Where are all the Manga comics?

I was asked this by someone looking at our artists from issue one. Most of our ‘accepted’ submissions were Western styled comics. We do accepted manga looking comics. HOWEVER, we do not accept manga styled comics. Allow me to Elaborate.

if you want to be a manga artist, and taken seriously, you need to know what you are doing. Manga-styled comics are done in such a way which is convenient to a Japanese audience and some practices do not translate well to English audiences. Moreso people tend to copy their favorite mangas without really knowing why the artists draw certain things. YES I know the panels look cool, and these poses look cool. BUT the big question is WHY. 

In regards to Seqapunch, if you want to submit a manga styled comic, not only does it have to look good but you need to show, in your story-telling and panel layout that you understand what you are doing. These are a few things that will instantly get your comic rejected.

MANGA STYLE DO-NOTS

1. Do not submit a manga styled comic that right to left. It doesn’t make your comic look cool if you didn’t write it in a language that reads right to left. Seqapunch reads the same direction English is read as to not alienate audiences who don’t get it.

2. Don’t use Japanese terms such as san, kun etc. Because again these honorifics are Japan specific. And again, anime fans yes we get it, but you’ll be alienating other people who don’t understand.

3. Vertical speech bubbles. Again this is language specific because kanji is read vertically. It’s more natural to do horizontal speech bubbles.

4. Try Stay away from anime stereotypes. Or try not to make it so obvious.
Some examples —-> http://www.listal.com/list/anime-purototaipu-x3 like these. We’ve seen them over and over again. Base characters off of the personalities of real people. 

Just to name a few.
We have to be nit picky when it comes to manga styles comics, because when you do it right it looks really good. But if you just copy something because it looks cool without understanding it it makes your work look bad.

SO YES WE ACCEPT ANIME/MANGA inspired work, but you need to be damn good to show us you’re studied in this style. The same applies to any type of comics really. I personally draw manga styled comics, but I try not to just copy my favorite Japanese comics, but study them. 

~Sakura02 

Hey there, Doc Glasgow here. Been awhile since I made a post, but this is relating to something that happened recently.

Lets talk about PROMOTION.

Recently, SEQAPUNCH set up a table at an artist alley that the Savannah College of Art and Design was holding. It was a small deal, not many artists, and probably a grand total of about 30 guests. But we still felt it was important.

All told, we sold about six books I believe. Now that isn’t that big a number in the grand scheme of how many books we’re trying to offload, however it is still just as important. Well, why is that?

I know it sounds cliche’d, and I know you’ve all probably heard this a million times before, but EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS. Every single person you talk to as an artist, every single sale you make, spreads your brand and makes more people aware of you, and of your product. You never know when the one person you sell to will go and tell all of their friends and convince them all to buy copies. It’s unlikely, but it can happen.

And even if people don’t outright buy your book there, you can still talk to them, get them aware of your product, put the idea of you in their brain. I cannot stress enough that every single person you talk to is an important person to talk to, no matter how old they are, whether yours is the first comic they’ve read or if they’re a veteran of the industry. 

The point I am getting to, is whenever you see a local convention in town, even if it’s just a small-potatoes event, try and make a point of going to it. Get a booth. You may sell a few things and make some pocket change, you may be the hit of the whole convention, you may just make a friend or two. If nothing else, you will, on some level, plant your brand in the subconscious of at least a couple dozen people, and who knows when that might come around to benefit you.

DG out.

Hey guys, so it’s been awhile since we’ve posted an update. So here is a brief break down of what’s been going on. ( and yes I did get a paper cut rapidly packaging the books >:[ those things hurt a lot!)

Books SHIPPED!

So we’ve already started mailing out the books. We ordered a total of 100 books, and we must have sent out at least a good 60 books to donators on Kickstarter.

And in the past 2 weeks we’ve sold 9 books online. Which is pretty modest but good. We need to sell at least 40 books to have enough to finance the next print run. We’re also planning on doing another Kickstarter campaign for an extra push./p>

Mistakes in the first print run

We need to get someone outside of Doctor Glasgow and I to proof-read the next issue. I mean considering it was 200 pages we did pretty good in terms of eliminating typos.

HOWEVER, we mistakenly printed a page of “Dave the Punk Rock cat” in reverse, The page must have flipped when i was inserting in Indesign (I had to scale many of the submissions to fit properly in our format), and in the process of scaling it, it got flipped. How the hell did, it get past us!? Well DoctorGlasgow and I skimmed over the pdf file several times, and we deducted that the reason why we didn’t realize the font was backwards was because of the unique lettering of the speech bubbles. If you were just flipping through the pages, you probably would not notice it, UNLESS you were reading. *_* So to make it up to the artist we’re going to re-print that comic in the second issue the way it’s suppose to be printed.  

Second Mistake is, we forgot to list off the name of all the donators of kickstarter. We only listed the ones who contributed $20 or more, so we’ll have to relist the ones that donated $10 in our next print run.
 

Future plans

So we have a couple of things planned for the future. 

Forums: an easy way for artist to come together and share art, comics, find collaborators, etc. The facebook group is okay, but I realize that most artist like to remain anonymous, so hopefully this will give anyone an opportunity, to just jump on board. I want to use the forums to just dump all bunch of interesting resources.

Artist Login:

Hopefully in the next few weeks we can set up an artist log in on the website, where you can upload your comics there and we can send you feedback via there.
We’re also hoping to add a few other things, that might be useful in reaching the deadline. 

And in other news

That’s pretty much it, right now we’re just advertising to get folks to purchase the book, and let artist know about the new issue. Looking forward to receiving entries. :)

So now comes the real test for Seqapunch. Last time, artist were able to submit pretty much whatever they wanted even old work. However, we do need to some how unify each issue somehow so things aren’t so chaotic. The real test for us is how many artists are willing to draw up a new story for the theme.

I’ve pretty much exhausted the places I can advertise. I’ve advertised on Deviantart, Smackjeeves. I’ve even contacted over 100 artist personally at Smackjeeves and 98% of them were too busy with their own work to be bothered :( or a lot of real life stuff going in which was preventing them from drawing.

My point is, we really need word of mouth advertising.We need you. This is going to determine if the magazine can keep its head above water long enough to grow. 

Blog about us, share this image, try to get your friends on board, invite other artists to the facebook group. Anything helps.  When mentioning Seqapunch here are some things we like to talk about to encourage artists to be apart of it. 
 

ADVANTAGES OF SUBMITTING TO SEQAPUNCH

- You get almost 3 months to draw a short comic, in black and white.
( Inked, sketches, digital any medium in B/W) And we only ask for 1- 20 pages. We’d like to believe this will give artists plenty of time to do a short complete story. Finished stories are more impressive than incomplete long ones, and if you can keep up with us, who knows you might have a lovely collection of short stories you can later print and show off. 

-Publicity
 With Seqapunch you can get your name out there, as we work hard to market your comic. Your website is also printed in the final book.

-We’ll help you enhance your comic skills
If you submit us drafts or in progress work. Our editors will talk with you one on one with how you can further improve your comic and drawing skills (Most editors won’t even do this with new artists, please take advantage of us). We do this to not only give you a better chance of being published with us, but to ensure that your comics are at a skill, to be understood and enjoyed by new readers which improves your chances of success as a comic artist in the future. Because you want people to enjoy your comic, and that goes beyond just simply good drawing skills.

- No risk
 You don’t have to pay us anything. You’re not locked into a contract that states that you agree to to draw for us or else. We pay for the books, we pay for the advertising. We incur all the costs. As an independent artist you’d be spending at least well over $100 to get your books printed at possibly even a lost. You have nothing to lose and something to gain by being apart of this.
-We give you a free copy of the magazine as an artist
-you get your name out there
-you’ve completed a short story you can later print or just show off
-you become a more disciplined artist by adhering to our deadlines
-and we give you free advice.

——————- 
 

So yes :D If you are an artist please, make an effort to make even a 5 page comic in the 50 days left till the deadline. Pace yourself, make deadlines. :D
Thank you
 

We’re announcing the theme for our Summer issue. HEAT

IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW

We prefer if you take the theme and do something creative with. If you can justify how the theme fits in with your story even if it’s a bit vague that’ll be fine. The featured artist for this issue will be chosen not only based on the quality of their artwork but how cleverly they can interpret this theme.

EXAMPLES OF HOW TO CLEVERLY INTERPRET THE THEME

- Metaphors
- Emotions
- Common Sayings
- Atmosphere


~Sakura02 

So Dr Glasgow and I came up with a few good ideas for SEQAPUNCH as our Kickstarter closes and submissions end. I also want to briefly mention a few other things that we’ll explain more in detail in other posts.

Promotional packages.

If you want to promote SEQAPUNCH, at a convention or at your college etc. We’ll send you a promotional package, which would include, fliers, bookmarks. And if you take a picture of how you’re promoting SEQAPUNCH we’ll have your name in the book as well as give you a copy of the current issue. We’ve gotten a few people who want to help us carry this idea through and we love you all very very much. So to make things easily, we’ll pay for it, we’ll send you the stuff and you just need to tell your friends and hand things out.

Furthermore you can help spread the name of SEQAPUNCH by mentioning us in your blogs, journals, etc. 


Get a printed multiple times in Seqapunch and get more page space.

 Each time you successfully get printed in SEQAPUNCH we’ll award you 3 more pages, for your next story. So everyone who gets published in our first issue your next comic can be up to 23 pages. The cap is at 50. This would come into play further down the line.

Themes for each issue 

Our first issue is our test run to see how many supporters and artists we can get so we’ve left submission pretty open. However, Seqapunch will eventually need to narrow their scope and we’re going to do that by issuing themes. We’ll be announce the theme for issue 2 in a couple days, as the submission deadline draws near for issue one. So keep in mind as an artist. This is your only chance to submit old work, everything else will more than likely have to be drawn fresh to fit the theme. However, that’s the challenge and we hope that you will be willing to take it on. The themes would be very vague things, such as ‘Ocean’ or something of the like and you would be able to interpret it anyway you want. 

Seqapunch books will be limited 

Another thing to note is that each issue of Seqapunch is only going to be printed until the next issue is out. The moment issue 2 for example comes out, we would not be selling issue 1 anymore. This gives each issue roughly 3 months of print time. Afterwards that’s it. Just a heads up.

Kickstarter ends on Tuesday
Submissions in about 2 weeks 
The book is scheduled to be available mid to late April  

Thanks everyone for your support

~Sakura02 

Alright today we’re going to talk about FONTS.

Lets just get this out of the way right now, here are the fonts you should NEVER EVER USE. 

Comic Sans MS, Papyrus, Impact, Any Silly Crap Made of Novelty Characters Like Dogs or Cacti or Some Other Crap, Basically Anything from DaFont Actually, finally Times New Roman, (or Basically Any Serif Font Ever). 

Okay, what are serif fonts? Well, in writing, they are the little doodads at the tops and bottoms of letters. See the little wings at the top and bottoms of the capital letter “I”? Those are serifs. If a font has those, do not use it in comics.

Serifs are included in typefaces to make works easier to read in large bodies of text. They’re perfect for business documents, for books, that sort of thing. Not in comics. Lettering should look nice in comics, not be utilitarian. Not to say you should pick anything silly or experimental. It needs to be personable, but not bizarre. 

The reason we pick sans-serif fonts is that they’re not as serious as serif fonts. They fit the medium better. Now, what fonts DO we use? Well, that’s really up to you. There are a number of websites out there where you can download pretty great fonts either for free or for cheap. Now I know it sounds pretty crazy paying for a font of all things, but trust me, if you pick the right one, it will always look better.

And of course, hand-lettering, if done properly will always look the best. What do I mean by that? I mean drawing out all of the text yourself. I know it sounds like a chore, but trust me, if its done right, it will make your work look so much more unique and personable. You’re using a “font” that nobody has ever used before, because it is your very own handwriting. Think of it as a part of the art process in and of itself.

A few sites to think about when choosing a font:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ 

http://www.blambot.com/

http://www.myfonts.com/

And don’t go to dafont. It is a hive of scum and villainy. The problem with DaFont is, they don’t have much in the way of quality control for the fonts they put up on there. You could end up with a badly created font, or one that you do not have the rights to use commercially.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

If you use a font improperly, from a legal standpoint, both you and SEQAPUNCH can get in a lot of legal trouble, and considering that you’re a new artist and we’re a new magazine, neither of us really needs that kind of mess right now. So make sure that any font you download is legal for commercial use, and that you have the rights to it. Don’t pick up any shady fonts on the side of the highway.

Lastly, try to stay away from Anime Ace as well. I know its on those sites, and I know it looks OKAY, but remember that a LOT of other artists use it. You want your work to be unique. 

-D.G. out

Hi Sakura02, I want to talk a little bit about copyrights with your comics both with and outside of SEQAPUNCH. Someone asked this a few days ago and its very important we address.


SEQAPUNCH and your work 

When you submit work to SEQAPUNCH. You will be required to sign a form giving us permission to print your work in the magazine for 3 months. Once the next magazine is published the previous issue will no longer be printed and we no longer hold the rights to print or publish your work in anyway. Unless we ask for permission. 

However, while SEQAPUNCH itself as a magazine is copyrighted, we can’t copyright your work for you, since it is not ours. If you are worried about your work being stolen through publication we recommend you individually copyright your own work.

How can I get my work copyrighted ?

There are many places that will copyright your work, but I personally recommend to register your work officially with the US copyright office. It’s a pretty easy online process, and costs about $30-$50 to register your work.

http://www.copyright.gov/

My personal feelings on copyright

As a comic book artist copyrighting is important, and it doesn’t hurt to get your work copyrighted. However, in the event that someone does steal your work, the copyright paperwork is there to guarantee you a win in court case against that art thief. However, that is if you are willing to pay lawyers hundreds of dollars to get reimbursements. I think for starting out artists, it’s there for a certain sense of security. Unless someone can sell your work for hundreds of dollars, then I wouldn’t freak out too much about copyrights. But again why risk it if you want to do it? Again the process is pretty simple. 

Summary

- Seqapunch does not own your work, only the right to print for 3 months
- After 3 months we no longer have the right to print or sell copies of your work 


 

100% Funded

Doctor Glasgow here. Well, at half of our donation runtime, we have now been completely funded for the initial print run that we meant to do. First of all, on behalf of everyone at SEQAPUNCH, thank you. We deeply and profoundly want to express our utmost gratitude at the outpouring of support and interest that people have shown us. But we’re not at our donation deadline yet. What does this mean?

Well, it means a couple things. For starters, with kickstarter, your donation drive runs for the initial length that you said it would. It goes until that is done. So we will still be receiving donations from people who want to see this project. Any further donations WILL be put into SEQAPUNCH, I can promise you that.

HOW they will be used is another matter. There’s one of two ways we can do this, and that’s entirely dependent on the kind of interest that’s drummed up in the remaining time before the books go to print. We’ll continue to advertise, and if it turns out there’s an even bigger demand for the books than we had anticipated, then we’ll use the money differently.

To begin with, the most obvious use of further funding would be advertising. With more money, we can advertise in bigger places, or for longer amounts of time. We could spread the word about SEQAPUNCH even more before it goes to print, which would drum up more of an audience.

Additionally, if it turns out that demand is already high, we could use further funds for a larger print run. A larger print run means more physical copies in people’s hands, which is great for the artists.

We’ve got other ideas of how to use further funds, but right now those are our two big ones. If we come up with more big ideas, we’ll keep you posted!

-D.G. out