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Mastering Manga Studio 5 by Liz Staley

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I've received my copy of Mastering Manga Studio 5 from PACKT Publishing, this is a very fun an helpful book who will help professionals and beginners to learn to use this magnificent software to draw comics.

The book will guide you through the most basic contents to the more advanced ones, such as customizing your own tools, story management menu, how to use the rulers and other tools that will help you in the path of becoming a great comic artist.

I want to give my thanks to PACKT Publishing for letting me participate in this amazing project as one of the reviewers, it was a nice experience.

Do you want to know more about this book? You can see the whole information here.

Previous Posts:
Become more Productive in a few Steps
Manga Studio 5 Review
Pre-Launching Béance
12 Tips for Webcomic Beginners
Tutorial: Create Scenery/Background
Improve your sketch abilities in 10 steps

How to Publish your Comic

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Hi guys! It's been a long time! The last week was kinda sad for me, reasons only known by those closest to me... It is really a personal issue! But we must keep on and do everything we need to go forward.

Today I'm going to tell you some ways to publish your Comic, maybe in future posts I will expand each tip I will give you, but for now I'll explain this in a easy and simple way to understand, if you know any other methods you can tell me by comments, your knowledge is really appreciated. Let's begin!

1) Submit your project to a Editorial, well this is one of the most safe things you can do in the world of Comics, you send your project and after 3 or 4 weeks the Editorial will answer you, some editorials will give you some great feedback, others will not even see your work (that's reality). In the world of editorials you will have to work with an editor (if your project gets approved), in most of the cases after the first revision you usually have to re-do everything again. Try to learn some advices from other artists who already have worked with a editorial. My advice is: be patient, really patient, it takes time for the editorial to review your project, most of them will not consider you, but if you don't take the risk no one will do it for you. Go for it! You can always learn from a defeat and try your best the next time.

2) Self-publishing, in most of the cases people who don't want to take the commitment of working for a Editorial they just start self-publishing their comics, they do not have a editor or a boss who tells them what to do or what not to do, this is like to be a "Freelancer" you can do your comic, you can control your own artwork, working hours and how much chapters or pages will your comic have. 

There are some ways to Self-Publish your Comic.


- You can try Printing Online sites like lulu.com and Kinko's. They took a great part of the money of the final product but it is worth but you can earn more money than the money you can actually can get from royalties in a Editorial. You don't have to pay for shipment costs, that's pretty good! It is really worth the try, the only risk by using this method is you have to promote your own comic book series by yourself.

- Save some money and try to print your comics in a local printing office. That's one of the most common cases in my country, Colombia. Most of the people work and save a huge amount of money to print between 500 and 1000 comics for a local fair, they usually sell the comics in a really cheap price so they can make sure they will earn something and will sell all the copies. In some countries shipment cost are really expensive, so you have to plan very well how are your going to do if you want to reach other countries.

- Jump to the Internet and make a Webcomic! One of the most impressive revelations of this comic era is the power of Webcomics, you can buy your own space on the Internet and create your own content, manage your fans, create alternative content, and take control over the persons who enter to your site. Try to be creative, there's no limit on the Internet, and people from all the world can reach you! That's a very excellent point! If you want to know some of my tips for "Webcomic Beginners" hit Click here.

- Sell e-books! Comics are books too, now most of the people have a Tablet, iPad or Smartphone where they can buy and read a lot of e-books in a cheap price. One of the most famous is Kindle, you can take control over all the content of your e-book and reach over more people. But as I mentioned before, the problem here is that you have to promote yourself if you want to get more sells for your digital comic. 

- Start a Fanzine with some friends of you. For some people to start a Fanzine with other people is a really bad idea, because they don't like the kind of work of other persons, but well, the good point is that you can look for artist you trust and create a really original content. Some friends of mine have just released their first Fanzine comic book, that's really amazing, between them saved some money and printed 1000 copies of their first Fanzine, that's a good Idea because people can read like 3 or 4 stories in a cheap price. 

Well those are the methods I know about publishing your Comic, I hope this was very useful for you! I'll be posting some new content soon because I've started working on a new Comic series, not related to Béance, you will know soon about it!

Previous Posts:

Become more Productive in a few Steps
Manga Studio 5 Review
Pre-Launching Béance
12 Tips for Webcomic Beginners
Tutorial: Create Scenery/Background
Improve your sketch abilities in 10 steps

Pre-launching Béance

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Hi guys! I'm here making a special announcement, I usually write on Mondays about tutorials and personal experiences, now today I'm going to tell you some details about my new Webcomic Béance, you will start to enjoy in early march.

Plot


Béance is the story of two guys, a young thief called Griv, he has a lot of problems making friends as he is a pretty violent and impulsive, but there's one person that will change that, his name is Guido a mysterious youngster who Griv saved many years ago when they both were children, and become his friend and protector. They both are living in a big city named by Odora, a city divided by three big stone belts and most of the poor and humble people are living in the bottom of the city, where sunlight can not reach. The two thieves are trying to recover what those people have lost in the darkness, but there are people who will try to keep things as they are and hide the origin of this controversial city.

Concept behind Béance


When I wanted to write Béance the first thing that came to my mind was "Thieves! I need thieves! That would be epic!" I was exploring the Idea of "Hey, why I would make a thief a hero? or why robbing someone is a good action to become a hero?" well, that's the emotion behind stealing something that means something for a person, behind an object or a feeling you can find a lot of things, is not the story of the stolen things, is the story for a stolen and strong feeling. "How can you feel if someone steals your heart n front of you?" Awkward question isn't it?

Becoming a person who steals gold and delivers it to people is not the main idea of Béance, you will see more action, more emotions and a the difference between having something and not to have it, as simple as that but is deeper than it sounds. "Watch out! It is the boy!!"

Concept behind the characters


One of the first things I want to talk about is Why two main characters? In most of the series there are one protagonist e.g. Naruto, Bleach, Superman, Batman, Dragon Ball Z. In this case this is story reveals how two very different people can have a really special bond and destiny. Guido really needed someone to help him, in that case Griv appeared to save him in that moment and also his salvation for life, with a guidance, a model to follow, even if he's not the best person in the world but he's actually your saviour and your friend, that makes you thing that you can amend mistakes from the past, create a new life with new good things and new problems too.

Griv, he's maybe the solution and also the problem in Béance, creating a person who is part of the main problem and believes that doing things his way will resolve everything, but that's actually a lie. Guido, he can be a really nice person, but he's actually a dangerous person in the shadows, the truth about Guido will remain only in his lost heart, no one know who was he before he met Griv.

Publication


- Béance is a project written and drawn by Rizian Larc, and published by Noktos.

- You can read the Webcomic in a Website that will be launched in Early March.

- You can read there Two pages per week.

- When a volume is complete you can buy a printed edition for you.

- You can stay tuned in Béance's Fan Page on Facebook for news and other cool resources.


And we will have... Victory - Lord Béance.

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