Mangatalk: A question...

[telophase]

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ETA: GAH but I've got to re-adjust my new monitor! Those looked almost white on it. The brightness and contrast is obviously way the hell off. I'll fix that and redo the pages tonight, when I get home.

Much, much better now. Not perfect, but muuuuch better. You may need to force a reload if your browser's cached the original, awful, images.

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ETA yet again: Just posted a followup-type entry, coming out of some comments down below.

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I've been musing on various things - the differences between the current crop of OEL manga and Japanese manga, backgrounds and the lack of same, detail vs. no detail, and it hit me when I cracked open Fruits Basket 12 that maybe I should just post something and see what comes of talk about it.

This is page 18 from Fruits Basket 12 (no spoilers), once normally and once with as much of the text and text balloons cleaned out as I could do (and sketchily-fixed-up pictures, just to give a rough idea). This should be the page as it looks after inking and toning and before the text balloons are drawn in (well, ok, so I expect that the mangaka draws the balloons in the pencils, and inks the balloons at the same time the rest of the panels are inked, really).

Anyway. This page has many of the same characteristics as a lot of amateur manga out there on the Web that I see - lots of empty space with tone thrown in to fill space, almost no background whatsoever, figures drawn in profile (because it's easier than 3/4 view), very little variation in line width. The question, then, is...

WHY DOES IT WORK?

ETA 2: I'm specifically asking, in this case, why the empty space, use of tone, and lack of detail and line width variation works with this page and yet not with pages of amateur manga that have the same characteristics. Yeah, the answer is, technically, "because the mangaka is a pro," but I'm trying to get at what makes the difference between the pro Japanese work and the amateur* work and much of the OEL manga that's been published so far so marked.

* or, rather, 'inexperienced,' since there's some pro-level amateurs out there - we need better terminology.

I'll probably track down some examples of what I'm talking about tonight and post a new entry with them.


Read right to left, Japanese style.








I ahve a few ideas, which I'll put here in white text on a white background so as not to prejudice your thinking. Highlight to read:

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1. Very, very,very, very, very thin lines. Fat lines don't work with this - the linework stands out a lot when there's not much of it. Somethihng like Naruto can get away with thicker lines, because there's much mroe detail. Here the mangaka is using the barest minimum to define the shapes. If she needs to make an area darker, she uses several fine lines instead of one thicker one - the floorboards and baseboard in panel 4, Tohru's hair detail.

2. The profiles arne't straight - Tohru's tilted up taling to Kunimitsu and he's tilted down, talking to her. They connect across panels, and the panels relate to each other that way. In panel 4, Tohru's head is also tilted up at Kunimitsu, still talking to him.

3. Graphic design. The darks and lights are balanced. TOnes are never thrown in just to fill space; they're very carefully placed. And they don't fill a panel or a shape solidly, either.

4. What keeps the whole page from being static with the figures is the tilt in perspective in the last panel - if the mangaka had drawn her knee in straight profile like the other two profiles, it would be dead and uninteresting.

5. No figure is exactly in the center of a panel. They're just barely slightly to one side or another, which gives a gentle rhythm and flow trhough the page. Centering something would kill it dead. This also allows the speech balloons to ever-so-gently ripple back and forth, instead of reading straight down, which adds to the movement. And that movement drives your gaze directly through the figures in each panel where there are balloons and figures.


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Anyway, that's it. I'm going to bed and I'll see your responses in the morning. This may or may not turn into an essay, but not for a while.


(and next time I do something, maybe I'll damn well try shoujo JUST SO I CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS SORT OF THING!)

Comments

[akemi-art.livejournal.com]

Simplicity is beautiful. All that negative space in the manga makes it easy to read and focuses the attention on what is important, the visual story.

Compared to North American comics that are packed with detail, heavy inking, fully fleshed figures and backgrounds, I prefer the fruits baskets style. NA comic style is a whole lot of art to cover up the lack of substance.

Here's a cleaner page, for a better look at the white space

[octopedingenue]

I'm thinking about it, but I haven't decided anything yet. (Other than that Natsuki Takaya owns my soul and could draw stick figures and I would love them as long as she kept the page layouts and the eyes, but that is nothing new.)

[maiteoida.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's interesting. I've been wondering myself how shoujo can get away with being so damn minimalistic. ^_^;; (Even though I guess the closest thing I could classify my stuff as is "shoujo" I get so self conscious when doing stuff like that...it would be really interesting to see just how the mechanics of it work).

I would agree that the use of tone isn't just to fill in spaces- the danger in doing pages like that is that if one uses tone to "fill in", the pages tend to look too grey (or too busy). I think a lot of it just boils down to making things as simple as possible without compromising the overall composition. And despite how simple it makes pages seem...it's awfully complicated. ^^;

[moonlit-page.livejournal.com]

i'm a layman when it comes to artwork, but the first thing i noticed was balance. rule of thirds. three horizontal panels of equal size. one vertical, perpendicular to the bottom (anchoring) box. the distance of the 'lens' from the subjects in the panel is also balanced. so are the grey tones -- one, two, three. balanced. not symmetrical, just, in harmony. this page works because, if you were scrapbooking with your photo album, it would appear clean and balanced and fresh, despite the simplicity of the drawings inside. it simply clicks on an unconscious level.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Except that I am deliberately comparing it to amateur stuff and to the OEL manga that has less detail, in general, not American comics. Why does the less detail here work and the less detail there not work? That's the question I'm asking.

I wouldn't say that manga, as a class, has less detail than American comics do. Just off the top of my head: Blame, Planetes, Blade of the Immortal, Qwan, Saiyuki, MPD Psycho - they're all detailed. Now, shoujo manga, in general, has less detail than American comics, but manga as a class, no.

Re: Here's a cleaner page, for a better look at the white space

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Heh - I've discovered that my new monitor is still way the fuck off on the balance and contrast. I'll do what I can to fix that tonight, now that I've got an idea of what it looks like (arg).

I really need that second page with the text and the speech bubbles gone, for this question, arg.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup. :) Taking the speech bubbles out of that page really shows that - the layout itself is very simple, with a simple rhythm. And then when the bubbles go in, they add a slight, but noticeable, movement.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'll have to clean up a few more of the pages, some more complicated as well, from the manga to see if that holds through the rest of the book, or if the basic composition varies. Er, I'm not expressing myself clearly, but I ahvne't had caffeine yet this morning.

[prettyism.livejournal.com]

I've completely forgotten my Asian aesthetics class, but the little I remember about traditional Japanese aesthetics. Simplicity, juxtaposition, asymmetry etc are all part of a long tradition which may come from zen budhism(ok I'm guessing here)but the elements can be found in other areas. I've kind of given on using shoujo layouts, I decided to use the golden mean since I'm more familiar with it:D

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

I'm not a very visual person, so my automatic assumption has usually been that Takaya (and other gifted manga-ka) simply have an intuition about how to make their work flow. It's really interesting to see it broken down into its more scientific components and be reminded that it's a craft as well as an art. ^_^

Oh, and Tohru's talking to Kunimitsu (Kazuma's assistant) in that scene.

Ysabet, somewhat new to reading your journal

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* Oh yeah - I do understand what you mean about the normal American comics style, with the heavy inking and stuff. :) I'm just trying to understand why it often doesn't work - or, perhaps "doesn't work the same way" is a better phrase - when inexperienced artists try it and in the OEL stuff I've seen that's borrowing elements of shoujo.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D Yeah, it *is* an intuition often, but it's the sort of intuition that's carefully cultivated through lots of graphic design classes and familiarizing yourself with graphic arts and composition - bang all that deeply into your head and practice it a lot, and *then* it becomes almost unconscious.

Thanks for the ID - I've edited it appropriately. :)

(*waves* Welcome!)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:) I think what I want to do is to winkle out the guidelines behind the simplicity, juxtaposition, and asymmetry, though. What makes this simplicity work right and yet an equally simple page not work? Basic rules of composition, I'm sure, but I want to make them explicit and understandable.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say without the comparison examples, but are the pages you plan to contrast actually equally as simple? I'm not a designer or artist, but it seems to me that there is a difference between concsiously reaching for a simple 'shoujo' style and the internalization of that style to the point where you actually produce something simple, balanced and 'clean'.

(I don't know if that makes any sense, and will try to post something more coherent later. Or, alternately, just wait until you post the contrasting examples so I can stop talking out my ass.)

[kate_nepveu]

I noticed when reading the FMA manga that it was less detailed than _Saiyuki_ and also had thinner, more delicate lines, so I think you may be on to a useful guideline there.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The problem here is the definition of "simple". It's less-than-useless in and of itself. "Well, this page works because it's simple." No, it doens't work because it's simple - simple pages can completely fail. It works because of the composition. How does the composition make it look and feel balanced?

This is what I'm going for: a deep, detailed decosntruction of why it works, not the - sorry for this term, but it's true - shallow "It's simple" explanation. Think of it this way: if you're drawing a page and you take it to someone and ask them how you can make it better, what do you want to hear? "Make it simpler" or "Make your lines thinner. Move this figure to the side. Change the angle of this panel so it's not straight-on. Delete the tone over here." The latter one is the same as the former one, but it's useful because it says *how* to make it simpler.

That being said: the sorts of pages I'm thinking of have thin(ner) lines, little to no backgrounds, a focus on character's faces, and tone used to fill in space. Why do they fail to hold together compositionally, yet the page above nails it?

I don't actually have any examples yet because while I don't have problems putting up published pages that don't work in my opinion, it's harder grabbing a random shoujo webcomic and saying "Gosh, this doesn't work. Let's crit the sucker in detail" without knowing if the artist is going to find it and spaz. Published creators, OTOH, open themselves up for critique as part and parcel of being published and can be presumed to behave professionally.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

This all sort of started right after I was looking at a page submitted for the PB anthology and decided I was going to tell the artist to use more line weight variation - and had made a copy of the file and added some, which made it really pop. And then picked up Fruits Basket and the first thing I noticed was the utter lack of line width variation - and I'm trying to figure out why the hell it works when it didn't work in the page I was looking at. Part of it is that the lines are so delicate, but part of it has to be the general page composition. Hrm.

"Vary your line weights" is often a good bit of advice, but sometimes it isn't and I want to figure out the difference.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think I can forumlate a guideline here, in that the less detailed your artwork is, the less variation in line weight you need. Hm. Makes perfect sence the other way - if you've got a complex piece, you need the weight variation to make sense of the image and direct people's eyes.

[kate_nepveu]

Line weight isn't something I really pick out automatically when I'm looking at a page, but I have noticed that _Saiyuki_ both fills up the page with more *stuff*, usually, and has more shading/dark areas than _FMA_. WRT characters, I did notice that the character designs in _FMA_ seem . . . cleaner? than those in _Saiyuki_, which I think probably something to do with line weight (based on randomly clicking pages at readmanga.com, anyway).

[kate_nepveu]

(Compare Ed's blond hair to Sanzo's, frex.)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

This probably isn't what you're looking for, but I notice that Takaya has very carefully posed the characters for maximum emotional impact. The postures and cut-offs aren't random; they've all got a clear effect. In panel 1, Tohru is clearly in a posture of supplication: looking up, eyes wider than usual, mouth open to ask, hands clutching the phone. You don't see her for a few panels because this remains the emotional impact ... and then the final panel of her emphasizes this, having her kneeling as if before a shrine, looking up to the phone and to Hatori, with the length of the phone stand emphasizing how small and powerless she is. The other person (Hatori? Shigure?) has a closed mouth, is looking slightly down: is withdrawn and reserved. (More likely Hatori than Shigure, then.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

About to head to lunch, so can't give more than a quick reply - year Ed's design is cleaner and simpler and seems more cartoony that Sanzo's, although they're both equally far from reality, just in different directions.

Will post links to pages of both and see what I can see later todya, though it may be tonight since I need to get actual work done today. :)

[jou.livejournal.com]

I think it's got a lot to do with spatial relationships and the framing/cropping of an image, that lends sparse shoujou pages their flair. I notice that paneling and placment in shoujo manga draws a lot of parallels to swiss/high design. ... So really, I think that talented shoujo artists are talented designers, as well. They really know how to work the negative space to their advantage.

...That said, I'm not so sure that this page is the best example. Shoujo design is every bit as evident in the shape and placement of word balloons as in any other part of the illustration. To remove the word balloons doesn't make sense to me, as they're an important part of the overall layout. I don't think Takaya designed her page without knowing that there would be balloons full of text taking up a lot of the "white space" in her panels.

[octopedingenue]

I have a ton of random crappy shojo oneshots I could dig up for less-than-great art (although since it was all published in magazines at some point it's probably STILL better than most webcomics). :D

[octopedingenue]

It's neither Hatori or Shigure; it's That Guy Whose Name I Can Never Remember who's Kyou's adoptive father Kazuma's assistant at the dojo, as Tohru is calling to make an appointment with Kazuma. And I like the placement of the cutoff of his face, nearly cutting off his eyes but not quite. The complete cutting off/disappearance of eyes is always a very significant indicator of powerful and unreadable and/or negative emotions. Here we've got just a fraction of That Guy's eyes widened eye, indicating that he's surprised by the unusual nature of Tohru's call and request for anonymity. If his eyes were cut off entirely, it would make him look at lot more suspicious and involved than he is here, where he's just acting as intermediary between Tohru and Kazuma.