How to Suck as a Manga Artist

You can’t wait to be famous. It’s going to be a piece of cake, Shonen Jump is going to publish your work and it’s going to rock everybody’s world. You don’t need to do any kind of hard work at all.

Don’t read anything else besides manga.

The goal is to become the best mangaka in the world, right? Who cares what other comics look like, who they’re done by or what they’re about. You want to draw your epic story and get it published by an international manga publisher now! You don’t need to have anything else poisoning your style, make you think twice about something or even show you how to improve your skills. You can survive on your genre alone! Want to make the best shojo series EVER? Just keep reading all the shojo titles you can get your hands on and do your best to copy your favorite one – down to the personality and character design of the main character. People will adore it!

Don’t actually figure out how to write.

Making stuff up is easy. You’ve been doing it since you could talk and heck, all your favorite manga artists use a formula anyway. You don’t need to know how to hold people’s attention, use drama or even plan anything out in advance. Your high fantasy project almost writes itself ’cause you’ve got all the characters people expect. Why waste your time making them unique or diverse and why do you even need to think about character motivations when all you want them to do is kick monster butt? That’s the only thing people care about anyway.

Don’t bother learning about drawing.

It’s manga. It’s not REAL comics. You don’t have to learn anatomy, perspective, composition, design principles and all that hard stuff. You can draw whatever you want, slap on screentones and people will eat it all up! Manga artists don’t even include backgrounds half the time and anything people critique, you can always chalk it up to ‘personal style.’ That’s untouchable. You don’t really need to be drawing from life on a regular basis to improve. Just keep drawing those pages and earn money faster!

Don’t ever look for alternatives for anything.

Okay, you’ve figured out what tools your favorite manga artist uses. Buy those immediately and watch your work instantly level up. No other tools can possibly achieve the same effect. It doesn’t matter that they cost a fortune! People respect you now as a real professional. Go ahead and buy the most trendy and expensive software and hardware your parents can afford. Everyone knows the only reason why artists get popular is because they use Wacom Tablets.

Don’t make friends with the competition.

You’re all on your own. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you’re sure as hell not letting other people take your spot on the top. Go ahead ignore all the comments people give you and don’t even think about talking to other artists who have more experience than you. You’re only going to feel bad all the time anyway because you keep comparing your work to theirs. You don’t need anybody to become somebody.

Go ahead. Make your manga. It’s going to be an instant bestseller, right?