The only special drawy things i bought was my
-Five star 30pg sketch pad ^_^
-Staedtler pencil set

You eventually learn the authenticity is instilled far more in the artist's aesthetic sense and technique as relevant to the genre and expressed within themselves than any mere arsenal of equipment... besides, classic manga technique is becoming quite archaic in today's technological advances, specifically in regards to computers and their graphical application...

Still... let's see what I can remember from my younger days... Well, like other people said, authentic manga artists use India Ink, so that's pretty standard... They say that the best quality is made in Asia of course (I believe the Chinese actually invented India Ink... something like that)…. On the other hand, the asian pen system is quite different from what you'd normally find in North America.

The Japanese have specific names for their pen nibs like spoon, g-nib, school and round. The North American system on the otherhand is a mishmash of unrememberable numbers and lettered prefixes. If you ask one of your local art dealers for a spoon pen outside of asia, prepare for some confusion unless they really know their stuff. Let's see if I can remember... spoon pens are for more delicate line work, school pens have a harder more uniformed line width, g-nibs are flexible and have a good line variety with a soft feel, finally round pens have a hard feel with a great deal of line width variety.

Hmmm... now paper type... whereas western comic artists use Bristol board usually at varying sizes according to the publisher, manga artists have their own specialty paper... respectively labeled A4 and B4. There is also B5, but it is rarely, if ever used by professionals, as it is smaller in size, but is commonly used by amateurs. Hmmm… let’s see if I can remember this right, A4 is what is conventionally used for individually pressed manga, think paperback novel like-ish, B4 is what is most commonly used for manga magazines, aka the big fricken’ phone books… but in either case, they are scaled down about 82% to allow for a more refined final product. It’s something a bit hard to understand unless you see them in real life. These numbers do not determine the quality of the paper, but rather the size. As always, the denser the paper, the better... I believe that 135kg is the most convention for professional manga production in Japan... Specialty made manga paper often has stuff like margins and guides to help you out for production, but other than that, it's not that much different from any other high quality stack of paper.

Now screen tones... I hate screentones... bloody archaic mess of cut, peel out and press ons. Damn with today's computers, you can do everything screen tones could ever have prayed for and more... but ehhh... Screentones are really hard to find outside of Japan these days... Hmmm... so to describe screentones in a nutshell, they are like press on textures and shading that you can use to elaborate your black and white work... screentones were conceptualized due to technological limits, since budget restraints in printing manga limited production to black and white instead of grayscale or color, so dithered screentones were created to make the job of shading and texturing easier with the black and white limit. Professional manga artists conventionally have a dull plastic knife like object called a tone applier or something between the lines… think a rice paddle but a lot more expensive and shaped like a knife.

Let’s see what else there is… well, when it comes to manual coloring, the most trusted tool apparently boils down to Copic Markers… yeah, that’s the brand’s name, but there might be a foreign equivalent… basically, they are high quality markers that come in a myriad of colors and with a blending marker to boot… They also happen to be ungodly expensive… something like $250 US for the entire set, and that’s when it’s on special. Of course, I’d always recommend to take up your coloring on a computer, but if you really want to do it the old fashion authentic way, Copic Makers are your best bet… Apparently, there is also an optional airbrush application, although I’d imagine that it can’t be very cheap…

Hmmm… other supplies… well, a pencil of your preferred lead type, an eraser (electric ones are nice if they didn’t cost a small fortune), any given ruler, a pencil style eraser (think of it as a pencil filled with eraser material instead of graphic), a scratch pad, white out and lots and lots of tissues for cleaning ink… there are also some inking pens out there that have an autofeed system that allows you to bypass the good old dip and ink procedure with no chance of leaking or splatters. There seem to be some companies in North America in Europe that make very good autofeed pens by the way. Oh, shape templates are also good, like circle templates and the like that make drawing shapes easier... think of them as cooky cutters for artists. French curves and Flexibles have also been of pretty good use to some artists and draftsme for drawing perfect curves once you learn how to use them... French Curves are like boomeranged shaped stencils that supposedly you can draw any curve imaginable with (It's a lot harder than it sounds though)... Flexibles are like adjustable snaky things you can use to draw a curve with... these things are pretty common, I bought all mine at Staples, hahahaha... although I stopped using them after I start relying on the computer 98% of the time.

Okay… with all that being said, a computer and a graphics tablet can make all of the previously mentioned obsolete (And even more so if you deck it out with a scanner, a printer and a Tablet PC)… I probably have made this pretty clear already, but if you don’t live in Japan, it’ll cost you dearly to import all this art supplies, and lots of it is consumable so you’re going to eventually need seconds…

I think this is my longest writeup yet on this forum, but I hope it you found it useful. Personally, I highly recommend studying Japanese aesthetics and stylistic preferences over what equipment they use, but the choice is yours ^_-

[ 20-05-2005: Message edited by: Zephos ]

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www.xynthica.com

Hmm so i need A4 paper, india ink wit that nib thingy (wtf is a nib? anyone got pictures of it?, screentones, and copic markers to make a "decent manga". Pencil and pen drawings just aren't makin me satisfied anymore, i really wanna draw nice "black" lines instead of the cheap black ink and the gray lead from my pencil.

All this can be ordered of the internet right? I kno how to get the paper in america but not the other weird thingys

Sly swears by these "Sakura" fine line pens he gets (he lives in the US), I've not seen them in England but he says you can controll the flow somewhat with pressure and I have to admit it's pretty dark and clean lines from it.

I only really use a mechanical pencil nowdays, a putty rubber, a normal eraser and the small little rubbers you get for the mechanicals. They are a right pain to get hold of though...

I would say that my tablet is the thing that was improved my digital art the most and they are not really all that expensive if you know where to look! The Wacom online shop (Link Here) offers ex-display models or damaged boxes etc at knock down prices but they still have the 2 year warrenty etc. I have a Graphire 3 classic that will set you back about £50 including postage, or you could get a Graphire 1 or 2 for less!

If you really want to go for that authentic manga paper, nib pens, screen tones etc then you could always try one of the how to draw manga starter sets (Link Here on Amazon) this even has a book telling you how to use it all but no ink! So that will have to be a seperate perchase.

I do reccomend working with traditional media though. As Bomu said in his Art of Drawing Manga, "The final product only exists in a 'virtual world' - printing your work isn't as tactile as traditional artwork methods."

If you go to my gallery at deviant art you can see examples of colored pieces done with copic markers, and one with prismacolor markers (Less expensive, not as nice, but still artist quality). http://~jedaka.deviantart.com/
Faye Valentine is a picture that I did in both CG and traditional, I scanned the line art from the traditional before I colored it with copics. Which do I think looks better ? the CG Faye. Which do I like better ? Copic Faye for sure. Because it's hanging on my wall and nobody else has it ^_^

Your cheapest solution for COLORING: Wacom Tablet + Adobe Photoshop CS (Or Corel Painter IX), I bought a Wacom Intuos 3 9x12 from www.campustech.com for about $385(Academic discount store). Not consumable, instant access to every color imaginable (and unimaginable). 9x12 is the largest size, they have smaller sizes for considerably less.
I'm going to go ahead and just say you cannot effectively do digital art unless you have a tablet, period.

And one nib costs $5 XD, i plan on buying at least 4 and dam thats a lotta money alone, plus the paper.

aaaaand cant you jsut freakin download photoshop?

(dont flame me, i dont give a shit if u dont like warez or not )

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Ezekiel 25:17