telophase | What Makes For Professional Manga (Akira Toriyama, DRAGONBALL Z)

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What Makes For Professional Manga (Akira Toriyama, DRAGONBALL Z)

[ Edit: This was the first essay I wrote and desperately needs to be edited and reworded. And one thing that I think needs to be clarified is my use of the word "amateur." Way too many people think that "amatuer" is something worse than "professional," which isn't the case at all. My use of the word in this essay is meant only to distinguish the amount of time that one mangaka has been at his craft from the much, much longer amount of time that another has. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me to clarify. ]

At the request of

coffee_and_ink, some blathering on about why and how manga pages work. Images in it, with at least one image about 200K - slow-modem users beware.

Not that I've even got to SAIYUKI and FRUITS BASKET yet, which is what she asked for. I'm going to hit DRAGONBALL Z first, for reasons you'll shortly understand.

First, I'm going to start off by attempting to explain what makes the difference between the pro artwork and the almost-there-but-not-quite artwork, because it's something that I think people who don't have much of a background in art have problems seeing, as well as what "confidence in linework" means. The easiest way to show you is to compare Akira Toriyama's work (DRAGONBALL Z, published in SHONEN JUMP) with R. MacPherson (SHORT TRIP, published in EigoMANGA's RUMBLE PAK), since the style is so similar that the comparison should hopefully be obvious.

Here's a page from each, with roughly the same amount of stuff going on in each. Read the Toriyama page in the Japanese way, from right to left, but read MacPherson's in the Western way, left to right.

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The first thing you can see here is that Toriyama uses negative space - when he leaves empty spaces in his panels, the shapes made by the white space are solid, distinct ones. If you colored the characters and background elements in solid black, Toriyama's are clean and simple. You can figure out what's going on in the panel almost by the silhouette alone. Note that MacPherson clutters his with extraneous shapes, and that the outlines of his character and landscape aren't as strong. Note also that Toriyama's character shows her strong, defiant personality in her stance, and you can guess at her character just from seeing the silhouette. MacPherson's character's silhouette is pretty much indefinite, and you can't tell anything about him from it. Toriyama's speech balloon gives the character plenty of room, but MacPherson's crowds in on him and gives a sense of claustrophobia, which doesn't contribute anything to the panel.

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It's quite possible to do a good page without using negative space as such, which is something that Kazuya Minekura does in SAIYUKI, but what she does is fill up her spaces with so much linework and tone that it still becomes a form of negative space; visual white noise. I'll get to that when I look at SAIYUKI (which may be in a separate post).

In the comparison above, I think MacPherson's panel would have been stronger if his character had a stronger pose, where the chest arched outward, because a chest collapsed inward signals fear, weakness, and inescurity. His character is cocky and sure of himself, so the pose works against him. The character is also reassuring the girl about their ability to fight monsters, and thus I think should probably be in more of a boasting stance, with chest thrust out, in an attempt to inspire confidence in her.

Going back to the pages as a whole, another big difference between the two is that Toriyama allows panels for characters to have wordless reaction shots - there's no need for him to crowd dialogue into every single panel, and the story flows better because of that. You have a better idea of what's happening on the emotional level, and the characters seem just a little bit more complex because of that.

Now take a look at how the panels are composed. Toriyama goes in for close shots in panels with higher emotional tension, like when Number 18 (the girl) is berating the other characters, and zooms out for establishing shots. This allows for the characters to be placed solidly in their environment, and lets us build up a picture in our minds of what the setting looks like. It also allows the characters space in which to exist. MacPherson chooses to remains tight on his characters, which gives all the panels the same emotional intensity. I think the panel where the girl is saying "M-Monsters?" would have been improved by pulling way out, and leaving the background white, with a large amount of whitespace on top of her, because she would look small, exposed,and uncomfortable, and the white space would have given an oppressive feel. The whitespace would also have allowed for a resting place for the eye on the page, which is desperately needed - right now the eye is darting all over the page because there's no place for it to rest for a second and that doesn't work for pacing - cluttering the page makes you read it at a headlong pace, like Connie Willis' novels, which are exhausting because they don't let the reader slow down until the end of the book.

Since you almost never see the full body of MacPherson's characters, and they tend to fill the panel, you get a claustrophobic feeling, even though they're in a wide-open wilderness setting. One thing that might have improved that is to remove the big speech balloon from panel 1 of his page, which would give us a big wide-open feeling about the landscape, *or* to do what Toriyama did in panel 1 on his page (remember, it's on the top right for Toriyama) and clear a much bigger empty space for the balloon to float in, so it wouldn't be obviously blocking out background elements. And allowing for big empty spaces in one or two other panels would have added more visual resting spaces.

MacPherson is also shy of whitespaces in general, not just in the backgrounds. Note how Toriyama's characters have areas of solid black and solid white within them - Number 18's sleeves and hair, and the bald guy's tunic have white areas. MacPherson doesn't do that. He fills in whatever white spaces are in the inks with a grey tone, or with lines, and the only big white space on the page - the hand in the close-up of the vial in the next-to-last panel - is covered over with emanating rays. I think that panel would be much improved by having the emanating rays *behind* the hand. The white space of the hand would then frame the complicated lines of the vial, so it would be more prominent and seen as soon as the eye hits the panel, instead of being lost in the lines.

Which leads into the linework.

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Toriyama uses thinner lines, and his lines have a subtle variation in width that lends a certain fluidity to them. This is most noticeable at Number 18's hairline - the lines on the top of her forehead taper to fine points from a subtly wider start deeper in the hair. Her eyelashes also taper to very fine points. In contrast, MacPherson uses the same width of line throughout the entire page, and in the comparison picture just above, the girl's hairline and eyelashes taper to much wider points than Toriyama's equivalent. The position of the irises and pupils in MacPherson's girl are indefinite - you can't quite tell which way they're looking, but there is no doubt as to exactly which direction Number 18 is glaring, and it focuses her anger -- you do NOT want to be on the receiving end of that glare!

Now go back to the two full pages side-by-sside and note that Toriyama tends to use ever-so-slightly-thinner lines for his background elements, and reserves the areas of solid black and the variations in line width for his characters. This focuses attention on the characters because they're mor visually complex. MacPherson uses the same style of inking for both his characters and background, and there's no prominence given to one over the other, which again leads to the claustrophobic effect and visual confusion.

Now to the ever-amorphous condition of "confidence" in the linework. It is, I think, a combination of the quality of the line itself, and how much the artist commits to a line or curve. Take a look at the panel comparison of Number 18 and the girl Let. The lines of Number 18's cheek are smooth. Let's cheek lines have a certain wibbliness to them, a roughness which happens when either the artist uses a paper that absorbs too much ink, so it spreads out a little bit, or when the artist doesn't draw big and shrink down small -- the action of doing that smooths out wibbliness in lines. I've got a quick-and-dirty example of that on the scraps in my DeviantArt account. That's part of the confidence thing. [In all fairness, the wibbliness might be caused by pixelation from the low resolution that EigoMANGA used to post the pages, but it resembles the wibbliness caused by the other two things and detracts from the overall look of the art in the exact same way.]

The other part of line confidence has to do with angles and curves. Note that Number 18's cheek is made of two distinct lines with a fairly sharp, although slightly rounded, angle, and she has a small but definite chin. Let's cheek is almost perfectly round, but not quite, and her chin is nonexistent. There are no real, definite angles on her, but there's no really definite curve, either, which would be made more prominent by thinning the lines at the end of the curve.

Last, anatomy, which also contributes to the line-condfidence equation. I've seen manga where the perfectly-round face shape works, but it doesn't quite work for me in MacPherson's, because it's not quite perfectly round, either. The curve arcs inward, pushing the side of Let's jawbone in unnaturally, so her chin gives the impression of being a little too far to the side, a little bit off the middle. Note the jawlines on both of them Number 18's jaw has a small but definite upward angle defining the jawbone *before* the ear. Let's jaw sort of vaguely curves up, and the jawbone is showing as *behind* the ear. That reads wrongly and makes the head appear weirdly pulled-back and slightly misshapen. If you look at Number 18, yes her head *is* weirdly misshapen off of what we think of as human, but all the bits fit together correctly and give it an internal consistency that Let lacks.

The other major anatomy quibble with MacPherson's girl is her neck. The pose in these panels is similar - the character is thrusting her head forward in anger. But MacPherson doesn't get the emotion across and his character looks off-balance because of the neck. Number 18's neck thrusts forward with her head, but MacPherson's doesn't react to the movement of the head. This is unnatural - the body's parts *always* react with each other's movements and even if you don't notice it consciously, the figure still looks somehow wrong if nearby bits aren't reacting. This is something that MacPherson carries throughout the chapter, and his characters resemble bobblehead dolls whose heads are mounted on springs and whose bodies aren't entirely connected to the head. This is also why his characters' heads look too large while Toriyama's, whose heads are definitely on the same scale as MacPherson's, look natural -- Toriyama's heads move with the body while MacPherson's move independent of the body.

That's it for now. I'm going to go eat dinner and think about what I'm going to say for SAIYUKI and FRUITS BASKET, which are two completely different styles distinct from Toriyama's and will be fascinating to rip apart like this.

Index to the Series

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You ROCK! Thank you for indulging me.

More later.

ooooh i like this... Recognizing Professional Manga Art 101 :)

-Meli

Wow, this is great stuff. It's helpful for me as a manga writer too, I think. I'm still transitioning from TV writing, where you write in scenes and leave it up to director to call the majority of the shots-- the writer indicates establishing shots, close-ups of significant objects, and stuff like that, but essentially you're writing something that's more like a play, where you assume most of the action going on is always visible.

In manga, of course, you have to think shot by shot. The most difficult thing for me so far is breaking down actions which really occur simultaneously into panel sequences which convey the same action but without clutter.

Yeah - I could tell you're thinking TV when you write. :) That's why I'm making you do the 2-3panels/page for fights and 4-5 panels/page for regular - the final pages wil probably ahve more, but I'm breaking them down into shots.

Wait until you get to the Saiyuki one. XD

I ougth throw an action sequence from Blade of the Immortal up, because that's really interesting.

Figuring out which panels are the most important, and thus are bigger (often with less dialog than the others), is the key to working out the panel layouts, I'm finding. And it's not always clear which panels are the most important.

Oh - and when you get to the Saiyuki one, note how Sanzo and Gojyo are arguing - in the one panel they're both in, you can't see Sanzo's face. It's boring to have profiles in a lot of panels, and you cna't have two characters talking or arguing in the same panel and show both their faces without doing profiles, or faking it, like on stage where you fake towards the audience a bit. So you focus on one character in the panel with them both, like on Gojyo, then break them into separate panels, and have them still *look* like they're facing each other, like int eh two panels with the Sanzo and Gojyo heads.

Number 18 YAY!

Er...sorry. DBZ is so denigrated (often for very good reasons) it's really nice to see something that takes on how and why it works., and you're very good at that.

As I was saying in a recent conversation, there's a vast gap between the skills of a professional and an amateur, even it's hard to see when you're not a specialist in that particular art. I can easily tell the difference between the bad writing of a professional hack and the bad writing of a complete amateur-- the former is clunky but in a polished way (I'd have to do a long post to explain) whereas the latter is unreadable.

Note that when the amateur acquires that pro sheen, even over serious but more subtle flaws, they typically turn pro.

Yeah. I can generally do the pro-artist vs. total amateur-artist but I'm not good with the why-- I haven't done it enough so I don't have the right tools.

I'd have to do a long post to explain

<taps foot> Well, get cracking then.

Bonus points if you use Atlanta Nights examples.

---L.

Hee. I pretty much hate the type of manga the DBZ is, but Toriyama is so damn good that I find myself liking it when I read it. Not when I watch it - the anime leaves me cold - but the characterization and visual pacing suck me into the manga.

The manga is so much better. I watched DBZ because hubby watched it and then I kind of got sucked in, but really only about ten minutes out of every five or six hours actually got you anywhere. The manga's so streamlined and cool and readable.

Cool. Thanks for this. Speaking as one whose artistic training is limited to the straight lines of origami.

This is probably more than you want to handle, but how does, say, Jeff Smith's Bone compare to these? (One thing I've always liked is how, from the first issue, his lines are clean and confident -- and apparently learned at Walt Kelly's knee.)

---L.

I don't know. I've never read BONE. :) There's a lot of classic comics I havne't read - I've read some CEREBUS, but it was a while ago and I don't remember much about it.

AHHHH! CEREBUS! RUN SCREAMING!

Dave Sim, the creator of Cerebus, is a raving maniac who fears, loathes, and despises women. In his own psychotic words:

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html

Heh. No, Cerberus is no Bone. Though Sim is a pro artist, even I can tell -- if a loony pro.

I like Bone quite a lot. "Stupid, stupid rat-creatures!"

---L.

Okay, thank you so much for this and the Saiyuki parts! I hadn't even thought about texture in the grey spaces for Minekura -- all I'd really noticed visually, beyond an impression of OMGKOOL!!!!!, was the use of "empty" panels to emphasize dialogue, and the way unbordered panels between bordered panels acted as a kind of--subliminal cue? stream-of-consciousness?--in a lot of cases the unbordered panels will be a moment of emotional emphasis, or a flashback, or an image whose meaning the viewer might not know on the first read, but which gives this emotional charge and adds depth to the storyline. It's like a bit of emotional expressionism slipped into a film that had seemed to be naturalistic. And that she does a lot of shading in to emphasize particular figures--I'm thinking especially of Gojyo finding Cho Gonou for the first time in V.5.

I'm still not sure I get confidence in line, but the line thickness and the contrast stuff and the way panels create movement, this is all great.

And I'm glad it's helping you, too. :)

You're welcome! Yeah, SAIYUKI's so complex that it all sort of washes over you, but lots of the cues hit you on a subliminal level. And the full-bleed (borderless) panels are used at important parts of the page as well. She also tends to grey out those panels, mostly in flashback, but at other times of emotional emphasis, by applying one tone over the whole picture, to show that it's memory, and not as sharply perceived as the scene right in front of the character.

Forgot to add something aobut the confidence in line - it's really hard t explain, as you've seen, but it one of those things that you just tell is teh mark of a pro.

Part of it is the physical act of drawing - the amateur draws slowly, with a bit of hesitation, because he is consciously calculating where the pen is going and trying to get it to follow the pencil line it's tracing. The pro lays the inks down smoothly, with no hesitation, because she has done it so much know kows where the pen nib is going without needed to watch it closely - she's actually drawing with the ink, instead of tracing, like the amateur. Moving the pen slowly leaves more ink because the paper has more time to suck up ink, so it gets a bit oversaturated and the ink spreads out - so you get the hesitaiton caused by lots of little course corrections, for want of a better word, as the line is carefully, slowly, drawn, and the ink spreads out and gets fuzzy because the paper is oversaturated. Fast lines don't do that - the pro knows exactly where the line is going and is leaving just exactly enough ink on the page so it doesn't spread out.

Hey! Its Nayami-chan from dA, followed the link from your dA journal. Mind if I add you to my friends list?

Anyways, this was well written and thought out, and it provided a lot of insight. Thanks for taking the time to write this!

::goes off to read part II::

Hey, go right ahead, I don't mind at all. :)

Thanks!

It occurs to me that in metrical poetry, there is an exact equivalent to "confidence of line," one that could almost be called the same. There's a difference between a poet who knows meter and is making sure his syllables fit the pattern, and one who knows the rhythm in her bones and says something with that soundshape. One key determining sign: never seeing any awkward phases to fit the form. When you get to the confidence of line stage, you can start writing with and upon and against that pattern, playing with the line.

---L.

Yeah, that sounds like the poetical equivalent. Spiff. :)

And it explains one of the many reasons why the awful teenage poetry on deviantArt makes me wince, while reading poetry about the exact same themes by more accomplished writers doesn't, even though I can't really explain why - it just feels right.

Further thoughts, rather than take up your space.

---L.

In prose, we call this narrative force, or "authority."

All things are one. All arts are one.

We just hold the pencil differently.

Word.

---L.

These are lovely! I'm definitely looking forward to further reviews, and I shall friend you. :)

If you ever do action/fighting manga, one to look out for is Tenjo Tenge, by Oh!Great. The fighting scenes are just jaw-dropping.

:) Be my guest.

I haven't read Tenjo Tenge yet, but I've been following the whole editing/censorship argument about it. :)

I was not interested in "Dragonball Z" and "Short Trip" at all, but this post was fascinating. The stuff about white space especially--I've started noticing (and admiring the use of) white space a lot more in manga than American comics, probably because in manga it's usually actual white space. And maybe I'm a bit interested in "Dragonball Z" now. :D

I'd love to hear your take on "Naruto". (Look at us all bouncing up to say, "eee, do my favorite series next, eee, you're so good!" for it is true.) I know it's action manga but it has all these lovely little moments of emotion in the art that make me happy. Like this one.

Oh, yeah, Kishimoto is a master of character. :)

I used to think that I absolutely despised Dragonball Z, and then I ended up reading bits of it, since Shonen Jump was running it ... and I found myself drawn into it. I had to figure out why - Toriyama is someone else who's pretty good at character, and he's a master at composing and drawing it to suck you in and pull you along. It's certainly worth looking at to see how he does it. :)

This is fascinating! I can't even draw a straight line, but this was still incredibly interesting to look at. And I admit I particularly enjoyed this post because it's nice to hear good things said about Toriyama's style. So many people seem to hate the way DBZ is drawn, but I love it. Very cool post!

Thank you! Like I've said before - I originally thought I hated Toriyama, but after a few issues of SHONEN JUMP I found I was actually reading DBZ and following the story. And wondered why - it's because he's so good at it.

You know from my experiance I get a lot of people who really hate the artwork at first because it's very different, very angular in comparison to a lot of other works.

But also, they got the MUSCLE MEN, a lot of people are like totally turned away from DBZ because of that, they automatically assume it probably has no plot or storyline what-so-ever.

Plus the whole big boom it received in the mid nineteen nineties, everyone was DBZ everywhere and it was mostly being chewed to little bits by the greedy companies out to profit from it. A lot of people can't stand something if it's over commercialized.

I didn't necessarly have anything agaisnt the artwork; it's just that without reading it, all you see is the surface, the stuff that's marketed to sell to ten-year-old boys, which is exactly what I hate. All the stuff I like - fascinating characters, emotional subtleties and complexities, story growth and change - is pretty much guaranted to turn off the target market if ti's advertised, so it makes sense. :)

I haven't had time to read this yet :( but I've already bookmarked it, and look forward to the read! Just from skimming, this looks excellent and well-worded! :)

*goes off to ready notepad and pen to take notes* :D

Thank you! If you see somplace you disagree, or if you've got anything to add, feel free to comment - there's been lots of good stuff coming up in the comments from various people. :)

Oooooooo, that was so much fun to read! Like others have said already, it's so refreshing to see Toriyama's skill recognized instead of the -surface- of his story being bashed to bits. I too was turned off by the weird style and muscle men x_x But once I gave the story a chance I LOVE it and the charming characters, even at the ripe ol' age of 20 xD His style is so recognizable among the anime-copycat dribble; even if you don't like it, you can defenitely tell it's his.

A lot of what you wrote I've always felt as far as pro vs. amatuer work, but was never this eloquent to explain it ^^; This critique is going straight to my memories (if you don't mind) so I can reread it and possibly show it about!

Thank you!

I certainly don't hate amateur work, and read it when I'm interested as long as it's not so amateur that the layout and character don't work against it, but there is very definitely a certain attention to details in the art and layout that transform it from a story that's OK to read and kind of enjoyable into one that pulls you in without you noticing it's doing that. And it's hard for a lot of people to tell where that line is, especially with more avant-garde comic styles that look unfinished or amateur on the surface, but are deeply structured underneath.

Woow this is very eye opening... I never thought about how to analyse a manga page lik this. I have a lot of further reading to do on your other articles. ^^

Hello!
I found your LJ through

umadoshi and I am completely fascinated with your series of essays. I really appreciate your comments on negative space, the confidence in the linework, use and placement of text ballons. As I read, I had lots of flashbacks to my art classes in college :-) Reading this was wonderful. Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a comprehensive essay, and for introducing me to Toriyama's work :-)

Thank you! :)

Toriyama's stories are really the sort I'm not interested in, but if I pick one up I get sucked into it and can't stop reading - you have to admire the craft of someone who can make you do that. :D

I think I know what you mean. I probably wouldn't have picked one up on my own, but now I am rather curious, and I would definitely love to see more of the artwork (especially how fighting scenes are handled). Contrasted with the other manga page you referenced, it looks so clean and even elegant, certainly visually pleasing.

Is it all right if I keep reading? You are probably not very interested in replies to posts you made a while back, but you just have so many interesting things to say :-) (And I just noticed you have a DevianArt account!)

Thanks for your reply, and for sharing your knowledge with us.

If I minded people reading, I'd friends-lock everything. :D And feel free to comment on anything you want - I may not respond if I can't think of anything to say in reply, but I do read and appreciate all of them. :) (and I'm the weekly manga columnist over at Tokyopop.com, so anything that might serve as fodder for future columns is eagerly read. XD)

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What Makes For Professional Manga (Akira Toriyama, DRAGONBALL Z)

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You hated Akira Toriyama?

Re: You hated Akira Toriyama?

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