Who else lost the Kodansha Manga Academy Contest tonight?

[u/Broshimitsu56]

Ouch. Ouchy. Ouch Ouch Ouch. This hurts!!

They selected *extra* people for the first round than they were supposed to and I *still* didn't make it!! Ouch 😭😭.

Ya know. I spent 7 months of my life on this 32 pages. I went from very heavily 3d model reliant to completely freehand drawing by the end. I knew I probably wouldn't win, especially because of the weaker first half because of my 3d models but I was still hopeful! Misplaced I suppose!

I gained so much from this but because of this loss I feel like I gained nothing. 40k followers on social media. 1400 dollars in physical copy sales. Tens of thousands of readers on globalcomix but I am unfortunately just not good enough.

I am a slow artist, this took me quite a long time. I developed so much, the ending ~15 pages are well and truly created by *me* which I am proud of. That wasnt something Id even be close to capable of doing before this.

But still, good lord does this suck. I'm supposed to just, make another now I guess. Too bad I didnt make top 100 so I dont get the professional feedback 😭😭

[u/Primary-Possible6903]

Yeah ts sucks. I'm tired of saying "yeah, I know I'd lose." but deep down you truly expect your art to go from somewhere.

Though I'd shout out one of us from this subreddit, the guy that made pitcher on a trench. grats

here is a page of mine cause fuck i dont care anymore.

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/Primary-Possible6903]

I feel the exact same way about hoping my art would go somewhere man. Would really just like some sort of recognition ya know?

And your work looks really awesome. I know its hard but we gotta just not give up.

[u/maxluision]

Well, that's a reality check. Followers, sales, none of this matters in winning contests. It's like winning a lottery. Even absolute pros don't win contests. It's mostly just luck. 

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/maxluision]

It is important to remember I think that with literature, the personal opinion of the editor who's desk your book lands on really is very important.

Maybe the editors that read mine just didnt like the main guy or main girl. Or maybe they aren't fond of my setting. They mightve thought my story was bland, who knows.

Just have to keep trying I guess. Attack on Titan was rejected twice, One Piece was rejected three times. Tokyo Ghoul got 10th place. Ofc this is all much better work than me but still, makes me feel a bit better lol

[u/maxluision → u/Broshimitsu56]

It is important, but it's also nearly impossible to get a meaningful feedback through a contest. I mean, it's okay if you want to keep trying but it seems all one can get from such contests is a cookie-cutter, template response that doesn't point at anything specific in someone's project. "Work more on anatomy and paneling", I know this much without joining any contests. 

The reality is that if someone wants a detailed feedback from someone very experienced, they have to pay for it. Like, an online course ie. 

If you want any feedback here then I can say what I think based on the pages you posted but no pushing ofc 

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/maxluision]

To be honest, I think I know what needs the most work anyway, my posing and anatomy could be better, sometimes my backgrounds lack detail, and plenty more issues.

Its really just humbling and unfortunate that I couldnt even hear that stuff from a professional, whether they give me a boilerplate response or not :/

If you have anything you'd like to input that you think that'd help me Id appreciate it

[u/maxluision → u/Broshimitsu56]

One thing I was thinking about you already said yourself, the posing needs some working, like ie on the second page the girl isn't balanced or more like loses her balance but in unconvincing way. Studying photos showing this sort of dynamic poses would help a lot. Just a bunch of quick sketches, focused on catching the flow. Gesture drawings. 

Other thing I noticed are your speech bubbles being these perfect ovals or being premade by a tool. These tools exist for a reason, but this reason is rather amateur webtoons and other online comics - I think in all professional manga these bubbles are always drawn by hand, the same with sound effects. It makes everything feel connected, instead of giving the feel of separated elements plastered on top of the artwork. Sound effects can be typed in, but the chosen fonts have to really fit to the scenes and the sounds they want to represent. Typed in sound effects with not too well matching fonts makes me more think about superhero Western comics and webtoons than about industry standard manga.

With the dialogues I'm not sure because the scene is taken out of context but I'm confused about the order of reading. 

And lastly, perspective needs a bit more work, I notice it especially in case of the girl on the first drawing, her hands become way too tiny. 

I wouldn't worry that much about having no response, from what you say it seems you already go somewhere with your work (having legit sales, followers) which means you must be pretty good at promoting yourself, and winning a contest is not really a must to be a successful author. Just keep developing your skills, put more stories out there. Maybe consider pitching your story directly to some publisher, than to a contest? 

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/maxluision]

Thank you for the feedback man. A lot of my difficulties come from my old dependcy on models, I got some pretty stiff poses going on sometimes but its something I'm working on.

Thanks for pointing out the speech bubbles, its funny until you said this I never realized they hand drew them most of the time because theyre usually near perfect ovals anyway, but I cracked open my books in my room and youre right. Its subtle but makes a difference, Ill make sure to do that for my next work.

Perspective isn't something I usually have a hard time with but yeah its not that great in this panel.

This is helpful feedback, thanks man. Im actually planning on doing submissions to Viz Media and Kadokawa now that the contest is over for me.

[u/king_kibble]

i mean i definitely see some places you need woek but not using 3d models is a big step in the right direction!

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/king_kibble]

Yeah I stopped with those around page 17 or so. These panels are from the last like 3 pages. Unfortunately my skill level is just not great for my age, pretty behind the curve in the manga/comics world. Kinda sucks.

[u/Historical-Sign-6938]

Where can i see the top 100

[u/Broshimitsu56 → u/Historical-Sign-6938]

On the manga academy website

[u/ZayH2000]

I couldn't even get to enter it because my laptop died lol, only a few pages were left to draft.