Manga Pro Superstar Workshop: How to Create and Sell Comics and Graphic Novels

by Colleen Doran

Get real! Open this book and step inside the "real world" of creating professional-looking, publishable comics. Since landing her first professional gig at age 15, superstar cartoonist Colleen Doran has accumulated more than 500 credits to her name as an artist, writer and designer. In this book, she shares the firsthand lessons she's learned along the way, giving you a genuine, real-world understanding of how to create polished, publishable manga comics and graphic novels using the same methods the pros use! This is the kind of valuable insider information you won't find in other how-to books ... stuff that Colleen wishes she knew when she was starting out, including how

Genres: Anime

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2007

About the author

Colleen Doran is an American writer-artist and cartoonist. She illustrated hundreds of comics, graphic novels, books and magazines, including the autobiographical graphic novel of Marvel Comics editor and writer Stan Lee entitled Amazing Fantastic Incredible Stan Lee, which became a New York Times bestseller. She adapted and did the art for the short story "Troll Bridge" by Neil Gaiman, which also became a New York Times bestseller. Her books have received Eisner, Harvey, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild Awards.

Reviews

[haven ⋄ f (hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Includes useful techniques that still work!

This is fairly dated so a lot of the tips either are proven incorrect or are just for older styles. The cover betrays how the artist draws. They are good at drawing, but their manga skills are a little more crazy than I expected.

The things I didn't know but learned about was how to logically lay out panels and how to apply tone. I will be using a computer for coloring so the latter won't work for me but I did find the former to be quite useful.

My biggest complaints are the walls of text in a typewriter font and the coloring tips.
• I personally find typewriter fonts hard to read if there is a lot of it. I found my focus being detracted from the written tips to the actual drawings included. This is probably just a personal problem, though.
• The coloring tips are.... Something. I would not suggest coloring this way but I understand what the artist is trying to emphasize. They want you to clearly show the shadows and highlights.

Dated, but potentially useful!

[Everbright · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really cute how-to book that I got for my neice for Christmas. Discounted price on Amazon, so it's a bargain. There are great tutorials, but she likes the step-bystep comics pages best. Very good book for young teens. Colorful and easy to follow. It's advanced on some of the publishing advice, but she's serious about pursuing this, so that's good for the future. This book is a little dated because there's not any computer instruction in it, but for beginner to intermediate drawing comics, it's very nice

[Laura (ローラ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best "how to draw manga" book I've seen in English. The art tips are practical rather than just "copy what you see" and there is insight into the "Japanese" process which isn't often touched on in other titles, including the use of proper equipment. Good title.

[Kali]

I need to find this book or I'm probably going to die.