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EX5 Interview #4 – yoonmi

Christopher Tordoff Christopher Tordoff 26/11/2019 6 min read
PROFILE Name: yoonmi Age: 24 Country: United States Favorite manga: Currently its… “Gokushufudou: The Way of the Househusband!” Favorite movie: Whiplash; The Prestige; A Silent Voice Favorite quote: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (from The Little Prince)   “The opportunities that come with entering SMA speak for themselves.”   QUESTIONS 1. How does it feel to win a SILENT MANGA AUDITION® award? Nothing less than awesome! Knowing my work was shown to the judges is something to be grateful for in itself.   2. What were your first impressions of the theme? I thought it was an unusually broad theme. It made it impossible to think of a story right away, but I also appreciated the lenient nature of it.

The iconic LAPD building in yoonmi’s home town of LA!

3. What was the inspiration behind your winning work? While gathering ideas, I was looking through the names I made a few years back that I’d put away. The original story is completely different, but there was one I drew about bubbles. There’s no special inspiration behind the bubbles, even in the original one. I just love them. Meanwhile, I’d already decided I wanted to try drawing boys for the story.   4. What challenges did you face making your manga? How did you overcome them? I still can’t seem to think of what to put in a panel while simultaneously considering the panel size and layout on a page. So I have to do one before the other, and this always takes up a lot of time. I kind of just pushed through it, as it’s simply a skill that needs honing.

Indispensable tech of a mangaka

5. What did you learn from making your manga? Did you pick up any new skills or techniques? To save my eyesight from declining further, I decided to do the inking part of the comic with analog tools. It was a huge learning process—as if I was learning how to draw my first comic ever. The drawing took so long that I was starting to push the deadline, and there were many mistakes I had to fix digitally. I’d totally do it all again, though, just to get better at it. Oh, and I learned a cool way to put down tones using Clip Studio Paint. With the right settings, you can convert a greyscale layer into halftones, and then make it add a thin outline to the edges of the tone, so the edges will look crisp. Isn’t that awesome? As if there isn’t enough reasons to love the program already.

…But tech is still no match for the tried and tested methods

  6. How important is entering the SILENT MANGA AUDITION® in relation to your professional goals? The opportunities that come with entering SMA speak for themselves. Professional feedback on top of that is indispensable.   7. What advice would you give to people entering the SILENT MANGA AUDITION® Writing a comic that reads smoothly is just the first step. The second is to make it compelling. It’s never going to stop being difficult. Let’s work hard!   Read yoonmi’s EX5 EXCELLENCE AWARD winning manga, “Daze” HERE!

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Christopher Tordoff

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