The Candid Camera    O.K. I warned you.  Here's where the beans are spilt.  Day-One  (note: summer)  My typical day runs from 12 noon to 4-5 am. When I hear the newspaper boy drop the paper,  that's when I head off to sleep.   (visual description: skip  Manga artists don't look particularly photogenic after a night's work.  But I'll say I do look more photogenic than the mess on & under my desk.)  Under the cover of darkness....the cleanup can wait 'll morning.  Day-Two  Wrong. Did I say I got up at noon. Make that 2pm.  I don't want to face the cleanup, so head back to sleep.  Day-Three  same as day 1& 2  all days are the same to a mangaka under project.  all hours run together like bad run-on sentences.  But it's o.k. i'm my own boss. ^_^  The Rotten Apple  Weekends are reserved for art supply shopping in New York.  F for F_ rustrations (complaints, complaints, complaints.)  I typically tear up 3 pages for every page done.  The Hard-Core Process   Like a play, first the major scenes are estalished. Then as this work is  to be submitted to a magazine, pages are limited in increments of 32pages.  A cursory look at the entire story, and an estimated number of pages are determined  for each scene.  Once I know approximately how many pages a scene will take,  I can then go sketch the sequences. This is called the "brainstorming" sketch.  The brainstorm sketch: I make a small booklet, and without really drawing, establish the  dialog, the layout, the personnel.  The dialog is EXTREMELY important.  Shojo  manga are plot-driven. The dialog is the flow of the story & drives the action.  I need to be absolutely firm on fitting all that I want said in the set number of pages.  Here, I need to take into account, the final font size of the letters.  See, the drawing didn't even start yet.  The drawing is just the filler. You can draw anyway you like, but you can't just  whip the dialogs around. You can draw smaller, bigger, but the words have to be  that fixed size, that fixed block.  LAYING DOWN  Once the script & dialog is ready, along with an idea of what action, I just grab  my brush-tip gray markers & whip up rough comps. Yes, like magic. Oh, and this is  where I gurgle & make faces at the full-length mirror by my desk.  Never, never  interview a manga artist  during the impersonation stage. This is where I exercise   my superior egoist  conceit  and transform my pathetic poses into heroic, (& i mean heroic)  characters larger than life. ^_^      (*Where you see my characters brandishing swords, I'm  actually swaggering around with....... a yardstick.)  Over the gray lines, I rework with black markers.  Write doodles on the side, etc. This the easy part.    FINAL COMP   Get out those crips, white, clean 11x14" paper for ink medium.  Then with blue color pencil, I draw the B4 size boundaries.  Then scramble to find my rough sketches, using a light table, transfer them  to the final good paper.  (Just a note: I ain't got no fancy light box. Mine is just  a broken glass-top table with a flourescent lamp, tortured & contorted to fit under the table.  Real cheap & sleazy. )  I threw out 3 pages of penciling for every 1 page inked.  This is a major shuffle, help, find me reference, this looks wrong, kind of time.  Don't talk to me during this stage. I will slam the door on ya.  The Evol Black Stuff  Fun, fun, fun. Since I go through the agony of the previous stage, all I have to  do when inking is to make sure I don't  go off the pencil line. White-Out is my best friend here.  Can't live without white-out at this stage.  S & M  Screetone and Markup. Torture!  MARK-UP  Protect the surface of the finished page with tracing paper.  Write your dialog in pencil directly on the tracing paper. Not on the artwork.    "ALL YA  NIMBLE FINGERS  OUT THERE"  This word-processing stuff. This is another science.  I'm sitting there, trying every damn font size to divide the words right.  Those of ya who translate mangas done this stuff before will know what i mean.  TALK SLAVERY TO ME  Anyone who's willing to be my slave-assistant can contact me.  I live around New York City area. Heck, i'll even pay you.^_^  But too late, i ended up doing all the menial erasing work myself. My  evol sibling won't even do it for pay.    FINAL FANTASY  This is so out of the subject, but gosh, that FF 8 sure is something. I've always been a fan of Amano, the amazing guy who  illustrates for FF1-FF6 series.  But whoever did the illustration for FF8 blew me away! My Fantasy?  During the summer I work on this project, I was sent to the doctor's for being slightly anemic. You see, i live a vampire kind of life while doubling as mangaka.  The way I see it, both creatures aren't that far different.  Watch out for my fangy pen nibs. ^_^