Graphics Questions? Ask me Anything~

Hey everyone,

Thanks for supporting Fakku Books and being part of this cool kids club section of Fakku :)

Anyway, I was the editor for Renai Sample and will be for many manga to come within Fakku Books. Hopefully soon we'll have many more editors to push books out even faster for you all to enjoy~

A little about me...

I was the founder of Soba-Scans back in the day and originally self taught myself Photoshop with the help of Nikon and Raze to smooth out my wrinkles of general scanlation's do's and don't's. After about two years I was signed on to Project-H (not such a great experience). During the year I was with them and the year after that I started school for Graphic Design at the Art Institute which was what really honed my skills with design aesthetic.

Within Fakku Books we work in the Adobe Suite specifically working with Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. I'm very comfortable with all three due to my education and self interest. I love helping others learn new things, so if anybody who is learning or interested in specific areas I'd be happy to help and answer questions.

You can ask anything graphic related, I can offer tips on how to pick out fonts to use for different things, or even just answer any random question you have in general about what my role is :)

Thanks for your hard work, I'm looking forward to Renai Sample!

Hey I just started learning how to use Photoshop to typeset/edit manga yesterday, so I really don't know much at all right now. But I think its something I would really love to get into... its always bothered me whenever I see a typo in a manga, I always wish I could fix it! Anyways you've been doing this for a good bit of time... any advice for a beginner like me?

Oh and Renai Sample looks awesome!

Hey, congrats on the new hobby! A fair warning though, once you get in, you can't get out. It's some secret rule or something. I hadn't been involved with anything related to anime or manga for a year before Jacob called me up and said "I'm gonna make you love it again!" Which he did. And here I am. :P

As far as editing goes, you'll be responsible for key things in scanlation.
1. Color Correction (specifically for scanlation only)

2. Text removal

3. Redrawing

4. Typesetting


All in all, besides what was listed above: Practice, practice, practice. You grow with each project you do, even I do. I learned new things with Renai Sample, and I've even learned a few new things with this next manga I'm doing.

The biggest tip out of everything I can give is if you come across an obstacle and not sure how to do something in Photoshop... all you gotta do is "How do you ______ in Photoshop" in Google and 99.9% of the time someone asked that same question :P

Hi, Ziggy. Thanks for doing this AMA.

Speaking of Soba-scans, I just read D.P - Winter Rain House Arrest that was on my backlog and saw your credit page. Made me think of you and your endeavors. I'm glad to see you've found a new place with Fakku for your talents.

We've missed you over in the Writing & Fanfiction section. If you're not too busy, there's a romance contest going on until October if you find the time, I know that was your talent from your previous entries in contests.

Anyway, I was wondering if you can talk about each of the different roles in a general scanlation staff. Is there a place on a team for someone more talented in literary areas? Being a writer and editor myself, it's been an interest on the back-burner in my mind, but graphics is sadly not my personal expertise. Anything you can share?

Thank you for your time.

There's definitely a QC (quality check) role in scanlation for something like that. Everyone within Fakku Books is pretty much a QCer. Translators stare at text so long that sometimes they miss glaring typos or grammatical errors because they're so caught up in translating a statement accurately that sometimes it goes unnoticed that it doesn't sound natural in English. Even when I'm placing the text it's difficult for me to catch spelling/grammatical errors because I'm so zoomed in and focused on everything from the size of text, ratio of space inside a bubble, the shape the text makes, and how legible it is for me to notice a typo. It's just as easy for me to hit a button and have a layer that's out of sight (too zoomed in) and something happen to it while I'm working on a different part of the page too. Bump a layer or miss a small sfx.

They have to look at everything from translation issues to editing issues.

So in general, with scanlation you have:
Translator
Editor
QCer

Sometimes larger groups who can afford to split groups up will separate groups further:

Translator
Proof Reader
Cleaner (removes text and cleans manga scan)
Typesetter
QCer


P.S. It's funny that you say that about my writing, writing is one of the talents I feel like I lack the most in, but I appreciate you thinking of me.

Thanks for the detailed response! I already have the feeling its going to suck me in and never let me out... I haven't even finished my first project yet and I'm already thinking about what I could do next.

I haven't had to do any redrawing yet, although that one seems like the hardest part. Its definitely the most intimidating, anyways. I'm sure after lots and lots and lots of practice I'll get the hang of it. I've mostly been doing typesetting so far, with some text removal. I can already tell its going to be my favorite part of the whole process.

Redrawing really isn't something to be scared of, it's kind of just like playing connect the dots, you see where something is supposed to belong and you just stick in the missing piece that connects to either side of what's supposed to be there.

You'll notice as you get more experienced you'll have your 'specialty' so don't feel discouraged if you feel a little weak in one area but really strong in another. When I looked for editors with Soba-Scans to help me out I had my go-to person for specific types of manga. I had editors that were amazing at color correction, so if I had a manga that was scanned poorly, I'd give that book to them because I knew they could make it look great. I've worked with editors who were amazing at redrawing but slow at typesetting, but if I had a difficult book with redrawing, that extra time would pay off because I knew they could make it look nice. Same goes with typesetting, some people have an eye for it and some don't. You'll find your strengths and you'll be able to play up on it.

I get a mishmosh of everything.

To keep it simple I work with a mix between indesign files, illustrator files, tifs etc.

That sounds pretty neat and orderly actually, but at the same time it also sounds like a lot to keep track of.

what are the demensions of Renai Sample going to be, like my copy of Velvet kiss and some other project h manga dont actually fit on my shelf becasue they hang off the edge, will the upcoming releases be the size of a regular manga, or the size taht s slightly larger?

Project-H makes the books larger, we'll be keeping them their original size, which is 150mm x 210mm. :)

Is the digital versions... is it going to be pure untouch resolution like Wani got it for mastering and pre-publishing or is fakku going to resize with a non printable dpi or lock the file from manipulation. Because i can see this being sold at local cons and stores in the unauthorized fashion. Printing cost too much just for a few personal use copies.

so it wont stick over the edge of my shelf!

So you were the editor that Jacob used...

I honestly have no idea at this point, that's more of a Jacob question :P I just do what I'm told lol



Yep, I won't be the only editor though

Groovy.


... fuck these antibiotics must be eating thru my resin coating on my brain matter. Remember people when you're at the lake during a drought and the water is 30% of normal.. wear water shoes so the 100 years of fishing hooks, knives, fish shit and dead mexicans gangmembers don't give your an infection when you step one one of these or four when you beach on a island that should be under 200 feet of water.

That's A5, right?

Yep