How to Draw Manga: The 7 Steps, and How Long Each Actually Takes

On a 16-page one-shot, count about 12 to 15 hours of work before drawing anything definitive. That's a lot, and that's normal.

1. Set the format before the story (30 minutes)

Decide on the number of pages first, not the plot. A 16-page one-shot is about 90 panels, or 5 to 6 panels per page. This constraint will write the story for you: it forbids you three story arcs and twelve characters. Authors who give up are almost always those who started with a saga.

2. Write the script in scenes, not chapters (3 to 4 hours)

A scene fits on one line: who is there, what changes between the beginning and the end. On 16 pages, you have room for 4 or 5 scenes, no more. If a scene doesn't change the situation, it's skipped. The classic Japanese structure, kishotenketsu, works well here: introduction, development, unexpected twist, conclusion.

3. Storyboarding, called nemu (6 to 8 hours)

This is the step everyone rushes and it's the most profitable. You draw your 16 pages in miniature, postcard size, with stick figures. Goal: nothing beautiful, everything readable. You place the panels, the speech bubbles, and you check the reading order. A page that fails at the nemu stage costs ten minutes to redo. The same page that fails after inking costs three hours.

A simple test: show your nemu to someone who doesn't know the story. If they have to ask you who is speaking, the page needs to be redone now, not later.

4. Sketching (1.5 to 3 hours per page)

We start again from the thumbnail, enlarged to the final format. The standard Japanese format is B4 for a B5 printed output, which allows drawing large and gaining neatness upon reduction. Many artists sketch in light blue: blue disappears when scanning in grayscale, so nothing needs to be erased anymore.

For 16 pages, count between 25 and 45 hours. This is the bulk of the project, and this is where work rhythm matters more than talent: two hours a day are better than a ten-hour weekend followed by three weeks of nothing.

5. Inking (1 to 2 hours per page)

Inking is not tracing the sketch, it's a second decision. You choose which line is thick and which line is thin: character outlines and foregrounds in thick lines, interior details and distant elements in thin lines. It is this hierarchy that gives the impression of depth, much more than the setting itself.

Solid black areas, hair, and dark clothing are added during inking. They structure the page when viewed from afar: squint at your panel, and you should still be able to tell where the character is.

6. Tones and Finishing Touches (30 min to 1 hour per page)

Tones are used for shadows, textures, and atmospheres. The rule to avoid visual mush: a maximum of two grayscale levels per page at the beginning. Beyond that, the page becomes gray everywhere and nothing stands out anymore.

7. Lettering (20 to 30 min per page)

Speech bubbles are placed last on the final file, but their placement was decided during the thumbnail stage. If you discover during lettering that the text doesn't fit, then the panel breakdown was wrong.

Let's add it up for a 16-page one-shot, starting out: about 13 hours of preparation, 35 hours of penciling, 20 hours of inking, 10 hours of screentones and lettering. That's roughly 78 hours, the equivalent of two months at an hour and a half a day.

This number isn't here to discourage you; it's here so you stop believing that your slowness is abnormal. The three most costly mistakes are:

• Starting with page 1 in its final version. As long as the complete script doesn't exist, each finished page is a gamble on a story that isn't locked in.
• Redrawing the same character until it's perfect. A character stabilizes by drawing them a hundred times in different situations, not ten times from the same angle.
• Choosing a 200-page project to start with. Finishing 16 average pages will teach you more than 60 abandoned pages, because you will have gone through inking, screentones, and lettering at least once.

If you're stuck on a specific part of the drawing rather than the organization, tackle the problem separately: body construction, hair, and hands are worked on outside of the pages, on practice sheets.