telophase: (Default)
2008-01-07 09:08 am
Entry tags:

Monday morning reminder!

Since I keep forgetting to post about this at a time when I know lots of people are reading LJ! Manga chapter analysis here. Comments, observations, challenges, complaints that I got it wrong, etc. welcome. Especially as the only one who's said anything about it is [livejournal.com profile] octopedingenue and I know it's been read more times than that by my stats. :)
telophase: (Bleach - dork squad)
2008-01-05 06:18 pm
Entry tags:

Reminder!

Analysis of chapter 118 of Bleach (in volume 14) is posted on Google Docs here! Comments HIGHLY ENCOURAGED, even if you think you don't have much to contribute! I want to know what I'm not seeing in it.

If you want to be able to edit the document itself - which I also encourage because the idea of a collaborative document is nifty - let me know your email address* and I'll send you an invite.

It's not just about the art, it's about layout, pacing, writing etc. They all form one big whole.


* Don't assume I already have it - odds are I've lost it, or only have your Paypal email or something like that. Email me at telophase14 (at) gmail (dot) com.

ETA: The original post on this is here.
telophase: (Bleach - Aizen and Gin dance!)
2007-12-31 09:20 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

If you zoomed past my previous LJ entry analyzing a chapter of Bleach while the link was down, it's back up now.
telophase: (Kenpachi loves you)
2007-12-31 08:24 pm
Entry tags:

GAH - manga chapter layout analysis

I've just spent a huge chunk of the day ripping apart chapter 118 of Bleach in order to improve my understanding of page layout. I won't know how successful I've been until I sit down to do my own layout, but you may find it interesting. (Why that chapter? Because I had it on my hard drive, and it wasn't all fighting.)

It's up on Google Docs at this URL: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgcxvp5k_9dfx4m77k

ETA: Aarg, dammit, didn't realize my inserted comments don't show up on the published version of the document, Hang on while I convert it to PDF or something that *does* show them... Back up! With actual visible comments this time!

If you have comments you want to make about the chapter and the layout and whatever on that document, email me and I'll send you an invitation that will allow you to edit it. :) Comments welcome here, too, but it'd be cool to have a collaborative document, I think.


And always remember KENPACHI LOVES YOU!
telophase: (Default)
2006-11-18 05:28 pm

Manga story structure

If you don't read the manga blogs, right now you're missing a go-round on story structure and books vs. serials sparked by a post by Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading and Christopher Butcher's review of [livejournal.com profile] tentopet's Fool's Gold.

Chronologically:

1. Johanna Draper Carlson's essay about reviewing serialized chapters, in response to someone challenging her reading of Mail Order Ninja.
2. Christopher Butcher's review of Fool's Gold.
3. Queenie Chan is asked by Newsarama to write a bit on the state of OEL/global manga, and responds to the above two by detailing the story structure she followed in The Dreaming.
4. Butcher responds, challenging Chan's perception of the three-act structure she used.
5. Heidi Macdonald at The Beat jumps in also.
telophase: (Saiyuki - drinking)
2006-10-11 09:44 pm

Links to Saiyuki essays

(This entry is to collate the various links I've collected around LJ about Saiyuki, so I have one place to point people to in one of my Tpop columns. Feel free to add others in the comments.)

ExpandMany of these links will contain spoilers. Browse at your own risk. )
telophase: (Default)
2006-04-08 05:39 pm
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Saiyuki stickfigures

So I started to think about working out how a chapter of Saiyuki was constructed, and got so far as dropping a layer on top of each page in one chapter and scribbling the figures and backgrounds as stick figures and notes.

Then (a) I got that OH GOD YOU'RE NOT DOING YOUR REAL WORK feeling and (b) I sort of forgot where I was going to go from there, so here I am offering up the scribbles to anyone whyo wants to look at them and see if they can come up with anything useful.

I think I wanted to mostly see where Minekura used closeups and far-away scenes, how many backgrounds and what sort and when she used them, when she left the backgrounds off, etc. She almost never uses almost-full-figure people - they're sort of from the thighs up unless the camera is set far away. And she excels at managing to get a background in with giving you a really clear picture of the whole surroundings.

Anyway, the file is here. It's chapter 44, from near the beginning of the Kami-sama arc in book 8, only 15 pages long, no action, and no plot spoilers in the stick figures.

If you have any grand ideas, or not-so-grand ideas, post 'em. And no making fun of my stick figures!
telophase: (FMA - Hughes kittyspam)
2006-03-15 09:45 pm

Again with the Manga Online!

Just a quick note to announce that I've written another article for TOKYOPOP's Manga Online March issue which is finally online after all the RSOM posting. They asked me to compare OEL manga to Japanese manga, and I did so, focusing on shoujo, because that's what I had the most of on my shelves. We're very scientific here at Camp Telophase.

Anyway, to read it, head over to Manga Online, sign in (it's free to register), and click Submissions, then How-To of the Month.
telophase: (FMA - Ed panicking)
2006-01-22 09:25 pm
Entry tags:

Manga covers for 2005

Here's a montage of 49 of the top 50 manga (plus one novel - Vampire Hunter D) covers (I couldn't find #29 on Amazon.com, so there's a white space marking its place). I have no OMG WOW insights, but a couple of observations.

List from Love Manga, where David loves crunching numbers. :D This is from the direct-sales market - comic book stores - and not bookstores. (which is interesting in reference to the number of shoujo series in the top 50, I think, since the market at comic stores tends to be more male and bookstores more female. We'll see how it looks when David posts the bookstore list. :D)

ExpandRead more... )
telophase: (Near - que?)
2006-01-09 07:51 pm

Mangatalk: Covers, part 2

A quick-and-dirty experiment on a couple of covers from the previous post. You'll want to read that post first for this to make sense.

ExpandOn to the pics )
telophase: (Near - dork)
2006-01-09 07:35 pm

Mangatalk: Covers

Stemming from this afternoon's discussion of cover colors, I got the desire to see if I could see any difference in the top-selling manga and less well selling manga. I couldn't find any numbers for a full year anywhere, but the admin of Love Manga loves to crunch numbers and posts a Top 50 list every month. So these ratings swiped from his Top 50 Manga for November 2005.

I swiped the images from Amazon.com, and since Amazon was running slow for me, instead of comparing the top 10 versus the bottom 10 in this list, I'm just doing the top 5.

Caveats: we all know the cover isn't the only thing that causes book sales (word of mouth is actually the #1 selling point), so you don't need to tell me that the cover is only part of that and there's all these other aspects that go into it. (Anyone posting to tell me that gets directed up to this sentence. :D) Also, looking at one month's sales don't really tell us much - I'd need to look at the sales month-by-month for an entire year or more, and frankly you'd probably need to pay me to do that. XD So we can't draw any real conclusions from this, but it might provide something to think about. Or it might not. Let's see, shall we?

ExpandOn to the cover images )




 
telophase: (edward elric don't get fangirls)
2005-12-06 01:15 pm
Entry tags:

Mangatalk: part 2

This is again nothign formal, just tossing something up to see what people have to say. This is in response to [livejournal.com profile] kate_nepveu's comments here comparing Fullmetal Alchemist to Saiyuki.

ExpandRead more... )
telophase: (Default)
2005-12-05 11:48 pm
Entry tags:

Mangatalk: A question...

--

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.

--

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

--

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...

ExpandWHY DOES IT WORK? )
telophase: (L stalker blinky)
2005-11-01 09:28 am
Entry tags:

Tokyopop Manga Online

As the November issue of Tokyopop's Manga Online (neƩ Takuhai) has gone live as of today, I shall make the official announcement:

An edited version of my two essays on visual flow in manga has been posted as Manga Online's How-To of the Month.


=====================

And a pimp for anyone who comes by: I am also seeking submissions of original manga short stories for an anthology I and some friends will be publishing ourselves. We're willing to work with you to an extent, and if you are an artist looking for a writer or a writer looking for an artist, we can hook you up! Information can be found at the PandaBuddha website.


=====================

[another edit] Just found this quote. Has nothing to do with manga, but I liked it anyway.
"Libraries are brothels for the mind, and librarians are the madams, greeting customers, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping books."

--Guy Browning, The Guardian, October 18, 2003
--signed, [livejournal.com profile] telophase, madam librarian
telophase: (gojyo - hopping)
2005-10-10 02:29 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

There's a goodly number of you that already read either [livejournal.com profile] kate_nepveu or [livejournal.com profile] manga_talk, and thus already know that she's posted another analysis of art from Saiyuki, this time from volume 8. Spoilers for 8, natch.
telophase: (Mello - shiiiny)
2005-10-04 11:41 pm
Entry tags:

Interesting technique

A quick manga observation right before I go to bed. DUnno how many of you read Tramps like Us (Kimi wa no Pet), but volume 6 is out and the mangaka does something interesting for part of chapter 32.

She follows along a day in the life of the main character Sumire, but for a good part of it through the eyes of the other characters. It starts with narration by Momo, Sumire's "pet,"* as he talks about how he gets to see a side of her that her boyfriend doesn't. Then the narration switches to her best friend, trying to work out what's bugging Sumire and musing on how she's been like she is since college. Her boyfriend then picks the narration up, pondering what she's not telling him, and then a romantic rival of hers picks it up, and puzzles over why Sumire doesn't seem to be much into her boyfriend, and why she doens't try harder to make herself appealing to men. (And then the chapter concludes with Typical Manga Plot Twist.)

The change in narrators is signalled by a new page and scene, and each thread of narration starts with the narrator musing that there's something about Sumire that they just don't get. (And I ahvne't gone thruogh and re-read all the scenes yet, but I'm wondering if maybe what each person doens't get about SUmire is answered by another person?)

I don't have much to say about that, no deep analysis, because it's past my bedtime and I'm sleeeeepy, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see if anyone else thinks it's a nifty as I do. It'd be annoying if it were overused, but it seems to be a cool way to contrast different sides of Sumire and how she's different with different people.


* Momo is a young male ballet dancer who is living in Sumire's apartment and acting as her pet. I fully expect that not a single one of you blinked when you read that, because you're all used to manga by now, and you probably wondered if he was kinda hot, and you already have figured out that there's romantic tension occurring. Yes. You should read it. I couldn't do justice to how he ends up in her apartment.
telophase: (Near - dork)
2005-10-03 11:11 am
Entry tags:

Open question...

Over on [livejournal.com profile] homemade_manga, [livejournal.com profile] scorpio1987 is asking the question What makes a manga instantly popular?.

We know that "instant" success really isn't that - it's the product of a lot of preparation and work - but there's interesting thoughts in there about what makes a particular manga more popular than another, and why something takes the public by storm. Thoughts, musings, arguments on the subject, anyone?



I'll go pimp this on [livejournal.com profile] manga_talk once there's gotten to be some actual discussion, but for now I'm going to lunch. Ta.
telophase: (Near - dork)
2005-09-28 04:24 pm
Entry tags:

Manga analysis question

As a result of minor good news that I am not discussing publicly yet except that everyone on my friendslist knows, I'm going to ask - what would you like to see me tackle next in my manga analyses?

I know that most people tend to want me to dsicuss a specific series, but that puts the burden of figureing out what the heck to say on me and I REFUSE THAT BURDEN, GOOMBAS! So ... if you have a specific series you'd like me to talk about, you'll have to come up with a specific question, probably on the order of "How does the mangaka of [blah] achieve [blah]?" or "Why did the mangaka of [blah] do [blah] instead of [blah]?" Only with, you know, actual words with relevant meaning instead of the [blah]s, in case you were feeling smart-alecky today.

Of coruse, it's not like I have time to do any a bunch right now, but it'd be nice to have a list of topics generated to pick and choose from when I do manage to squeeze in a bit of time.