Alright, I would like to apologize for my inactivity for the past several weeks. To be honest, I've been using this time to start making a comic within Clip Studio Paint which I've been meaning to make since like 10 years ago. That comic is "Di Luar Sana", or in English, "Out There", and it's about some dudes talking about aliens and outer space, all that sci-fi technobabble and stuff. At the time this blog entry was written, I've finished 4 pages already. The reason why I haven't uploaded this comic into the gallery proper yet is because I'm not sure if I'll ever even gonna finish this comic at all. I have a tendency to leave comics left hanging and incomplete forever, with little to no motivation left to finish them. x_x It's this ugly procrastination that I wish to try to eliminate, and I wish that it won't happen with this comic. >_< So I decided, I will only upload this comic into the proper DeviantART gallery once I've finished at least 10 pages in advance.

By the way, the characters are all humans this time, so sorry about that. XD Because of that, I don't think it'll be appropriate to upload the comic onto Weasyl. 3 of the pages can be viewed in the DeviantART version of this blog entry: http://marwangreencritter.deviantart.com/journal/Been-making-a-comic-and-the-experience-gained-680355732

Anyway, I wish I can find a way to finish comics faster and within a reasonable amount of time. I've seen comic artists who can finish like ten pages in only a day! O_O I should really start doing some of those tricks that those artists use, like for example, doing the thumbnail drafts for all of the pages ahead of time.

Anyway again, doing this comic is, at the same time, also a massive learning experience for me. While doing this comic, I also looked at various comic pages on Google Images search. I looked at Japanese manga, obviously. I looked at the late Osamu Tezuka's manga, especially so, because he's the man who popularized modern manga practices these days, and I wanted something that isn't stereotypically too anime-styled, back when anime and manga were at their infancy. However, I also look at American comics as well, and allow those to also influence the creation of this comic as well. I don't want to stuck with only Japanese manga (and Korean manhwa) as my only references, even though the comic's end result visually makes it placed under the "manga" category, with its heavy use of typical manga iconography and storytelling techniques. No; rather, I'd like to think of this comic as being born out of the result of multiple inspirations, a hybrid of techniques from different comic cultures.

It's interesting to see how different Japanese manga and American comics are, and it's not just the reading direction. A single chapter of a Japanese manga tends to span dozens of pages. Actions often spread-out across multiple pages, and there's even more emphasis for those tiny details during those actions. Dialogues are used sparingly, preferring instead to tell the story via its use of emotions. In comparison, American comics are much slower-paced, and are very dialogue-heavy. So much that you will almost never see a single comic panel without a dialogue balloon in it -- there's always at least someone talking. The heavy use of dialogue balloons is also economical: comic artists can tell so much story from the constant chatter of these characters, and it allows the story to be compressed into as few pages as possible. Plus, much of the scene is obscured by these balloons, so comic artists only need to draw less for that scene.

I hate looking at these "comics vs manga" comparisons on the Internet, because often, they're written by manga otakus and are biased in favor of manga, with the conclusion that comics suck. :no: American comics have their charm, too. And looking at these pages on Google Images gave me a renewed appreciation with American comics once more. Referring to these American comics and how they cram all these dialogue balloons together became extra handy when I made that 3rd page, due to how dialogue-heavy it gets.

Talking about these different comic-making practices around the world, especially in Japan and America, reminds me about our own comic-making practice, here in Malaysia. Yes, we have our own comic production practices as well. The way we letter our comics are different. Dialogue balloons were often not drawn into the comic panels itself, but instead added later in post-production via a computer, giving them a fake, mechanical look (but more freedom to customize the size and shape for different language releases). The dialogue balloons themselves were rectangular, though, these days, the more classy elliptical shape is preferred now. Arial font is used, as opposed to more comic-style typefaces used in American comics. Also, unlike American comics, bolded words do not indicate stress and/or emphasis. Instead, these bolded words are used to recognize colloquial words, words that do not appear in the Malay dictionary but are common in colloquial Malay speech. You can thank our governing body here, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, which governs the correct use of the Malay language, demanding for a way to let school students recognize words in a comic or magazine which they should never use in the exams. Many Malaysian comic and magazine distributors adhere to this guideline.

Well, in conclusion, all I wanted to say is, I just want to make a comic of my own, something I want to be able to identify myself with as the creator. ^_^;; And with just these few pages I've drawn, I've learned a lot. I predicted that, once this comic is finished, it'll be around 16 pages, or maybe 20. We'll just see.