EDIT: Chapter 1 version 2 release: Mediafire, Rapidshare.
Translator: Tsundere Yuriko, Editor and Scanner: Audio Erotica (EcchiYuri)
Age Rating: Adult
Tags: Yuri, Seinen
The Iron Pen Force plans on taking over the world, and no manga assistant will stand in their way! But in an attempt to eliminate Tamae, an aspiring manga assistant, they are thwarted by Keika, a master of Manga Assistant Jutsu! Keika saves Tamae, and after a bit of misunderstanding, they become very intimate friends. But what plans do the Iron Pen Force have in store for Keika?
Manga Updates page.
EDIT: May or may not need new Editor. AE is going to try ch2, and see if she can continue from there.
Please comment on AE's editing attempt! Where she can improve, what she did well, etc. Thank you!
Posts
The premise of this manga is hilariously absurd. I really can't read it with a straight face at all.
ReplyDeleteAs for the editing, the redrawing and cloning look decent (although I can't really judge properly without raws). The font size could be smaller. It needs a little bit of leveling. The whites are white, but the blacks aren't. She did a good job with the scanning so that's not actually a big problem. There are also (very few) stray dots here and there. Might be from imperfection of the paper or a little dust from the scanner. Just white those out. Overall, a very good first edit.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWow, translations and releases are so fast now. ^ ^
Many thanks, it seems an interesting series. I didn't expect that they were going to have sex right in the 1st chapter, lol.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I noticed that there are pages 1 and 3, but not 2.
Also, you tagged this as "shounen", but I think it's actually a seinen manga.
I'm not an expect at editing, but I think that AE did a good job ^^
Looking good.
ReplyDeleteI made a picture explaining the benefits of cropping the image levels (using the Curves tool in photoshop) here: http://imgur.com/bR2nQ.png
You can see the results here, look at the file size: http://imgur.com/QjW7W.png
The original image was 954 kilobytes. After adjusting curves and exporting as 16-color (4-bit) indexed png, the resulting image is only 279 kilobytes in size. That is to say, I shaved over two thirds off the image's size! Extrapolating, you could expect the 17.7 megabyte chapter to become around 6 to 8 megabytes instead. This can make a huge difference with slow connections and slow servers (as for example mediafire often is,) and services like rapidshare have download limits which go by file size.
I find the even black and white surfaces to be much more pleasing to look at, as well.
You really should tell Audio Erotica that she's absolutely fine. Her work is really quite good for a first timer- I see no reason she can't continue!
ReplyDeleteWell, unless she really doesn't like doing it :(
She can improve by leveling a bit more or using the curve tool. Her soundeffects look quite okay, with some practice she could easily make really good edits there. Don't throw the towel just becauser the first time was hard!
I took a quick look at the first few pages, and AE did well for a first edit with partial sfx replacement.
ReplyDeleteThe things I'm going to comment on won't be jarring for casual readers, but if she is interested in improving:
-tweak the leading on certain fonts to make sure lines of text aren't blending into each other (the one on p3, for example)
-ziptone pattern cloning needs work (some of this could be that it was already bad in the original version--I haven't compared them)
-on page 7, reconstruction is very choppy behind "shwoo," like she just erased the parts of the sfx that were not on the lines. But maybe it looks like that in the original too.
The biggest problem was the leveling, which has already been discussed in depth by other people. Text is a little large and uneven in places, but that's really an area of personal preference. I think the cartoony font she picked suits the tone of the manga well.
Wow, thanks to everyone for their constructive criticism. I feel like I have a lot of new ideas to work with.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I did level the pages (or so I thought) but I was worried that if I did it too much I would lose too much of the mid-tones. I will re-level the pages keeping in mind not to worry about losing too much and just get white, white and black, black. I was also worried about going too small for the font which is why I tried to keep it at 7pt or higher. If everyone is okay with smaller fonts then I’ll try to keep it smaller. That works for me since that would mean less text bubbles to redraw.
@ Antti Tuppurainen: THANK YOU so much for the visuals! I’m using Corel x4 so the leveling tool layout is a little different there but with your example I was able to understand better what I need to do. Do I level the page as a final step once it is edited or do I do it first?
@ Erin: I think the sfx (especially on page 15, where there were a ton of them) was the hardest thing for me. There were some places in the manga where the background zip-tone was polka-dot then in another place of the same panel the background would change to a stucco looking pattern. Trying to make it uniform was not easy for me and in some places I relied on adding the English text to cover up what I couldn’t easily clone over. Behind the “SHWOO” really does look bad. I had to do that page over twice because on my first attempt at editing this chapter I didn’t use anti-aliasing on the fonts. That redraw was rushed and while I really didn’t notice it when I QC’d my work it looks really bad to me now. Any tricks on how to do smoother cloning would help me greatly!
@Kuro Page 2 was the table on contents which will be included with the final release of this volume.
Thanks to everyone that commented and especially Tsundere Yuriko for the translation. I’ll give Chapter 2 a stab and see if I can improve!
@AudioErotica
ReplyDeleteIf you're worried about the midtones, remember that you can always use the level mask to decrease the effect of leveling on certain areas. That or you can do the opposite. Level it until the midtones are fine, then make a new level mask to ensure the whites are whites and blacks are black, color the whole mask white, then black in the areas you want to level.
personally i think you're doing a great job for a first timer AE :) the more you work with this, the more you'll improve ^^ and ty TY and AE for this hilarious release hahaha, im definitely gonna follow this ;D
ReplyDeleteOwwwww... Nice start xD
ReplyDeleteheheheh I'm really really happy for all these project Tsundere r workin' on em. Thank you very much for the time that u spend to translate this series for us...
Kisses and see u soon :D
Finally got some time to read the chapter.
ReplyDeleteThe premise is really quirky, sexy, and funny. I wonder what will happen next. Can't wait.
@Audio Erotica: I think you did an amazing job editing, especially if this was your first time. I really don't think there's anything too in need of change. Great job. ^ ^
@Audio Erotica: Can you use layers in your graphics program? With some patterns, I find that pasting a chunk onto a new layer and then moving/tweaking it until it fits works better than using a clone brush.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you can put the text on a separate layer and save the images in a lossless format that preserves the layers (like PSD in Photoshop and PSP in Paint Shop Pro), that should save you having to redo pages from scratch.