Then we met award winners from first year of Silent Manga Audition, Alex Irzaqi and Fima, who wrote the story for the one of the two award winning titles, “Excuse Me”.
Alex worked with Fima, who wrote the story for the winning title “Excuse Me”. Idea for the story actually came from Fima’s personal experience. Must be a fun memory 😉 Her current favourite is Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin).
Alex and Fima met on a Manga lovers community to start working together.
Reviewing and discussions are actively done within the community. Finding a good critical reader is sometimes a young manga artists’ hardest task in improving their work, but the community seems to be a great place for the like-minded.
For drawing, Alex uses IllustStudio, a software made by Celsys. Seems to be a very popular system for Manga artists! He looks up to Hiroaki Samura, the author of stylish Samurai action “Blade of the Immortal” for inspirations.
On drawing Silent-Manga, he says “I’m a man of few words, so drawing in silence felt really neutral for me.” “There are many artists who are serious about drawing Manga for living. This award is a godsend for people like us”.
So how does it feel to have his manga published in Comic-Zenon?
“Happy beyond words”. We are equally glad to be able to hand him a copy of the Magazine 😉
Alex has many titles of his own, published around various websites. Portfolio of which is available on his website http://www.irzaqi.com
It was such a pleasure meeting an award winner face to face. Let’s hope we will have more chance to meet award winners ( and all participants! ) from other countries too. 🙂