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Note to manga artists:

Your characters have feet. It would be nice to occasionally see them. None of us live in a world where we only see people from the mid-thigh up. Also please choose camera angles other than straight-on-shoulder-level periodically. It makes it look so much nicer.

(Yes, I'm going through Rumble Pak and Sakura Pak.)

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Hey, I show feet! :D They might not be well drawn feet, but they're feet. :D

:) I just paged through an entire story where the characters could be double amputees floating around in hoverchairs, for all I know. The artist didn't even try to move the 'camera' up or down a little bit. This sort of thing works fine in a simple gag webcomic or 4koma, but not when you're trying to do slightly more complex sequential stories. *sigh*

That sounds kind'a.... boring. ._.;

Yes. It was. I wasn't impressed by anything in Rumble Pak, and Sakura Pak has so far one really nice story, a couple of pretty good ones with a few serious flaws, and then a bunch of forgettable stuff. I'm judging primarily by art, of course, and it'd be interesting to see what someone with more a focus on the writing would think.

Let me put it this way: did you read any stories that you thought were good? Or that you think I'd think were good? Did any of the dialogue read like it was spoken by witty people who were fluent in English?

One.

Although to be honest, if I hate the art (and I know I'm picky), I can't get into the writing and I skim it so I don't pick up the story, so someone who's not as picky as I am about the art might find more than that to like.

I'm writing a longer review now, so it'll be up after a while. (What work?? It's spring break! Not that I have the days off or anything. :/)

Sometimes people who write sucky dialogue can construct a good plot, which you won't be able to make out if you skim. But if any of the dialogue reads like Babelfish, the whole thing will read like Babelfish, so skimming will identify that problem.

Anyone who's read a slush pile of any kind knows that if the first page is badly written, none of the rest of the pages will be good, so you may as well stop there. A well-written first page may cloak larger problems-- poor plotting, inconsistent characterization, and so forth-- but if the first page sucks, you're quite safe tossing the whole thing.

What I want to know i why the hell didn't EigoMANGA's editors do any actual editing? I know they're soliciting for stories that have at least three issues already penciled and inked, but you'd think that some sort of professional pride would lead them to, say, want to fix the most obvious typoes and grammar-oes.

dude, you TOTALLY got spoiled by minekura, eh? =D

I got spoiled by professional manga.

~~but Minekura has spoiled me for the utter lack of implied handjobs in the manga stories~~

It's all your fault that we didn't do the implied blowjob I wanted.

Mea culpa! How was I to know that they were LOOKING for things like demonic bishounen boy-bondage?!

The next one: blowjobs all the way! XD

XD true that...::goes back to stare at the WA pic again::

I'd also add:
1) Hands are not for hiding.
2) Characters have butts. Legs do not go straight down from the small of the back to the angkles.

I don't mind hidden hands when youdo it well -- there's a lot of hidden hands in RUROUNI KENSHIN, for example, which aren't obvious until you're paging through it desperately looking for useful hand positions to ~~copy~~ reference, but characters who stand around with their hands in their pockets in more than one panel is SO BLOODY OBVIOUS that it should be banned.

A couple of years ago Bruce was hosting a panel on drawing manga with the character designer of Azamanga Diao and a web comic artist who is extremely popular, I don't want to mention names. Anyway near the end of the panel someone asked how they should draw hands and feet. Bruce suggested drawing their own and taking life drawing classes, the Azamanga guy agreed as well but, the web comic guy said do what I do, and draw their hands and feet out of the panels.

The Azumanga artist freaked out and couldn't believe the web artist said that. Needless to say Bruce calmed the waters and stated although that was an option you need to master the art of drawing hands and feet before taking short cuts.

*snerk* Heh. Hands in pockets and off-frame all the time is a sure sign of a lazy artist, to me. But carefully planning your poses so that the hands are unobtrusively hidden (see RUROUNI KENSHIN) is quite an admirable feat.

Then there's SORCEROUS STABBER ORPHEN whose artist is so good at hands in perspective that his characters are always casting spells directly out at the reader.

...I like drawing hands and feet. Although the hands being more accessible, I have more practice drawing them. (My own, anyway. I should draw my husband's feet. God knows, when he's hunched over playing some computer game only his hands move...)

I'm decently good at feet, as long as they're in any position other than normal-standing. Hands ... eh. I need far more practice.

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