Layering and Layout at Authoring Time (Katsuhiro Ogata)

(Presentation transcript)

I am a trainer of Pokemon GO.

Anyway, I run a small company with my friends. The company’s name is “Denno Mavo LLC”. It is an agent company that also edits manga planning and editing. The client is eBOOK Initiative Japan, TORICO, NAVER corp. and others.

We deliver about 5 contents every month to manga application. Today I will tell you what I felt in those jobs.

The other day I took a questionnaire on Twitter to a manga artist. How are the manga artist in japan delivering them?

This is a graph of this. These three way are most popular delivery way in japan. The most frequent answer is “Compound format containing both images and texts” 57%. The second is “Image containing rasterized text” 23%. The third is “Balloons without texts and text files” by 20%.

So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of these three types of data?

Let’s start from “image containing rasterized text” which was 23% first. In this way, export image files from the application. All characters are rasterized.

Advantage is to be able to publish quickly. However, it is limited only when there are no errors. The biggest disadvantage is that if there are errors, you must ask the manga artists to correct it. Also, since all text is rasterized, secondary use such as translation cannot be done. And, If the manga artists uses non-commercial fonts, it may be a big trouble at a later stage.

In conclusion, there is no merit, so this way should not be adopted. It is not more accessible than anything else.

Next is “image containing rasterized text” which was 23%. In this way comic artists give text files to the manga editors along with image files. The image file balloons are blank. The manga editors use the text file and associate texts chunks with each balloons.

Advantage is that manga editors can correct mistakes themselves. You can organize the text for easy reading by the reader, and it will not get caught in trouble. The disadvantage is that it takes a lot of time.

In conclusion, this is a good way to put up with even taking time. If you adopt this way, you may have days when you cannot sleep at home.

Finally, “Composite format containing both images and text” accounting for 57%. Psd is a Photoshop data. Clip is a ClipStudio data. Mdp is a MediBangPaint data. These are all data formats containing text layer. So the comic editors can receive the same position, same font and letters of the same font size as the manga entered. After a proofreading, the editors outputs jpg, png and publishes the image data.

Advantage is efficient as you can use the text entered by manga artists as it is. It is easy to use on the net as well as for printing books or translations. As long as the fonts used by manga artists and the fonts that comic editors use should match, they can be published shortly after proofreading.

In most cases, it is extremely rare for manga artists to publish the received data as they are, as the fonts used are different from the delivery specifications. Also, clip and mdp are not suitable as data format for delivery. These are similar to RAW image data in photographs.There is a danger that if you mistake the output setting a bit, data different from the manga’s intention will be created. Finally, all of these formats are proprietary, so we can not exchange data across vendors.

In conclusion, Japanese manga editors are exhausted with inefficient and useless work. The most efficient way is to agree on the type of fonts beforehand and use an image format containing text layer. If there is an open standard for image formats equipped with text layers, the life of Japanese manga editors will be easier. It might be SVG.

Thank you.