Thoughts on my manga so far

[Jwebtoons]

This is my action fantasy manga series. I know there's only a few chapters out, but I would like to know about initial impressions.

It's my first attempt at making a manga. Any and all opinions are welcomed. Please don't sugar coat it, because being brutally honest will help me improve.

Note:
If the link sends you to the middle of the story I apologize. I have not been able to fix it even if I try to copy the link again.

Read The Legacy of Combat | Tapas Web Comics

[candiedcotton]

My biggest suggestion is to not market this as a manga, because it isn't one. Manga is just the japanese term for a comic (generally made by japanese people). Sort of like how anime is just the japanese term for animation. There's usually a distinct style, yes, but doesn't have to be, as long as it's japanese made. Western comics/animation are just that; comics/animation.

The style of your work is pretty western. I can see influence by manga styles, but it feels more western to me and I think marketing it as manga when it isn't, is going to really hurt you as far as getting viewers goes. Also, since it appears to be western-made, it's confusing that you are using japanese reading (from right to left).

[darthmongoose]

The thing that immediately jumps out are how small these pages all seem to be, and all the lines look kind of... fuzzy? Like even before commenting on the art or story, that's such a big problem with the presentation that I'd personally recommend fixing whatever is causing the resolution issue there.

I'm not sure what size you're making these pages, but ideally for Tapas, you want pages to be 940 pixels wide. I'm not sure why you've put a black border around everything either... you can just have your full bleed panels go to the edge of the page and it'll look a lot better on mobile.

There's an odd grey... cloudy sort of texture in all the white areas and the black lines are all fuzzy, which makes it look kind of low quality and "dirty". How are you making these pages and preparing them to upload, if you don't mind my asking?

[Flios]

I second what @darthmongoose said. The quality of the pages is weirdly pixelated. Also, you don't need so many black lines for textures. Make it more clean and have more blank white spots. That gives the whole thing a cleaner and more refined vibe.
Other than that, story-wise, it's intriguing and I'd be pretty curious to read it in the future when it has more chapters.

[Animefanka]

looks like traditionally inked with upped contrast during scanning to remove pencil lines (I recognize the look from my days before tablet
I'm not sure how shading is done, it could be either blurred airbrush or pencil or maybe watercolor/watered downed ink shading blurred and smudged digitally

op, definitely upload in bigger resolution and if i'm right about your process, scan in higher resolution as well

[Nugtown]

I disagree, it's clear cut enough that's what it is. Manga isn't just the japanese term for all comics, this is made distinct by the fact that american comics are just called "american comics". Themes, use of black and white or tone, general narratives, pacing, paneling style, and action details such as speedlines are distinct to "eastern style storytelling" such as manga (and manwha and manhua)

Image quality problems aside it's not that bad! The paneling is rock solid and the action is more or less clear (technical grievances aside) I'm not a fan of the bubble style/lettering/sound effects, which I feel could be handled more tastefully. And there doesn't seem to be a plot.

Overall there just seem to be a lot of distracting technical issues.

[Jwebtoons]

First, thank you for taking the time to review my work. I appreciate it.

I have no issues with labeling my work as a webcomic. I just thought when most people see the style they'll think "manga", so I thought I should follow the format (right to left) and call it a manga. Especially since it shares similar traits to one.

[Jwebtoons]

Thanks for taking the time to review my work. I appreciate it.

I didn't see any issues when I was looking at the preview version. I just checked now on the ones I released to the public. I see the issues.

The page size was made 616 X 940. Not sure why it didn't come out right.

The artist who works on them sends me the finished product, but they are a bit too small, so I make them larger before I upload them.

The cloudy texture on the white areas was something the artist added to some versions of the pages. Said it was called a screen tone. I assumed it was part of the style.

[Jwebtoons]

Thanks for taking the time to review my work. I appreciate it.

I didn't see any problems when I was looking at the preview version. I just checked now on the ones I released to the public. I see the issues.

The page size was made 616 X 940. Not sure why it didn't come out right.

The artist who works on them sends me the finished product, but they are a bit too small, so I make them larger before I upload them.

The cloudy texture on the white areas was something the artist added to some versions of the pages. Said it was called a screen tone. I assumed it was part of the style.

[Jwebtoons]

Thanks for taking the time to review my work. I appreciate it.

Any tips for the bubble style/lettering/sound effects?

There is a plot. It was mentioned in the second chapter. The 3 teens are training to pass an exam.

I didn't see any issues when I was looking at the preview version. I just checked now on the ones I released to the public. I see the issues.

The page size was made 616 X 940. Not sure why it didn't come out right.

The artist who works on them sends me the finished product, but they are a bit too small, so I make them larger before I upload them.

The cloudy texture on the white areas was something the artist added to some versions of the pages. Said it was called a screen tone. I assumed it was part of the style.

[river121693]

Did the file they sent to you also look pixelated?

It could be b/c the artist saved the files in JPG form, which will pixelate the image. It should be saved as PNG.

It also looks like the image was pixelated when they shrunk it down for Tapas' size standard without adjusting the dpi. You making them bigger probably didnt help either. I really hope they didn't make the page starting at 616x 940 pixels. They should made it at a ~9.8" x 13.9" for standard manga paper, at 400 dpi at least.

[river121693]

Anyways, here're my thoughts:
Theres an issue with your story summary:
Who is the "she" you're referring to in: "Many years have passed, but she has not returned."? the previous sentence uses "her" to describe the village chief, while the next sentence says "Refusing to lose faith in her" refering to Aniro's mother.

The start of the story does a good job of establish the characters, personalities, and relationships, along with the power system. They're all fun characters. You should change some of their names though-- 3 of the 4 characters have names that start with A. It's confusing.

The art style is good in general. Well contrasted to separate the characters from the background. Compositions are appropriately dramatic. That said, the sequential aspect can be confusing. For example, I can't make out Anaga in the trees and I can't understand how Aniro fell and trip on his own legs (?) in the first episode.

I suggest increasing the panel count per page if you intend to print. Right now, your pages average ~3 panels. The average manga has 5-8 panels per page. Save the larger panels for the important scenes.

[candiedcotton]

Your artist needs to have the sizes correct before even sending them to you. Resizing it yourself is just going to ruin the image quality.

616 is astronomically tiny for a comic. You need the original works to be at least 1k wide.

Your artist needs to take a lot of time to sit down and read about/understand how comic layouts work and what the recommended dimensions are. It's really hurting the quality of work.

Also if you want feedback about the artwork you should be clear in your OP that you are not the actual artist, because much of the responses you get will be catered to the artist. While you can pass information on to them, it helps people if they understand you yourself are not the actual artist.

[Jwebtoons]

I'll look into the page size issue. Thanks for letting me know.

[Jwebtoons]

I made a few mistakes with description. Thought I saved the edits. Should be good now.

Aniro's landed in a weird position so he stumbled. Was trying to show it wasn't a perfect landing. What chapter/Page was Anaga not visible in the trees?

I'll talk with the artist about panel numbers.

[Jwebtoons]

I wanted feedback on both. Whatever is art related I'll pass on to the artist and whatever is story related I will take care of myself.

616 X 940 was the largest an image could be posted in Tapas.

[thecrystalrook]

Can we NOT have this pointless debate again?
Market it as whatever you want, just make sure to keep the target audience in mind. If you're targeting those who are more likely to read manga, market it as a manga. It's not incorrect to call it either term.

As for actual feedback, I agree the images need to be bigger. I upload 800x1120 to Tapas, but my original images before sizing down are much much larger. I work at 600DPI with A4 sized paper.

but they are a bit too small, so I make them larger before I upload them.

Ahh, this is definitely not helping! Moving from smaller to larger is almost guaranteed to distort the image - less so if you do it with a smart object, but that can still only do so much

[darthmongoose]

The page size was made 616 X 940. Not sure why it didn't come out right.

Ahh, there's the issue. It's meant to be 940 wide. They can be any height, but if you're only uploading them 616 pixels wide, they're going to be small and possibly fuzzy. Try making your pages 940 wide instead of tall, that should help.

[candiedcotton]

Don't need to be nasty.

I don't think it looks at all like manga. It looks western to me. We don't have to agree, but I think we can at least show some respect to each other.

[darthmongoose]

I'm not really sure the "is is manga or not" argument is particularly helpful here... But I feel like I have to weigh in because like.... this comic is very obviously heavily inspired by shounen manga like Naruto. Like seriously, it looks a LOT like Naruto, I even considered bringing up in my review that a lot of the panels look like they might have been traced or heavily referenced from Naruto maybe to a bit too much of an extent?

In case anyone isn't aware of what the original manga of Naruto looks like. It's got much more naturalistic proportions than you might expect when you think "manga" and lots of heavy, hatched shading rather than screentones:

Even the cover at the start of each episode evokes the classic "Naruto team with sensei" format! It's obvious that OP loves Naruto and that it's a huge influence on this comic.

I don't think drawing right-to-left is a good idea for a comic being made in English for an English-speaking audience, but if people are looking for something that's similar in look and feel to shounen manga, they may well search "manga" in the tags or similar, or look for the word "manga", so I personally don't see a problem with using the word. I did my degree in Japanese, spent time living in Japan and have worked and studied with a lot of Japanese people, and they will generally describe even my work as "manga" and note its clear visual and storytelling influences from Japanese manga; and my work is much more western/hybrid than OP's.

OP's work is so manga influenced, and so obviously influenced by specific manga, that saying "it's not manga" is actually distracting from the fact that it might honestly be a little too influenced by some specific popular shounen manga and lacking its own identity and might actually have some traced or too heavily referenced art to the point it occasionally borders on plagiarism?

But I wanted to get OP to fix the resolution issue first, because that's the bigger issue, and I'd be able to make a more clear judgement on the matter if I could see the pages more clearly.