Public Service Message

[John Dillinger]

[floatl][/floatl]Attention all would be manga artists: The following clip from Love Hina shows the harrowing stress suffered just by manga assistants alone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhATGRDm-Rg

As you can see, it's not all Pocky and roses.

(For what's it worth kids, I wanted to do the whole OMIGOD I'M GOING TO GO TO JAPAN AND BE A MANGAKA thing, but the reality is a lot harsher. Unless, you're seriously dedicated, it's best to content youself with drawing Doujinshi.)

[American Oyaji]

I know a girl here in Ohio that got a gig with TokyoPop and is writing her own stores right now.

[Basjohn]

Heh, personally I think anyone who's ever tried drawing even Doujinshi with a strict deadline should realise it's anything but pocky and roses.

I've never worked with assistants or with any sort of help at all but I can say that I ran into a nightmare of difficulties on my first Doujinshi and, while I'm sure assistants ease the burden somewhat, I know I'd never be capable of producing +- 18 quality pages on a weekly basis.

I'm working on my second right now but who knows if that will even be done in a few months.

[Taro Toporific]

Heh, personally I think anyone who's ever tried drawing even Doujinshiwith a strict deadline should realise it's anything but pocky and roses...

I hear that writing Doujinshi/memoirs on rolls of toilet paper has never been as big a success.

[Basjohn]

Alas the 404 factor (though mine isn't quite as umm "elegant" as your bum angle shot I still think it fits in rather nicely) comes from my ridicuosly cheap hosts giving me exactly the kind of service you might expect for $9 a year. Virtually none.

I've lodged support requests/complaints about the site issue but they seem to be rather adept at email-fu and have thusly ignored me so far :'/

The guy who pays for my hosting is planning on moving me to another host later in the year (when the subscription is up) but the real problem arises with the site not being up for me to even back up my current data in the meanwhile.

[John Dillinger]

Heh, personally I think anyone who's ever tried drawing even Doujinshi with a strict deadline should realise it's anything but pocky and roses.

I've never worked with assistants or with any sort of help at all but I can say that I ran into a nightmare of difficulties on my first Doujinshi and, while I'm sure assistants ease the burden somewhat, I know I'd never be capable of producing +- 18 quality pages on a weekly basis.

I'm working on my second right now but who knows if that will even be done in a few months.

American Oyaji: Do you know what series she ended up doing?

Basjohn: I guess the thing is over here in the U.S some of the fanboys and girls have got this unrealistic view that they can just move to Japan and wow the manga publishers with their art, forgetting they'll need a college degree just to get a work visa, they'd have to learn Japanese and the fact they'd have to compete with about 3,000 native born Manga artists, not including all the kids doing doujinshi.
Even I wanted to do this in my late 30's, not knowing the challenges I'd have to face. Gave up the idea when I found out the cold harsh reality. Best idea for the kids is to do like AO's friend and try contests like Rising Stars and/or submitting to American companies seeking to do OEL(original english language manga).

By the way Taro: Thanks for the screen shot link. I forgot how to link Youtube videos.