One of the hardest things to do when creating something is not just learning the skills, taking the time, or the assets and polish. Rather, starting it and finishing it is what is the hardest thing to do. However, there can be many qualities that determine a "finished" or "incomplete" project. If you were to write an essay with a missing paragraph in the middle, but had a strong introduction and conclusion, would that be a completed essay? If you were to complete an art piece but not add any value to it, would that be completed?

Instead of questioning the value of completion, it's better to know what yields the best result for yourself as a goal. To reach that goal and achieve it satisfactorily, and to know that your best effort went into it, doing it without any regret... That is what you can consider complete. It isn't bad to have incomplete projects, but completing a project and allowing it to rest is great. It becomes wholesome, and can reach out to many.

Now, creating something good and refreshing in this day and age requires something new and original, but that becomes harder and harder to do. How do you be creative and original, without scaring away the audience, or confusing yourself? Particularly, the most important things are to stay away from what is normally done, and / or execute it differently. But how do you do that?

First off, creativity is something that you create yourself, a spawn of your ideas to share. This doesn't necessarily have to be original, but happens without a consideration of outside influence. Originality is where you stray away from other successful tropes and cliches, and try something that people either don't expect or don't know what to expect when going into it. The former will tend to cause some to stray away from new, unknown material, while the latter, will innovate old things through new ideas. The best of both worlds would contain both original content with creative execution.

Considering this, we have general formulas that stories, manga, and anime tend to follow these days. These patterns become so recognizable, that they have even coined a term for them, as "flags". For example, a death flag would be an event that happens in the story that causes or gives reason that the character would die. For example:

Girl 1: I've finally realized it! What Boy 1 was telling me all along!

Boy 2 "So you've finally realized it?"

Girl 1: Boy 1.. likes me!

Boy 2: Heh.. you finally get it.

Girl 1: I must go tell him now!

Boy 2: Hold on, it's a bit late for..

[Girl 1 has already left]

Boy 2: Oh boy..  [turns on weather channel]

TV: It seems storms are coming to town. Please seek shelter as soon as possible! It is expected that a high risk of death will happen.

Boy 2: Oh..

 

Now, this pattern suggests that (with a bit of exaggeration with the weather event) the girl had finally realized it, but this certain event tells us that there won't be a full on realization between boy 1 and girl 1 just yet, and there may even be some tragic event coming up. This creates a reader to tighten up their guard for the incoming, which allows the writer to manipulate the reader. Usually there is no manipulation to satisfy the readers. But with proper usage of these flags and more subtle hints in progression, you can throw events that would either surprise or become unexpected, rather than predictable and boring.

If you were to set up for a boring event to come forth and instead present an exciting development, that would instill far more excitement than if it was consistently set up to throw out exciting events on every odd chapter. It's the same feeling of discovering something for the first time and uncovering a new aspect in something you thought you knew. But, this is all a part of execution. Even if you can set up original and creative situations that betray the reader's expectations in a good way, it still must be contained in an immersive and reasonable state to happen within the story. Either way, this is all a part of understanding the balance within a story, shifting from event to event and giving the reader a shifting progression instead of constant. If it's constant, it is static, it is boring. Playing these event right is what creates a good story and makes it interesting.

Playing into this with outside elements is also important in appeal, to appear as original and creative as can be. In the age of anime and manga about school, action, harems, and self-insert fantasies, having something outside that circle is unexpected and exciting in itself. A wave of new and old comes along slowly, just like progression within a story.

But that's for another time

thanks for reading!

ceroblitz

I just have the need to get my thoughts out on all this story crafting nonsense, and what I'm considering for the next thing I'm working on. We certainly have many of our own tastes and dislikes, and general quality of a subject will improve the creation in question. But even quality, isn't directly related to it's ultimate reception. People come across crappy creations all the time. But does that mean they aren't good?

Lets say you have an idea you want to get across to people. Before you worry about format and what you plan to include, is it the best conveyance of the idea? Let's take a look at some examples of manga, namely, scenes that are high in execution.

Manga is about conveying a progression of a story from a particular perspective across the time it takes to read though and enjoy the moment. If the time and pace of the manga or story isn't believable, people can never get immersed or want to engage with the world. There needs to be a balance of presentation and understanding, alongside time for the reader to understand what is going on.

So lets take a look at this page, from the manga Helck (which you should read, it's really good, but I can't say it is perfect. But super enjoyable! Also, spoiler warning):

Chapter 36 - Helck

Revelation scenes like this, are built up with worldbuilding throughout the story. The less expected the element of revelation, the more exciting and interesting it is. The pace of this page, is overall slow, and the spacing between each bubble and panel is big enough for people to understand there is some huge relevance behind the sword. Keeping it brief and expressive, slow and steady is important in scenes like these, and a good grasp must be held, and gets the reader to understand: "Hey, this thing has some big relevance for upcoming events!"

Of course, manga isn't built just on scenes like these, and need to have a balance of scenes that get a lot of information out through text and scenes that give a lot of time to connect with pictures and pacing.

A lot of text can easily alienate the viewer from reading a scene, but if it is well spaced, and well worded, people won't be even able to tell.

Lets take a look at this text panel from Hunter x Hunter, which has overall great paneling, and a moderately fast pace. (Though the art is inconsistent, it's easy to understand, which is important)

At a glance, the text is easy to receive, but it's density can easily drive away people from taking all the details in. This brings up the question of how many of these words actually matter to the plot, if the reader should even have to read it all? Compared to the majority of the manga, which has spaced text of no more than 15 words per bubble, taking in fewer lines in less dense formats allows people to take in the information without really thinking about it.

But is there a way for people to take in larger amounts of text more easily?

If we have a different format to perceive information in relation to the picture - text format. Most words are contained within bubbles, and in manga, sometimes is generally hard to follow who says what without knowing the conventions. (I made this mistake in OH MAN quite often, with bubbles being squashed everywhere to fit in tons of lines of text).

When people are confronted with many chapters to read in any subject medium, people will tend to want to read in the least amount of time as a result of the overwhelming amount of chapters ahead. But if you follow a weekly release, you may find yourself re reading chapters that send out a certain feeling, and read it slowly compared to starting a new release. This doesn't apply to everyone, but I know people that read very quickly through manga. Of course, if it's really good, it warrants a re read as you didn't know what you were getting into before. But if it's mediocre, you'd be glad you didn't spend a lot of time trying to read something that you wouldn't have understood in the first place. A fear of the second option and a desire for the first option is the reason why people try out almost every different manga, and read through it very quickly.

If I can get readers to read through something slowly, while still maintaining enjoyment, would be the most optimal form of execution in a work. However, since everyone is different, to devise a form that is best suited for everyone is a difficult task. A format I had in mind are here:

Richer Dialogue will be presented almost in a forum like style, while phrases in action oriented scenes will still be in bubbles. These will have a max limit of 15 words, while the dialogue will have 15+. Since scrolling will the major form of progression still, the use of vertical spacing will be utilized a lot more to direct pacing, instead of cramming every panel into a page by page format.

 

If any more formats come to mind I'll try and post them.

 

Thanks for reading!

ceroblitz

 

 

I'd like to mark that previous as the start of something new, and the start of something in general. To keep you guys more updated on my life and the site in general, I want to update this blog frequently, enough to hopefully keep people interested and curious about what it to come, and who else what I can put on here?

 

Now, in terms of context, I love writing and thinking about stories and ideas, and reading and watching things that tell an effective, enjoyable, and fun story. With the format of modern ideas taking more production to produce something amazing to keep up with people's demands and what is popular, not only do things take a lot more work to make, but people are less appreciative of such things. With over-saturation of anything, people can tend to put things off and move on to something else, as they have that option.

What I want to do is to be able to cut down that production while maintaining an effective format to tell and depict stories on the computer, or digital medium, without costing a ton of time. In terms of overall production to release speed, there is a need to keep the audience's interest without isolating too many readers from the medium. The order would go like this:

Novel [ pure text ]

Light Novel [ very few pictures and text ]

Picture Book [ more pictures than text ]

Manga / Comic [ Formatted pictures and dialogue ]

Visual Novel [ Colored stills, voice ]

Filmed take [Live Action - Acting]

Animation [Frame by frame or 3D, voice, Music ]

Movie [ Production, Editing, Composition, Location, Quality, Sound, Music ]

Game [ Programming, dialogue, branches, Writing, art, animation, Music, voice]

 

From top to bottom, would be the amount of work required to fully tell the story from least to greatest. But what form is the most enjoyable by all people, that requires the least amount of work (proportionally) ?

From what I have asked people, (not many) I have received Manga as the answer to be the epitome of best form to depict a story, that isn't as work intensive as an animation or other things, or as intimidating as a pure text novel. It clearly depicts what I want to show in each scene, so everything I want to tell (or don't want to tell) can be not only visually shown, but followed by the reader at their own pace. However, it still isn't that efficient, as each page on a full blown manga still takes a lot of effort, and requires assistants to keep up constantly even as a full time job. So what I want to achieve is find a format that can house the same feeling of a manga or greater, in a way that uses the format of a web browser. I'm not the first person to try this, but I'll definitely try a whole bunch of different formats and ways that I can blend the story and format together.

Story comes first before everything else, all other elements are just supporting roles in crafting the execution and presentation.

Either way, this is the mindset I have with my new work.

 

 

 

Ahh.. Hello everyone, and I apologize for not having kept up with OH MAN or anything of the like, on this site.

Now, lets talk. A few things with my life are a bit busy, classes are even busier this semester, and I really feel the need to be doing more things, and become more active in general. However, with this wave of business, those types of things are harder to keep up with. Things I started, projects, comics, drawings, animations... I have a terrible tendency of starting these things and not seeing them through for a few reasons, which is the drop off in interest. Not to mention, the inability to keep that interest invested in the thing I have started on. I have fallen into that period of relaxing that is so hard to climb out of, filled with distractions, and obstacles that I don't really want to face. Either way, that would be the primary reason for me not reviving the comic. OH MAN has become a block that prevents me from creating new things while requiring me to fix up loose ends.

 

OH MAN was created completely on a whim, where the first chapter was created, and everything followed after. A project based on 3 things:

1. A test to keep up a daily comic, improve my work ethic 

2. To improve my ability with digital drawing

3. To see how many people would be interested in my works

Of these three things, I'd like to say that I had satisfied all of them, until a certain point. I had kept up OH MAN consistently for an entire year, releasing roughly 54-55 comics over that span. As you can see, I had also improved in drawings leaps and bounds,

from this:

to this:

So with this gain and control, I felt like OH MAN was lacking, and my interests in the story had veered off to other things. this is where I started updating less and less, until it practically just stopped. However, I wanted to revive it, because I felt bad for leaving people behind, and leaving the story where it is. But I also lacked the desire to continue writing and pursuing the story. I had planned it all out, put so much effort and detail into refining the story and mechanics, but now this battle action type story has gotten to a point where I don't want to really pursue it anymore.

 

This then comes to point 3, which is to see how people would react to my creation. I had low hopes, as my artistic ability was quite lacking back then, but I was confident in writing a story that was interesting. But now that I look back on it, its moderately interesting and has its few unique points, but overall kind of disappointing to look back on to what I can do now. If I really wanted to restart it, I would want to recreate it from scratch ( which is why I redrew the first chapter). But I know now that many people have read my works, though I'm not exactly sure how many at this point in time, which makes me hesitant to either put a end to it, or revive it knowing that the goal of completion is far away and letting people down again with breaks. With the abilities and interests I have now, I have more confidence in a new work than to continue something from a long time ago. I also think that if I do revive it, the story won't be handled in the same way as I intended, which was full of optimism and ideas all to promote it's growth, versus now, an uninterested way to move it along. I'd definitely still try and make it as interesting as possible, but it wouldn't turn out the way that I had wanted it to become.

 

Anyways, this boils down to a few things. I do not want to continue OH MAN any more, but I do feel bad for not continuing it and not managing it anymore. I would rather have a better scope of a project, and work on that and present it to you guys, rather than try and entertain you guys with the legacy of my past creation(as cheesy and arrogant as that sounds). I have the plans for OH MAN still in my head, which would probably span over 200 chapters more from where it currently is, for me to be satisfied with it's completion but it is far too big of a scope for me to handle.

 

Either way, I'd like to hear your guys's thoughts on the matter. I'd like to either leave my plans for the comic somewhere somehow, if you guys really want to know where I wanted to go with it... or stop it completely and move on to another project that will be better and greater than OH MAN ever was... maybe... hopefully...

 

 

Here's a preview of what I want to make, and it will be a different format than a comic.

 

Other than this just being a test post, this marks the beginning of a new era. At least for me. Anyways, having more access to all sorts of things will allow me to access and create things much easier, on top of making everything a little bit more automated. With the power of php, I'll be able to work much faster around the site and ensure that everything works a little neater, and a little better. Anyways, the site will have all sorts of my creative projects and the part dedicated to OH MAN, while this blog section shall be more dedicated to my personal life, upcoming news and projects coming to this site. While it's still under construction, many more things will come to life on this website due to my increased ease of access, so watch out for that!

-ceroblitz

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