So I want to be a manga artist

Ever since I was younger I've wanted to be some type of artist. Now that I've come to love Japan (to the point where I want to visit and possibly live there someday) I think I could become at least a small-time/amateur manga artist.

I've been drawing ever since I was little and have come up with some great ideas I can't wait to put on paper.

I know that I should probably learn how to speak and write in Japanese, so I'm going to be saving my money to buy the Rosetta Stone program (maybe I won't have to read English subtitles anymore).

Everyone I know thinks I'm a wonderful artist, so I think I could at least get published in America. Any tips on how to get started in this career would be highly appreciated.

So I guess I should actually ask a question. What materials should I use to create my manga? (I know I could look this up somewhere, but it's still a legitimate question.

Thank you very much for reading and/or replying.

First, no translation program is up to the level of translating comic-book (manga) dialog. If you don't believe me, try a google translation of Japanese websites and put them in English. You won't like what you see. Translation programs are about 70%-80% accurate, which seems good until you realize that getting 20%-30% of every sentence wrong is pretty horrendous. There is no magic way to get around a language barrier. You either have to spend the years and years learning the language, hire a real-person translator, or do your comics in your mother tongue. My suggestion is the latter.

Do your comic in English, and when you submit it, submit it to publishers of English-language comics and manga.

Before you start buying expensive paper, screentone, pens, etc., just draw your comic in pencil in a standard notebook. Don't skimp on things like backgrounds and details. Come up with good characters and learn how to develop them through your story. Learn comic book/manga pacing. Just being able to draw things doesn't mean you have story-telling skills, so your first move is to develop those.

The only way to draw comics professionally is to practice drawing comics as an amateur. Draw comics for yourself, and keep on doing it.

Good luck.

Thank you very much.

Just to let you know, the Rosetta Stone program isn't a translation system. It's a famous program for learning foreign languages.

Again, thank you for your input. I'll definitely write that down somewhere.

i wouldnt worry to much about doing it in japanese. learning the language is one thing but learning to read and write japanese is as hard again.

i wouldnt have the opinion that being japanese is an advantage, or that you need to be in japan. increasingly the industry is moving outside of japan with a lot of new popular series coming from the us, uk, korea ad even other countries.

also you need to decide what you want to do. no artist (or very few anyway) make a manga by themselves and then get published. most succesful mangaka have a team of assistants to do inking, tones, backgrounds etc.

this is usualy the way into the business. you essentially become an apprentice for an existing mangaka and if you have the skills then an opportunity presents itself.

do you necessarily want to be the sole creator of a story, and if so for what purpose? i myself, i love manga, but i simply havent got the talent, and can spend hours to achievesomethig my friend could do in 2 minutes. for this reason i have something of a collaboration, whereby i am the writes (i also do tones) and she does 90% of the art. for aspiring mangaka this is probably a good idea as most people are good at one thing but few are good at everything.

only other suggestion is there are occasional competitions, such as the rising star contest run biannualy by tokyopop.

another thing is people often focus to much on the art and not enough on the story. the story is twice as important, as the art can be amazing, but if the story sucks no one comes back for the second volume.

good luck.