"How I got started"

First of all - I am not a fantastic artist. I don't own any "how to draw" books, be it on anatomy or manga or otherwise. I have never had any art training. I have never had any any graphic design training. At school, I dropped art the moment I could - in fact, I despised it as a subject. I have not studied life drawing. I have not studied composition, colour, different materials, etc. I don't doodle in my spare time either. I didn't even doodle in class when I was bored. I produced art when I needed to for school assignments and other things, but I had no real interest in it.

As a result, when I first got this story in my head and decided to draw it, I didn't know where to start. In fact, when I first started drawing "Shirley's Story", I didn't even know what type of paper to use. I drew it on A4 computer paper (because it was handy), with fine-liners (because I didn't yet know you were meant to draw manga with pen and ink). And that was that. "A Chinese Ghost Story" was drawn in exactly the same way.

I was 18 at the time, pretty late to start a drawing hobby, one that I had no prior interest in, and in which my knowledge of was zero. Even now, my knowledge isn't that great. I still don't know what the "right" paper and the "right" pens and the "right" inks are - and guess what - I've found that to be a good artist, you don't really need to have the "right" drawing equipment. I still don't, but I get by. You will need the basic equipment, but you don't need brand-name equipment. In fact, you will benefit greatly from experimenting with the different things that come your way.

After all, the essence of manga is not so much the art, but the story-telling, themes and pacing. Anyone who takes manga seriously enough to try and draw it will tell you so. These 3 are what you should concentrate on when trying to tell a story - any story, not just manga. It's great if you can draw nice art, but you shouldn't start drawing a manga with that in mind. When I start a manga, my main priorities are the story and how to tell. The art is only a vehicle to the story - art alone cannot make people care.

I say this because I often get emails from manga-artist wannabes who tell me "I tried drawing a manga once, but I never finished it/gave up after 2 pages/it was too long. I really admire your perseverence". Well, I persevered not because I started off wanting to be a great manga-artist and drawing "cool comics" (though that crossed my mind more than several times), but because I had a story I wanted to tell, and wanted to tell it in manga format. So many people buy all the right equipment, all the right "how to draw manga" books and start off with great ideals - then fail because what happens on the page doesn't look as great as what they picture in their minds. Well, the key here is to not let that bother you and continue drawing. "Shirley's Story" looked like nothing I had pictured in my mind, but what I draw now is getting closer. Reality will never be as good as what you see in your imagination, but closing the gap requires patience, skill and hard work. You'll never succeed in anything if you give up after one or two tries and find you're not a natural-born talent. Even natural-born talent requires patience and hard work.