TOKYOPOP Manga Creator,Produced by Planetwide Media, is a new way for any artist (with a PC – no love for Mac users) to publish their own manga. In addition to using your own artwork, you can use officially licensed TOKYOPOP content to create your own manga, anime and comics. After you’re done creating, you can share it with friends, print it out, or post it on your website.
Some things I really like about TOKYOPOP Manga Creator:
- It’s easy-to-use
- Lot of options to help you customize your manga
- The interface is relatively simple (which is a good thing)
- You can choose from either a blank slate, black and white or color layouts, and manga-ka mode (which is the super-advanced-mode)
- The price is great – it’s only $29.95!
A few of the drawbacks I noticed were:
- A few of the controls are a little ‘clunky’.
- The type tool seems a bit slow to respond.
- The drag/drop features could use some additional tweaking.
- Not available on Mac (the official computer of TheAnimeBlog.com).
Here I’ll go through the basic steps to get you up and running for your first page. Unfortunately I didn’t use any of my original art (yes I can draw), but I think the library images I used show enough to give you a good idea.
Startup
First, you’re greeted with an easy-to-follow dialog box. You can either create a new manga or open an existing manga project:
Friendly Tokyopop-branded startup screen…
Step One: Title Your Project
The “new manga wizard†makes it easy to title and author your manga…
Step Two: Select a Content Pack
Choose your content pack. Depending on your initial installation settings, you can choose from:
- Basic – tools allow you to import your existing, almost completed original artwork.
- Black & White tools allow you to import a variety of existing panels into your layout.
- Color tools provides additional options, similar to Black & White except…in color!
- Manga-Ka tools are the ‘advanced user’ setting. This allows you to add tones, gradations and more to your work.
For the example, I chose the Black & White content pack.
Step Three: Select a Page Layout
After you choose the content pack, it’s time to select a panel layout. There are a variety of preset panels to choose from…I just chose the 6-panel one.
Step Four: Get Ready To Create Your Manga
It looks like everything is setup, so let’s start laying out a page!
Step Five: Layout Time!
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Here’s the program in full ‘create’ mode. The layout reminds me of a combination of a word processing program, Photoshop and a few other applications. Notice the top menu tools (File, Edit, View, Animation and Help). Even though I read about the features beforehand, I somehow missed the ‘animation’ part. Interesting…I’ll have to try that out another time. Below the menu are some basic editing tools.
Step Six: Insert Manga Artwork
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It’s easy to add images into your panels. For this example, since I’m using the Black & White content pack, I’ve decided to use existing artwork in the Manga Creator library. Since I’m only laying out one page in this example, I’m going to go ahead and fill up the panels and begin dropping in some text and word balloons.
Step Seven: Fill out panels, add text and stuff!
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Adding word balloons is really easy. Simply drag the shape you want onto your page and drag it around to where you want it. All you have to do is click on the balloon and start typing – you can fine tune it afterwards! Try out different fonts, text sizes and weights…whatever look you like!
Step Eight: Adjustments to the panel
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I’ve rearranged some of my text and added some captions to make it look more like a real page. Now it’s time to export the single page manga!
Step Nine: Publish Your Project
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To publish your manga masterpiece, choose ‘file’ from the menu and select ‘publish’.
You’ll see a ‘publish manga to’ dialog box appear:
I selected ‘view PDF after publishing’ so I could quickly see how my manga page turned out.
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The final manga page – all published and stuff! Next time I do one of these, I’ll take the time to use my own original artwork. But for now, I hope this gets you started. You can download a trial copy of Tokyopop Manga Creator here.
If you like the trial version enough to buy it, you can either download and activate it or you can order a CD (with real box!).
Initial Rating:
out of four gummies.
Have you tried it out? If so, what did you think?
No Mac? Screw that. I’ll stick with Comiclife thank you.
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Anne Packrat – Ooo Comiclife is great for Mac! And yeah, I was very disappointed with the lack of Mac support.
How long have you been using Comiclife?
I see it has a publish to website option, does this mean it creates a viewer (next, prev, first, last, zoom in, etc.) to insert into a web page. Or is does it just output a jpeg and you’re still going to have to find or write your own viewer?
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super rats – You can publish your manga in several different formats – JPEG, PDF and HTML. The JPEG option creates a series of stand-alone images. The PDF creator is a single file with multiple pages. The HTML option creates a single webpage – each page sits next to each other (horizontally).
The problem I noticed with the HTML option was that you have to change the location of the from your hard drive to the location you uploaded it to. The easiest way to publish webpages would be to put them directly on the Hypercomics website.
There’s also a Flash-based ‘flip book’ that you can create, which allows you to have all the files together, with a ‘next’, ‘previous’, etc. like you mention.
David – I’ve been using it for a few years, but I haven’t used it all that much, mainly just to make a few things for friends. I really should do more with it.
But considering I can’t draw worth anything, my options are a bit limited.
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Interesting program, although it doesn’t seem to do anything that can’t be done with Photoshop. Still, good price, and perhaps an easier learning curve.
Now, when is your manga coming out?
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Anne Packrat – What sort of stuff do you like to draw?
Kabitzin – I agree. However, Manga Creator does seem to simplify/eliminate quite a few steps that would take quite a few steps in Photoshop…like panel layout, text balloons, etc. I guess it all depends on what type of workflow you have.
Regarding your manga question…that will happen when I get some more free time!
David – Er, I don’t draw. I cosplay. Mostly I used Comiclife for Cosplay photo montages.
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Anne Packrat – Cool. Sounds like a great use for it!
[...] Análisis del Tokyopop Manga Creator por The Anime Blog [...]
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How do yo make the charectars look better.
do you have to draw them.
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no shit
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the side is down T_T”
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