/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>6469461
Make manga online.
If your stuff is good you will gain bucks online as well.
But if you want to sell manga, then you can do commissions and get somewhat stable that way and after that make mangas

>>6469461
I dunno, if american stuff like ppg and rwby became popular enough to get picked up by Japan then you don’t need to learn Japanese. Learning the language to publish is just cope. If you really have something they will translate it and beg for more.

>>6469472
>>6469479
This is what I was thinking, but being so isolated and socially inept I feel so delusional about Japan

>>6469461
Just make manga and publish them online on webtoon platforms, instagram and twitter and build a following, learn japanese if you want to travel to japan.
however you will make more money selling stickers and keychains of your characters when you have a following than joining the meatgrinder and trying to get your work published in japan.

you can use that money to ball around in japan for a few months every year. before you decide to move there.

>>6469482
Outside of anime subculture the more you learn about Japan’s culture as a whole the less you care about learning the language if you’re not a white male. Asians (who aren’t Japanese) get treated poorly and any other ethic group you can forget it. And even then, the English teacher is made fun of.

I mean it’s sounds completely ridiculous to learn an entire language for a subculture when you can’t get to use it in your daily life (speak it with natives) unless you plan to live there. And you already know about their working conditions. This is implying your manga somehow becomes the next One Piece.

Everything worth consuming gets localized nowadays except for obscure series and of course there are a trove of games that will never see the light of day but i’m sure there are a hundred thousand stuff you have yet to pick up. Really, it’s not worth it unless you are set on moving to Japan.

>>6469461
Honestly, as somebody who is also learning Japanese, you'd be better off focusing on drawing and making comics. Take a look at Radiant for example. It's an originally published (manfra) in French, and later gets localized for Japanese releases. It also had an anime.

You need that time for drawing manga, anon.

>>6469491
I never even thought about the fact that I should take a few trips to explore Japan before deciding to live there. that's more stuff I have to take into consideration

>>6469497
Very true, and I imagine that someone who learned Japanese just to publish comics would be secretly laughed at by all the Japanese mangaka themselves, like "why don't you just publish in your own country", etc etc.

>>6469526
how long have you been learning and how fluent are you? Also, I will take a look at Radiant, thanks

>>6469461
Logically it's a terrible choice. You will have to invest thousands of hours of study for a low-paying job with insane deadlines, terrible hours and almost no job security. On top of all of this the chance of ever getting published is astronomically low.
If you are passionate enough and can't see yourself doing anything else, it's possible but extremely difficult. Building an audience online or winning an international manga competition is probably your best bet to get your foot in the door.

Some interesting interviews from westerners who got published in Japan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdJICluC7Pc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkqC5vt_-U

>>6469561
>>6469561
>>6469561

>>6469561
how

>>6469560
>a westerner was the executive producer for an anime
Anon, you're making want to go to Japan even more...

>>6469569
>>6469564


just edit your post

>>6469570
>>6469570
>>6469570

>>6469461
You could study japanese while doodling.
How? Passiv input by listening. You don't know how effective that can be

Refer to this 4chan guide if you haven't already.
https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/

Also, even if you do not become a mangaka, you will still be able to draw and visit Japan, which is super cool on its own

>>6469576
I'm doing this, except with the original ajatt method. I spend 1 hour mining sentences and another hour in anki, but I don't even know if the whole thing is worth anymore. I'm feeling sick of Japanese. I was originally chasing Japan's comic market for the money, since it's around 3x bigger than the american comic market, but at this point it feels easier to "be the change" for American comics and grow this industry here

>>6469461
What's the point when Korean webtoons are the future?

>>6469461
you're a huge fucking faggot. you asked this very question at least a hundred times on /mmg/ and over the course of the year.

YOU WILL NEVER BE JAPANESE.

YOU WILL NEVER MAKE A MANGA.

YOU'RE NGMI

>>6469529
I've been learning for like 3 years or so, the last 2 years it's been a daily immersion thing for the most part. I'm a casual though just putting in as much as I feel like. Let's say some days I think I'm alright and some days I think I'm shit. Vocabulary is my issue because I didn't do much anki.

>>6469479
Related to this here's a question to fellow wannabe mangaka/comic makers: would you rather have an hypothetical animated series based on your works be made by a western or japanese animation studio?
It will not happen but we can always fantasize.

I'd honestly would kill to have a competent japanese, or even french animation studio being in charge with a decent budget, american anime-like series either feel very choppy (Castlevania) or visually bland (Studio Mir average tripe), and visually I am not sure they would capture something significantly more manga-like in art style and character designs than they usually do regarding my project, especially the female characters.

>>6469461
imo by N3 onwards you can really do a lot of your moon grinding in the background of other tasks or just as your media intake in general.

>becoming a published mangaka in Japan.
really depends on what you consider legitimate. you could literally fly out to the next comiket and put out a doujin which is fundamentally what most of the moonmen themselves are doing. if you can only accept having your work in jump or something, there are contests for that, some international some not. anons have won in the past. it's hard work but possible. even if you were to fail on both counts if you keep up the grind for 5 years or so you will definitely have the skills to be employed in japan or as a comics artist of some description somewhere

>>6469461

Does the Japanese read webtoons and stuff made outside? I imagine Tower Of God is translated to Japanese... But is it common for them to read work from outside Japan?

>>6469626
Nta but
>would you rather have an hypothetical animated series based on your works be made by a western or japanese animation studio?
I feel like animation from the western studio wouldn't be the same, and they'd cut out content considered too risqué to be shown on television, assuming it's a TV production

Anime is a freer market.

BUT, I do really like indie western animation online, so I would be delighted if they turned it into one of those!

>>6470192
Japanese webtoons is absolutely buttfucking the publishing industry

>>6469626
>>6470204
Personally, I'd KILL for a figurine of my own OC. Western merchandising isnt bad, but it's mostly just samey kids toys and dolls. Some shows don't even have official merch, see owl house and amphibia.

Translating your comic into jpn and publishing it online seems like the better option to me atleast.

>>6470585
3D printer exists you know

>>6469580
That's pretty much the sentiment of most people who actually start to get closer to achieving "the dream" of being a published mangaka. It's so obtuse and difficult, the odds are stacked so hard against you that it legitimately starts to seem less and less ridiculous to just try and make your way in the busted ass western comic scene instead. The manga industry is incredibly competitive, it's a complete pipedream even for the natives, and you have all the additional handicaps that come with trying to learn a language and then do business in a foreign country (a notoriously bureaucracy-nightmare of a country at that) that treats foreigners as odd curiosities, and not only that but compete with the famously incredibly hard working natives to write stories that will capture THEIR local market, a market you almost certainly don't quite realize how different it is in terms of what appeals to and interests them in an industry that even within their work-yourself-to-death culture is considered to be one of the harsher vocations.
To get to the point, the closer to get the more you realize that you don't actually want to get it, and that you were probably better off where you were.

>>6469461
I'm also doing this but its more as a hobby rather than a career goal (although I can hope). My goal right now is just to post short stuff on twitter and try to release in both Japanese and English (or just beg someone to help translate it for me. Then maybe in the future my art will look decent enough to attract followers/editors who pine through twitter looking for people to publish
Or at least one can dream

>>6470613
I feel better that other people have experienced what I'm experiencing. It just feels awful quitting something I've invested a year's time in already

>>6470638
頑張ろう!

>>6470835
If you're talking about learning japanese, then that's still a skill that might be useful to you. It's just not at all unreasonable to think twice about trying to get into a magazine there yourself. Not to say that you can't self-publish instead for a japanese audience or whatever.

>>6470840
there are literally anons who have been in jump
desu though fixating on getting published is the wrong mindset imo rather than just making your dream comic and selling it for yourself. if a mag wants your shit, cool, otherwise fuckem

>>6470843
>there are literally anons who have been in jump
No, there are anons who have met with editors, but none that have been straight up published in Jump. And I doubt that they'd disagree with the idea that it's totally reasonable to consider it not worth the effort.
>if a mag wants your shit, cool, otherwise fuckem
If a mag is approaching you then you don't need the mag. If you need a magazine, then you have to go to them. The only situation they would be coming to YOU is when you've made something that has already proven to be able to sell. Let's not forget that the whole point of going to a magazine is to, you know, get paid. Like, actually get paid so that you can survive while you make your comic, not just leech of the good faith of your parents or working on your comic between work or whatever.

>>6469461
i wish i was japanese bros

>>6469461
Pretty sure the Japanese know who Spiderman is and Stan Lee and the guy who drew Spiderman didn't speak Japanese

>>6470853
yeah exactly. I would never go to a publisher if I could make some money to live on while working on my comic. The whole point of going to a publisher is to get their $$ so you can live the dream.

>>6469461
i studied japanese two years ago so maybe i can give some useful advice

depending on how good you want to be and the time you want it to take will determine how much time you want to put in
>about 6-8 hours a day to get good in 3-5 years
>about 4-6 hours a day to get good in over 5 years
>under 6 hours a day to get good in about 10 years
we're not talking being fluent, we're just talking about being good enough to have conversations without constantly stuttering and being able to understand most conversations that aren't too technical

the second year of studying made me realize the sheer amount of effort and work required in order to get good at japanese
i was pulling 6-8 hour workdays, grinding anki cards, and making sure i was good on my Kanji strokes and despite all of this, i still ended up with an elementary understanding of Japanese
sure, i can watch anime without subtitles but i miss about 70% of what is being said and can only understand simple phrases and conversations yet i felt like i studied so damn much

if you still think you want to pursue it, i can give more detailed advice on what traps to avoid and what study materials are actually useful but i'd say to study it because you enjoy it not because you see yourself in a year or so being good at it because it's honestly going to take years just like with drawing
basically imagine the skill of drawing and how long it takes to get good and that's similar to how japanese is as well but it's a damn fun language to learn if you're up for it so i'd say to continue studying it just for that aspect but don't expect to get "good" in a year or so because it's just not that type of language

>>6471057
not OP but i learning japanese by myself 5-6 years ago. i know quite mostly essential grammar but i hate remembering kanjis,word. results in i still can't read japanese novel.manga physical book till these days. (if it a text on internet,pdf i can copy that word/kanji) and open dictionary
i think i read grammar until JLPT n3-n2 level. but mostly forgot

is it hard to get into a level like able to read science novel,fantasy light novel? i think i'm gonna start learning kanji and word

>>6471057
can you outline exactly what you did? I'm doing the ajatt method, and Khatz said he got fluent in 18 months

>>6469497
honestly, that's part of the reason i stopped
once i got passed my anime phase, i realized that there was no reason to continue to pursue japanese as they're not much more interesting than americans
also, i agree with the localization
people always make weird excuses to study Japanese like they want to read some random VN they found online when there are literally hundreds of the same or better quality that they can read but for some reason they want that very specific one, it's obsessive
>>6469610
i think that's normal then because i felt the same way when i was studying japanese
i had the sentence structure and grammar down but anytime i didn't understand a sentence it was because i didn't understand very specific words
once i knew those specific words then i understood the whole sentence
i think once you study japanese long enough, it seems that just the vocabulary is enough from then on, especially if you're not trying to sound fluent
at least i personally didn't see much use of the advanced grammar outside of textbooks
>>6469576
>>6469580
i tried that and it doesn't really work unless you have some understanding already
with vocabulary it might work but if you're studying anything else it's just a waste of time, at least it was for me personally
>>6469675
i wish i took my N4/N3 when i was studying, my teacher said that i should be able to pass the N3 but i never took it, feels bad
>>6471073
i tried reading a light novel back when i was really into it but it was very, very hard
understanding japanese at a conversational level is not that hard but when you move onto trying to read it the difficulty goes up by 10x
kanji is very hard to remember as it's not like chinese where one kanji has one meaning and one pronunciation and despite my best efforts, it was actually what caused me to burn out and quit japanese

>>6471076
yea, here's what i did that actually worked; just keep in mind that i learn differently from most people so this may not be exact

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsrakMT1h2g&list=PLOcym2c7xnBwU12Flkm5RcLIEhvURQ8TB
>Watch all videos once without taking notes
>Rewatch a second time while taking notes
Personally, this was what gave me a foundational knowledge in Japanese to be able to study it from books effectively. Without Trombley-sama, I would've quit Japanese since I fell for a few traps that demotivated me previously. (Similar to drawing.)

https://a.co/d/3UCv3sy
>Literally the only book you need for Japanese grammar
>You can get more advanced but honestly that's up to you and not entirely necessary

https://apps.ankiweb.net/
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/japanese
>First is a link to download anki and second is a link of different japanese decks
>Here are some recommended decks
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2141233552
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1194221613
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/266084933
>That last one is Kanji and will be very hard to learn so leave it for when you're ready
>You'll honestly know what level you're at and which ones you can study by the time you finished Japanese from Zero and gone through a bit of the Grammar book

You don't have to do it incrementally. If you get bored of Trombley (Japanese from Zero), you can try doing Grammar for a while or Kanji and then switching around to make it more exciting for you. Probably the best piece of advice I can give you though is to constantly do what it was that made you want to study it in the first place. The reason I stopped studying was because I stopped watching Anime and therefore lost my purpose to learn Japanese. It's a long journey so make sure you have a definite purpose for studying.
TRAPS TO AVOID:
>Reddit and their HORRIBLE advice
>Remembering the Kanji by Heisig
>Anything Abroad in Japan says to do
>Studying the Kanji in isolation
>Relying on Kana too much

>>6471093
Thank you for your very comprehensive answer. Did you eventually start your own deck and mine vocab? Did you mine sentences or vocab?

>>6471098
Yea but I think it was mostly a waste of time. I'm very particular about how I study so it was natural for me to create my own decks that I thought were better than the ones online but in hindsight, I should've been "just studying" rather than doing that shit.

For Anki, I'd say go for both at the same time. It's going to be hard at first but your brain will eventually pick up on the patterns and you'll find yourself using it in sentences subconsciously. I only realize it because I would say certain phrases in the exact same tone and speed that the girl/guy says them in the Anki deck. Luckily, people have already done the hard work for you and you just need to find the good decks. For me, they were the Core 2000 decks on that shared Anki link I have there.

Also, I find that I cannot learn by studying one thing at a time. I tend to jump around a lot. This is important since you can get stuck on Anki decks for 6 months and get tired of Japanese so make sure to switch it up when you start to get tired.

I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from studying it but I was fucking obsessive with learning Japanese and I still didn't get to the level I wanted to reach which is why I always tell people to really consider it because this isn't something you're going to do in 1-2 years and be done with it, it's going to take a very long time.

>>6471104
I believe you, it's just hard to see how difficult something is at the beginning. It's a series of toll booths where you have to keep reconsidering whether you'll continue on or give up, and it sucks. Thanks for sharing your experience, man

>>6471129
It did get to the point where I was so frustrated that I thought about quitting but the alternative was playing video games so I decided to stick with it. It was never as frustrating as drawing though but I think tha'ts because there's not as many beginner traps as there are in drawing.

>>6469479
i think theres a difference between a tv network selling a show for syndication to foreign networks and attempting to break into a completely saturated manga ecosystem.
not saying it wont happen, but not as simple as how tv works.

>>6471078
i'm 6469610. I'm sorry to hear you got burned out on kanji. RTK sucks, kanji out of context sucks, bruteforce kanji sucks.

Kanji actually make a good deal of sense if you study kanji etymology. Kanji meanings relate to the components used to draw the character, sometimes it's only a small hint but sometimes it explains everything. The etymology also explain how the components gained their meaning; important because the components used to write a character underwent transformation and stylization.

Kanji having multiple meanings is in most cases a derived meaning from an earlier meaning. I didn't know this until I got the Outlier Kanji Dictionary (a kanji etymology dictionary).

For example, the kanji 解 originally means "to dismember an ox." The modern meanings derive from that to mean:
-> to dissolve, solve, unravel
-------> to untie, undo
-------> explanation, understanding

If you remember the logic and flow of the meanings it's not so bad.

>>6471073
I highly recommend you get the Outlier Kanji Dictionary.
You can probably learn kanji like I'm doing it now. Pick words that you understand well in spoken Japanese but don't know how to read. Look up the word in the Outlier dictionary, understand the kanji used with it, and make a card for the word containing the kanji in an anki deck. Start with learning simple 1-kanji verbs/nouns. Or learn the Grade 1 kanji first using this method because you are bound to have words to use for all of them.

When you are reading books, you can also do the same with words you want to remember the kanji for.

You will need to push at the beginning to understand how kanji work. And when you want to really commit a kanji to memory, you need to repeat the process I outlined above. But you are encoding the kanji way more strongly than most people as a result. Remembering becomes the easy part.

Since most words you end up studying are kanji compounds, you have two chances that at least one of the kanji make a lot of sense.

>finish an anime and want S2
>find out there is a game that will come out soon for it
>still can't read nip and I know it'll never get localized

Hate this shit so much man.Maybe I should keep learning while drawing.

>>6473431
look into the ajatt method. Skip "Remembering the Kanji"

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-the-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-and-to-fluency/

>>6473574
I'm in the middle of clearing my backed up wanikani reviews. I reached level 8 but paused it since December because I was too busy and felt like giving up.

I also got an annual sub to nativshark but I didn't put much effort into and totally wasted my money BUT seeing that there are stories I want to continue following after a show ends and will never get translated I'm just going to keep going because this shit keeps happening.

Learn hiragana & katakana.
Read read read read
Watch shows and I don’t mean anime
Read read read read
Did I mention reading? All the meme shit that is suggested has its uses but is not a sure fire way to actual literacy.
Lastly, Japan doesn’t want foreigners taking their jobs or destroying their culture. You can be fluent and live there 30 years and it means nothing. Good luck.

>>6474339
>Lastly, Japan doesn’t want foreigners taking their jobs or destroying their culture.
what if said foreigners were also asian looking? what if said asian looking foreigners never told anyone they weren't Japanese? What if in fact, said asian looking foreigners, changed their name to be Japanese and received Japanese citizenship?

>>6476972
They hate other asians just as much if not more than westerners. And it's not like arr asians rook da same to them like they do to us. I doubt changing your name would change anything, though if you went as far as to get a full-on citizenship that might change matters, but what are you gonna do, wear your citizenship papers like a badge on your chest? Discrimination is just a fact of life.

>>6476972
Asians pretty much hate each other. Korea hates China more than Japan as of recently due to China stealing their culture and claiming it as theirs. China hates Japan and Japan hates South Korea and China. It's just Japanese boomers exploit the shit out of the all Asians who come into the country for work. Their laws are designed that way. Their imperial blood still lives on.

You still have shops that have no foreigners allowed. etc. Also, I'm pretty sure changing your name wouldn't do anything. Asians can tell each other apart like how black people can tell when another black person is Haitian as there are specific characteristics. Just make art in your own country.

>>6477198
who gave you this information? The Internet? I'm Chinese and I love Japan, and Japan has plenty of Chinese stores, where all the employees speak Mandarin. One of Shonen Jump's biggest editors is Taiwanese

>>6477271
i'm chinese and i hate foreigners AKA future slaves xswl!!! CHINA NUMBER 1!!!!!!

>>6477271
Mainland is raised from birth to hate Japan. This isn't a internet source when it's a fact. Also, why would Japan hate Taiwan? Unheard of.

You may not hate them because you're a weeb and so do millions of other, young Chinese only for their anime but you....did you just forget about what happened a few months ago when Abe died?

anyway this is getting off topic so that's my last reponse to this