The Dawn of a New Age

Today, I have read an interview between two mangakas: Ken Akamatsu and Kentaro Takekuma.

http://2chan.us/wordpress/2011/04/17/article-translation-the-exhaustive-debate-between-kentaro-takekuma-x-ken-akamatsu-%e2%80%9cthe-role-manga-editors-should-take-in-the-e-publishing-era%e2%80%9d-part-1/

It is divided into 5 parts and it is a conversation about the future of the manga industry, well comics in general with the coming of the technological age. This is much like conversations I have had with my rival, Contreras, creator of BLADE OF THE FREAK.

My father always asks me what i want to do with my future and I always reply, make manga and then he asks, "how?"

My plan was to keep practicing and coming up with a good story that I enjoy and one day start serializing it on paper while being a teacher (unless I start making more money making manga, lol). But with the internet becoming more of a resource, especially for comics, with people reading manga online instead of buying it, which I also guilty of, lol.

As of now, my plan in a couple of years is to start serializing SPOON online and have people pay a dollar a month and then publish chapters into volumes and perhaps collaborate with other mangakas on the site. Me and Contreras both are on board with this idea and will start having a podcast, lol. So this is my idea for the future and I hope all of you will support me, especially since I feel the power! haha.

-YOONICORN-

BREAKTHROUGH

Hola, Haven't posted in awhile and I just want to say that I have been having huge leaps of progress in my thouht process, meaning I think I got through my writers block! Of course some may argue such a thing may not exist, but my definition of it is even though you are coming up with ideas, they just are not good enough, nothing that makes you all excited to draw and I have been struggling for a long time trying to come up with a main backstory for SPOON. Like what are his goals and how people can connect to him. I juggled with a lot of ideas and talked with a lot of friends to figure it all out but I think I finally know what to do. I finally feel the creativity and feel like the story is all coming together! I feel that I have been going through periods of high amoutns of creativity and this is something every artist struggles with. I always read interviews by Terry Moore and he explains that he loves drawing with ideas that make him so excited and he wants to see it happen. I finally understand what he means. So what is the new idea? I'll explain: "Because of a curse, Charles has become a spoon and is on quest to find a spell to revert him back to his human form. " That is the main concept and I will not go into detail, lol. It may sound cliche, but I know with my ideas, I can make it a fun ride! To be honest, I read a manga called "Oumadogaki", which I highly recommend and it helped me...well believe in myself a little more. Oh and on top of that, I plan to enter this contest where I have to come up with a drawing showing all the characters of BAKUMAN. Here is the link for those of you interested: http://shonenjump.viz.com/bakumanfanartcontest I've reread all the chapters yesterday and have a decent idea, lol. The deadline is at the end of April and I do plan on submitting and we'll go from there. =)

Instead of doing homework....

Instead of doing homework that is due tomorrow, I ended up making this piece, lol.

Some of you may notice I have tweaked Charles' design a bit, haha. It is not 100%, but I like it more than before, I hope you all agree as well, haha.

Since the tsunami, I have wanted to make a drawing showing my support for Japan and inspiration finally hit me while I was at my friend, Oscar's place. I started to think of some decent thumbnails for the chapter I want to submit for the contest.

So yeah, JAPAN!

=)

Getting the engine started

Hola,

As of now, I have a crap load of schoolwork to finish, but in between all that, I am getting my ideas together...finally! I have most of the layout and characters for the first chapter set and hope to start drawing hopefully sometime by the end of this week!

I have been going around looking at a ton of art books and buying a few here and there dealing with perspective and anatomy. I find that everytime I look at manga, I pay attention to how every little thing is drawn and when I am walkign on the streets, studying perspective by seeing where the buildings are converging at what horizontal point, haha.

My spring break is coming up and I hope to get a plethora of issues taken care of, including my health, which has not been the best, lol. So please keep in tuned for more updates!

-Yoonicorn-

FUN

So good news.

These past few weeks, I have been feelign creative and been coming out with some crazy ass ideas (ones that I like too!). Of course, I am afraid I will look back and find them not so hot later on and go into doubt. But I am starting to see myself getting better and am getting out of this rut. I think I forgot what it is like to have fun....which is very important!

So I have been coming up with character designs and landscapes of the story before I start drawing...I actually got some nice paper to draw on as well! So I must start that all soon....

More updates soon.

Contest

Hola,

Schoolwork has been piling me up leaving me little or no time to draw of course...haha.

But awhile ago, me and a my rival were talking about this contest:

http://morningmanga.com/micc/

Since I wussed out of the last contest, I believe it is time to try again..and hopefully succeed. Whether I win or not is not the matter at hand, but whether I can finish it. The due date is July 7th giving me PLENTY of time to draw.

I plan to use SPOON, except a little different, hehe. The original chapter 1 I used I felt was a bit too much and for this oneshot, it will serve more as a prequel to the original version where it focuses on Charles being a vagabond. I plan to do everything differently where I ink with a nib and use better paper, so as of now, I feel excited and am still gathering ideas and we will see where this goes!

More news to come along the way....

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Dat! (or single awareness day..haha)

So I have not really drawn in a couple of weeks and I decided to draw this piece, but of course, once I started to ink and color, I thought it sucked making me go into a slump...again.

So I decided to go to the bookstore and look at manga, this time, the earlier Naruto volumes (because I thought the drawings were best back then...not now) and read Kishimoto's little entries about his childhood. It seemed he ran into the same block I did where he thought everything he drew sucked and said he became "afraid of manga". My girlfriend has finally admitted to me that when reading the previous, she felt that something was lacking and the story simply did not allure her, haha.

Well nonetheless, I hope to keep on producing and we'll see what happens....

=)