Manga NAME : How to avoid CONFUSING – “Where and When”. Japanese Manga 101 #031

Today, We’ll be looking at two points from the checklist. Those are :

3. The situation. “Where and What” are the characters up to?

4. The time. Are “Scene changes”, “Sense of time”, “Flashbacks”, convincing?

When a manga is “confusing” to the readers, most of the time the reason is that the readers can’t follow your characters actions and movements. The artist gets all excited, but the readers are left behind. Not very good. To avoid that tragedy, we must detect and remedy this, at the Manga NAME stage. About point 3, we talked a little about this before. The key is using good balance of long shots, and close ups.

Don’t just draw characters faces, but mix it with panels that shows the scenery. “In what environment / who and who, are / facing / speaking?” When you have long-shot panels that shows the scene, the reader will understand the situation, and immerse deeper into your world. Always think of the best long-shot, in each double page spread. On to checkpoint 4, about sense of time. Are “Scene changes”, “Sense of time” and “Flashbacks”, put in a way that is clear and easy to follow?

The scene changes, but the readers move on without realising the change! That is a situation you wanna avoid. Make sure you clearly illustrate Scene changes, Sense of time, and beginning and ending of the flashbacks.

Again what’s important here is the “5W1H” we talked about. Read and watch not just manga, but movies and stage plays. See how they work on scene changes, sense of time and flashback scenes. Finding you own ways of directing a scene, is the fun part of creating manga!

GOT IT? Next week, we’ll finally be at the checkpoint 5, Characters EMOTIONS. The last piece of the puzzle, that separates good works from GREAT ones. See you next time!