Questionnaries

Back to Manga!

Today I'm gonna talk about questionnaries and their importance for manga series. 

Mangas published on a weekly magazine such as Jump rate their popularity with a questionnaire system. 

Each magazine has a questionnaire postcard which readers can fill and send to the magazine telling them which manga they liked best. It looks a little like this:

Readers can rate all mangas (from 1 to 20) and this greatly influences the course of the series. Low ranking mangas will get cancelled, top ranking mangas can get offers for anime adaptations or drama cd and such. 

Now how does this questionnaire system work?

Well out of the thousands of questionnaires sent in, 100 are randomly chosen and sorted out and this makes the early results (if the magazine went on sale on saturday or sunday these early results will be ready by tuesday). 

For the final results (come out on friday) a wider poll is used: 1000 questionnaires are randomly chosen and sorted. This also takes into consideration the publics gender and age group.

This information can help authors to make changes if their manga is not doing well, or keep going as it is if their manga is performing good. They also serve as warnings if your manga is in rank 15 to 20 it is very likely that it will get cancelled. Authors usually tend to put in more plot twists or make some changes to bring the audience to like them more. 

The problem with this system is that it encourages to make only mainstream stuff because it sells better, and some creative or great ideas get undermined because of it.

stay tuned for more ;D

greetz

-red.

History on comics

This time I'd like to talk about popular western comics (or just comics). These have been around longer than many think and originated as narrative illustrations such as the Tarjan Column in 113AD Rome and some Renaissance paintings, but they were officially established and popularized in the late 1890s thanks to the industrial revolution's newspapers and magazines. 

tarjan's column

The 19th century brought many satirical drawings also called cartoons to life such as Max und Moritz a famous german comic. This time was also the birth of the Chinese form of comics called  Manhua.

It was in the 20th century that comics saw further booms in the industry. With comics such as Tintin by Hergé. And of course the birth of superhero comics with 1938 Action Comics #1 introducing Superman!

This made the superhero the defining genre of American comics.

In the late 1970s the term graphic novel was made popular by authors like Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

Since then comics, alongside the similar forms of film and animation, have been a part of our cultures and continue to entertain us.

Stay tuned for more ;)

Magazines and serialization

There are many types of magazines in which manga is first published. If they do well and get serialized the manga can get a volume with the first chapters and sell copies on its own. 
there are weekly magazines, monthly magazines, and others that come out only 3 or 4 times a year. These can also be sorted in readers age and type. it can be an action magazine like jump, or something with darker stuff, or romance and adult magazines. Manga is an artform for every age and taste. 
series normally start off as a one-shot - here the author tries to convey as much of the story and characters in one volume only, then if its popular enough it can be asked to do a serialized version to submitt to de serialization meeting. this serialized version includes the first three chaptes.
stay tuned for moar.

Names and Manuscripts

It all starts with a Name... which is the first draft of a Manga. It mostly tries to convey the story and dialog as well as the panel distribution for each page. The drawings are very basic and will be better once the Name has been approved and a Manuscript can be done.
Think of it like the drafts of movie scripts, when they try to put each take into frames.

1st post

This is my first post! 
We will be talking about japanese manga, korean manwa and western comics!
Any comments and suggestions are welcome.


Japanese Manga
Manga is the word used for comics/cartoons in Japan. Altough nowadays it is used for any sort of comic made in Japan. 
Manga is read from right to left. 


Korean Manhwa
Manhwa is the word for comics in Korean.
Manhwa is read from left to right (like western comics)


Western Comics
from the greek komikos, has both verbal and visual forms to convey a narrative.