A: mayshing.deviantart.com/journa…


Technical things:

FAQ #511: How do I post thumbnails of my art on the Chat Network or Forums?




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>>>>:ANIMATION Related:
1. What do you use to do animation?

A: My hands, my brain, pencils, animation paper, light table, animation pegs, scanner, after effects, tablet, and flash.
I do most of my rough animation in flash.
Coloring tools includes photoshop, and painter. Inking tool, Paint tool Sai, Flash, and Photoshop. Sometimes I use maya/3D max too... (but I am not good with 3D yet)


2. Will you make a tutorial on how to animate?

A: You caaaan pray to the google goddess to give you other tutorials. I would suggest these links:
www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/w…
www.scribd.com/doc/5445343/the…
www.cartoonsolutions.com/store…
www.how2machinima.com/lipsync.…

A tutorial on how to animate hair and eye blink by Nachooz
fav.me/d2s7klx

and this guy's tutorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWiv1l…

Download flash, or use Photoshop animating program will work, get to those practices.
Other wise, I am not into teaching animation unless it's a paid commission or if you end up on my production team. XD
It's simply not a skill that can be taught all in one shot tutorials,
either you take a few years self-study this, or pay tens of thousands to get trained,
and plenty have done great teachings online already.




3. Do you teach animation?

A: I take commission teaching, and if you are helping out my production,
for as long as you stay my knowledge is your benefit to access.

But I am not obligated to teach for free
because teaching is a job that takes time and money to prepare for.



4. What's your export setting for all the gif animations?
A: Export from flash or After effects as mov file, and then import mov file into Photoshop, and then shrink it to desired size, then save for web export as gif. (Mt setting is gif, transparency on, 128 color or 64 color, loop forever.) 


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>>>MANGA RELATED:

0. Why are your mangas right to left?

A: Because I came from Taiwan, a country where it's roots of the language is right to left, and they do their comics/manga right to left. I got used to drawing that way.
Plus, I am left handed, drawing right to left become even easier. I can still do left to right, but usually I won't choose that format unless I need to.




1. What pencil did you use to color?

A: Prang, ($-24) Prisma. ($ 48 ) set


2. What did you use for inking?

A: Micro Sakura pens, with thiness of .005 to .08; dip pen and brushes; G pen for dip pen, a 0 size round acrylic brush.


3. What do you use to CG?

Photoshop, as well as Corel Painter 9, use Illustrator rarely...


4. Why don't you use computer/photoshop to color?  

A: I use both traditional medium and digital equally.
why don't you try some traditional media first? Get out more, it will only benefit you.


5. How do you keep doing manga? I have tried and I just can't keep it going without getting frustrated and restarting.

most ppl start and restart and get stuck because they just can't be satisfied with their work. Manga doesn't work like an illustration where you aim to be perfect the first try. Manga is a marathon where you keep running and don't look back, with steady pace.

If you have issue with the first few pages, don't mind them and fix them on the next set of pages, that's how you keep going.

And for mangaka, the act of getting the story out of your head must be more satisfying than perfection itself, other wise you would just feel defeated and never finish something.

In short, refocus on what is important to you...
Is it getting the story out? Or is it making the art perfect?
If it's making the art perfect, you should just focus on doing illustration and make it good with foundation training. If its getting the story out, then work on that first, perfection comes second, then you will finish 1 chapter in no time.





6. How long did it take you to do one page of manga?

A: It varies. Colored manga like Edepth takes 4 hours per page, pencil manga is average 20-40 mins per page. Inking 20-40 mins depends on complexity. But at highest quality, each page takes about 6-8 hours. Occasionally, a page would torture me for nearly 20 hours due to its illustration aspect.




6.5. How long have you been drawing manga?

A: At age 10 I completed 120 pages of manga, that would be my first long serie, but I did smaller works before that... so..
Over 10 years so far.






7. What kind of paper do you use?

A: most of the time my anime/manga works are done on normal injet printing paper, now I also use 25 pound injet printing paper, because its heavier than the normal 20 pound. For more official work I use A4 size manga paper because it's convenient.





8. Can I do fanart of your characters?

A: Yes, certainly. You don't need my permission to do a fanart as long as you put them as fanart, not your own and credit me properly. And its always good to let me know. I would appreciate that.



However, I do have a few rules:
1. I DON'T like yaoi, yuri, so if you paired up any of my characters on your own, don't show it to me, then we will have peace.

2. I am SERIOUSLY against henti, or any sort of pornographic work done of my characters.

My characters are my brain-child that I have developed through the years, they are my visual family, I can't stand anyone mistreating them.

But I trust most fans of mine are respectful people, I haven't run into any trouble with the fanart. Keep them coming! XD





9. On an avarage of pages, how many panels do you like out of the page?

A: Used to do less than 10, now around 5-6 or less.



10. Did it take you a long time to achieve that many good panels in a comic?

A: You really need to learn the basic art design principle for this.

11. So what was it that inspired you to start making comics?

A: Doraemon. (the manga series) The kind of adventure and things I learned through reading the manga brought me a lot of joy and helped me to dream. I wanted to do the same type of jobs and had started doing comics since 2nd grade in elementary school.

12. Speaking of inspirations, what are some of the most inspiring comics and artists to you?

A: Doraemon, YuYu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書) Death note, Letter Bee, Wolf Rain, Scrolls of the water god (水神祈繪卷) and animated movies from Miyazaki.

Doraemon, Miyazaki and YuYu series decided my story telling genre, and my manga types. (I like making manga with education purpose in mind, offering a bit more than pure entertainment, with plenty of adventure and action.) 

Death note inspired me on drawing. Letter Bee on use of shadow shapes. Wolf Rain, and Scrolls of the Water god inspires me on paneling and layout. 

COMMISSION_________________________________

. How much do you charge for commission?
A:
Prize range depends on complexity + investment on the materials and shipping

See my commission listing:  mayshing.deviantart.com/journa…


+ Can you make an anime for my story?

A: See my commission listing: mayshing.deviantart.com/journa…




>>>>:Illustration related:

1. How long did it take you to CG or color?

A: 4-6 hours upto 30 hours, it depends.




2.how long since u starting to learn drawing?How do you get to be so good?

A: Thank you for the compliment. I started drawing ever since i could pick up a pencil. Just don't stop learning from around you and don't stop practicing. Observation is key to a good artwork.




3. Why is this in scraps?

A: Because...
1. my scrap are usually small piece of artworks done purely for study, or progress showing

2. They are parts of a whole piece that I haven't finish

3. They might just be good copied art.

4. My gallery is for online marketing, I do not want to mess up it's look and overall quality and feel when the users browse it.








-----LONG ANSWERS------

0. nellucnhoj I'm just curious as to what size page you use to draw your comic strips - do you use A3 or A4? Also, do you have your own custom layout when it comes to planning and laying out the panels or do you use the professional technique of drawing your strip within a 'safe zone' on the page?

A: Good Q.

Honestly... most of the time i use 8X11 printer paper. ^^b Since that's the most avaliable size, and alot of self-publishing also offer that sizes too, it's easy on the money.

For professional, contest works, I go by each particular publisher's demand, on the East and the West there are different demands, and each publisher varies just a bit from one another, it's actually quite a royal pain.

For USA based manga, now I follow Tokyopop's layout for Raising Star contests. There are other publishers that use traditional comic layout, that I do not know very well.

For Eastern side manga, I follow Eastern publishers' demand, most of them take A4 with digital works. So I usually work on A4. Although they said pro mangaka works on B4, dojinshi mangaka works on B5.  

For safe zone, I use mainly 3 kinds, A4 safty zone, Tokyopop safty zone on 8X11, and web style. Usually I go by what the publishers prefer, for Edepth however, since its web comic, I decided to stop following that rule for that particular serie since there's very few reasons to. But since I already followed the rule for a long time, I often subconsiously make all my speech bubble stay inside a safty zone even when i draw the layout.

I usually draw my own layout, it gives me more freedom, looking at those blue printed lines just gets on my nerves about staying in the box. X3





Edepth Angel related:

1. How I started Edepth:

"how did you come up with this story?(Edepth Angel)"

A few reasons combined:
1. I was inspired by a nurse in China caring for the nasty people with skin disease, those people weren't friendly, they would fight and bite if they could... but she helped them to form a community with good relationships.

2. I wanted to do a manga with robots, just to challenge myself, knowing most female artists aren't even interested in drawing such a genre. I ended up liking to draw robots after creating None.

I made a basic story of what I wanted to do, and then start to plan it in sketches, I always write my story in sketches form.

Then I go into researching, learning about what's going on in the science world, (since robot is always related to science) read popular science magazine, watch Science channel as I develop the story on a consistent level. But I do feel I am always behind on the news.
Bought a "How to draw manga book" on giant robots and got the concept on designing a robot.... and gave it a few tries until I like my result. I never designed a giant robot for a story before this (other than a few for fun doodles) so I just took my character Lien (Chris) and turn him into a robot, and there's None.


After a year of developing on on the story idea, I started the manga, but continue to develop it as it goes... watching the audience reaction and then make changes at times to my plot, sticking with my original intended flow.

This story is not long compare to my other one, 2Masters.... the ending for Edepth is already planned and decided, I just need to finish the final product.

This is a brief view on how I work:

mayshing.deviantart.com/art/Pr…


My inspiration:
Oh... gosh. hmmm... To try to list where my inspiration come from is probably too narrow. I am used to observing life, people, events... a lot of things in life can serve as an inspiration if one watches for it.  Even boredom.


The kind of schooling:
Community school for 4 years on graphic design and fine arts.
School of Visual Arts, 2D animation major
Self study manga and digital illustration


Getting Edepth publish:
Well, Edepth is only self-published, anyone can do it with lulu.com
Then register with the government on your own copyright, tada, you are published. BAH.
If I can get a fair contract or licensing/distributing for this series nation wide in US then it's a cause for celebration.





2. I just read your comic/manga. And I was going to do one myself and just wondering if you can give me some pionters on how top get th same quality work you produce?


A: Doing comics/manga do require a lot of discipline on the artist's part. The broader the study the better you get.

Abstract Art- for mood and art element foundation control

Graphic Design- for layout, the comfort of reading, and learn the placement of text, it's selection and flow.

Figure drawing- (gesture and character handling)

Perspective drawing - for making the world believable

Illustration studies on fine arts and digital matte paintings- for colors, composition, and work refinement quality

Manga studies- learning other artists' visual languages and culture, as well as all manga foundations.

Film studies- study good films that have good camera angle and transitions to apply it to my work

News and real life stories, documentries- studies of cultures, different views of the world and people.

Animation/acting: For the details expression of life and motion, to live-up your drawing.


Other Studies- archeology, psychologies, history, scientific reports, for interesting story development with the help of knowledge. And anything you want your stories to be about... you have to study it.







3. Drunksnowball said the following:

How much time does it take you to come up with a new character?  What are your first steps to drawing this new person?


erm, good question that demands a long answer....

It's actually very hard for me to come up with a new character, that's why I keep the same set, and register all my characters' copyright on my own.
I often make many models of new character designs and end up dumping them because they don't live up to my old ones, or become too similar to my old ones I end up merging it to my older characters instead.

First step:
1. Deciding the type of personality and character I want to make. I used to take model out of anime/manga I watch and read, now to avoid similarity problem I just observe from documentary or reality TV shows to find personality. Often a new character is born because someone strikes me and I said to myself: "I want a character like that!" or "I need a character like that!" or even... "I want to tell this person's story, it's worth retelling."

However, this applies mostly to my human characters, I don't make robot or mech designs the same way.

2. After the personality is somewhat decided, I search for a look to make the character interesting to draw. The key part is I have to want to draw the character over and over again after I have about 40 characters I like drawing already. So it only gets tougher. Often one new character go through several revisions before it's finalized. It also can not look or act too much like it's source, other wise it will be unsurprising or boring to me that way.

3. After finalizing the design... sometimes I do draw a line-up of my old characters that can be similar to the new one, to check for overall differences and similarity, if they look too closely to one another, I have to make more changes. (however, some changes don't work so well at times, I end up going back the old way I am comfortable with, a pretty deadly drawing habit.)

4. Finally, after the character is designed, I immediately think of a short plot to make this character interact with my other ones, to strengthen personality development, and assign this character to a relationship with other existing characters. For the purpose of easy implement of this new character to future stories.


5. Old characters: A character become my classic character when I can find spots for them to act in almost every major plots I have. Once a character reaches this stage of maturity, I may update them on clothing and hair, and they retain a certain personality that may be changed slightly in different series.

A character's growth rate varies, depending on what kind of character, gender, and age, and my preference. Some characters get supper fast growth rate and become classic character in merely 2 years. Others, 3 years or more, and some gets dumped after a few years or a complete do-over.



Q: How do you keep the story of your manga interesting? I sometimes find me getting boring.

A: easy, do the boring part in your planning stage,
then rework it and refine it and skip the boring explanation part when you do your final,
stay around things you find interesting to illustrate.

I hate explaining my settings in the story, to me that's the most boring way to "tell" people about my world, a good writer (or storyteller) should always "show", not tell. The more explaining I am doing, the more "telling" i am doing.
I try to use minimum explanations on all my work.

I rather throw the readers right into my world and let them figure out the rules from following what my character is doing, choosing to show a few rules each time in a chapter. Doing it this way increase the page count but makes for more interesting storytelling in my view.

When i do my roughs i put down all the content i have imagined and want to explain, but when i get to final i start to weed out things that I deem less important. Sometimes that has a downside, that is over-thinking my story and weed out details that's actually needed for readers to understand. So i have to keep reading back and forth between my own roughs and finals to double check whether my rough is more lively, or my final. If my final work is not as lively as my rough, I need to redo it. Because I sketch my story out, very often my first fresh composition and expressions are the best, so I actually TRACE it from my rough many times into my final. XD



It always pays off to think and rethink your script, but your script doesn't always have to be a word/text document.

Always have a rough draft before you do the final, never jump into the final straight away.
Rework your plot during rough stages, re-order them, play around, and think hard what explanation about your world and characters you can throw out, and just keep things present, and re-read your sketch constantly as you are doing new pages to keep checking your pace.



If you are doing 1 page at a time, not a sequence, you might end up losing control of the pace in a sequence, this is what I heard mentioned about the danger of doing that. I never do 1 single page each time, i always draw in sequence, 4 pages, 8 pages, somedays i sketch upto a whole chapter in one single day. (11-16 pages)



ABOUT MY SCHOOL SVA: 

1.How is the area around there, what is there you could do.
Its down town Manhattan, a city that doesn't sleep, lots of pubs/shops and stuff, the school is located through out 2nd ave up and down 21st-23rd streets, their campus is pretty scattered. But overall because it's downtown it's pretty safe, lots of people all the time.
But don't worry, you won't have too much time to play. ^^bb SVA will work you to almost breaking point. That won't stop some people having fun though.

2. As a graduate of SVA what are you doing right now? How do you get the jobs?
A. I am a bit of an odd ball, anyone doing anime-ish style is pretty much on their own after school. I get freelance jobs all the time after school because of my gallery portfolio on various sites, SVA has a portfolio site too which some clients used it to find me. (Most helpful is probably DA, and youtube)  If you make good enough friends and try out studio internships around the city you may get a job at a studio to do clean up animation and such for the start.
3D wise you also get game/commercial studios as your choices, but you need a strong portfolio to start. Getting visa to stay in the city might be a challenge for foreigners, my friend Gio waited for his visa over a year before he can get it to work in the studio, but he got it in the end. SVA also has some connection to the west coast (where major studios are) so going there is a possibility if you work on your connections.

3. Do you like the teaching style etc there, what things did you think that were useful they taught you.
A: Depends on who you have, try to get teachers teaching style that you like to train you, and it doesn't matter which teacher is teaching you, try to finish a completed, colored short film by 2nd year. Try to get a really technical teacher your first year, and enjoy your creativity the second year after your technique is solid, then buff up your skill again third year, and unleash it all your fourth year.

4. I got accepted into Computer Animation, and I like the curriculum, however I viewed it and they didn't teach traditional animation, is there a way in which I could learn traditional animation as well as on the side? Because in the future I would like to create my own traditional 2D animated shorts so I am a bit concerned. (However I would like experience in 3D as it would be useful as well.)
A: Computer animation is one of the strongest/most elitist/competitive/supportive department in our school. They are intense, and the pressure there is pretty high. (BTW, their thesis year is 2 years instead of one)
You can do 2D thesis film in 3D department but you will become the odd ball in the department. So I suggest switching to 2D under Film department if your true passion is drawing/painting animation by hand and not tweaking polygones on a model in Maya. If you like painting and such in 3D film you can try texturing though and try to work in a team for your thesis.
If you want to do 2D animation over 3D, and only have some 3D skills, I suggest you move to 2D animation department, and take 3D as elective, try to get at least 2 years of 3D training for your skill to be any use in outside world.
But be aware, this school does not like anime very much, with the exception of Cartooning (comic) department.
If you are taking 3D classes for the start, I def recommend Eric Eiser, who is very good at showing you the steps slowly and patiently.


5.How was the workload and how did you handle it? I am aware it will be hard, but I would like advice on the matter. (I was wondering how did you balance your time between your webcomic and workload.)
A: I commute to school, and I stock up my pages. My webcomic was updating but it does take a back seat during school years, dropping to only 4 pages a month. Other than the art classes, you are also required to take normal classes like English, math, and social studies, try to complete those classes in another school and transfer it over, it will save you valuable time for the art classes.