I've been having a bit of a creative crisis lately, mostly because I've been reading obcene amounts of Manga. Due to the unfortunate existence of a website called onemanga, I have been spending hours on the stuff, mostly because it is all instantly accessable and free. In my defense, if you suddenly stumbled upon weeks and weeks worth of free, published graphic reading material, alot of which is well written, or at least well written sappy goo, you'd probably get sucked in too.

The problem is, all of this shojo is starting to show up in my work. I know that manga was influencing my page layouts before, but some many hundreds of chapters worth of it later, I've just started to realize how big of an influence it has been. Personally, there are some aspects of manga artwork that bother me, so I know at least I'll be able to do my best to stomp out the inclusion of overlarge eyes, random flowers in the background, and men that look exactly like women, but where it really snuck in and got me was in panel layout. Much of the manga I've been reading has this kind of vast, flowing open canvas sort of thing, with huge splashes that break anything resembling a panel, or a logical structure. As much as possible. panel lines are eliminated, so that you become unaware that they are there. It's almost like the mangaka had a limited use ruler, and thus had to cut down on borders to make it last longer. All of these things are fine - if you are familiar with how manga works, and you intend your story to be read in large, chapter sized chunks.

My story is not a frilly romance, does not contain elements of the supernatural, nor will I be able to release chapter sized chunks. My audience, I would guess, will not be a manga audience.

On the other hand, I finally figured out my extended flashback page, so that makes me happy ^_^ . I think maybe that I think too much about all of this, and I should attempt to do this comic more naturally. We'll see. School will continue to kick my ass, so all of this is also a bit wishful thinking.

Progress: 6 pages (after the restart)