Manga Jiman 2014 (Part 1): Stacey's Crush

Greetings everyone! Today, I'll be showing you my latest project that I'm working on other than my web-comic. This is post will be about the comic that I'll be entering for this year's Manga Jiman Competition. It is held by the Japanese Embassy in London. This year's theme is "Once in a lifetime meeting" or "Once in a life-time encounter". In Japanese it is "一期一会" .  On the day I found out about this year's theme I got started on working on the story. Surprisingly, I wrote two stories based on this theme and hopefully if I have time to complete them in comic form I might enter them for the competition. 

The first comic is about a girl in her late twenties called Stacey and her ordeals during her job. The story is based on something that I went through sometime last year during the month of July. I have been hoping to write this story since last year. Some part of it is real and the rest is is fiction. When I began the initial sketches of Stacey, I thought of what she could wear in the comic as well as her hairstyle. The chosen hairstyle is based on the 80's musician Bette Midler. I really liked her hair style in this video and I thought I'd pay hommage to her by using it. :):

This next page is of Stacey's facial expressions.:

The next character designs are based on her friend Leanne. I decided to go for the fouth character sketch because. I yearned for something simple. The clothes that she is wearing will be what she and Stacey will be wear in the comic:

Here are the facial expressions of Leanne. The middle facial expresssion was the one I found very appealing:

The final character to this story is of Stacey's Crush. Unfortunatley he doesn't have a name. I chose to leave him anonymous. This is because I felt that only this is necessary since the comic will be only way of how he would be visualised. These are the sketches of how he is visualised. For hairstyles depicted in this drawing I looked at current hairstyles for men of this year.:

For the facial expressions, I decided to make him a older. So far it look pretty good. I'm quite impressed with the chibi character on the bottom right.:

Currently, I've finished the comic in pencil and in ink. I will be working on adding screen-tones from today and the rest of the week. There will be another post about the second Manga Jiman entry that I'll be entering too. For anyone who is living in the UK, you can also enter this competition too. Have a look at the website by clicking here. Give it a go! Thank you for visiting my blog and please leave a comment. :)