Introduction

It's contest time!

This time, we have decided to introduce a brand-new contest for Heaven & Earth - a doujinshi contest! All participants must create a 2 or 3 page doujinshi, containing at least one of the following keywords:

• Flowers
• Beach
• Camping
• Ice Cream
• Spring Clean

It must also be set in spring/summer, AND must contain both Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno.

Well, it wouldn't be a NaruSaku doujinshi contest without them, would it? You don't have to show romance (it doesn't hurt though!), but they must interact with each other in some way.

So, what will you get for your blood, sweat and tears?

The Prize

Just one prize... but what a prize.



Rules

Drawing and writing a doujinshi is a lot of work, so we're giving you a little over a month in which to do it. The final day for submissions is Saturday June 6th 2009! All entries must be in by 11:59pm British Summer Time. World Clock website

The doujinshi must be two or three pages long, and must be your own work. You can use any media (pen/pencil and paper, digital, etc.), as long as they are your own drawings. You are not allowed to use screenshots from the anime or panels from the manga. Anyone submitting work that is not their own will be ejected from the contest and may face disciplinary action.

No explicit sexual or violent scenes. A little citrus is fine, but keep it PG-13.

The maximum image size that can be displayed in the Gallery is 1000 pixels (width) by 1500 pixels (height).


Submit all your entries in the contest category on the Gallery (click to go there)!

Resources

We wouldn't give you such a task without a little help. Here are a few guides and websites to help budding mangaka!

TUTORIALS (highly recommended)

Making Manga - by mayshing
Manga Panelling Tutorial - by mayshing
Panelling, Pacing and Layout I - by lilrivkah
Panelling, Pacing and Layout II - by lilrivkah

Lots more drawing tutorials on DeviantArt!



SCREENTONES AND BRUSHES (if you're going digital)

DeviantArt has lots of screentones.
And lots of manga brushes, too.

FONTS (again, if you want to use computer text instead of writing)

Blambot Fonts - Smiter approved! Many excellent free and pay fonts there.
DaFont - lots of free/shareware fonts!

If you would like to suggest a resource, tutorial, or tips, post here or PM me. Thanks!

Best of luck in this contest. Do your very best!

Hah!

I knew you'd do this one day, Smiter! I'm looking forward to all the entries! Good luck to everybody who enters.

By the way, those prizes look awesome.

Looking forward to seeing all the kicka$$ entries!

Looking forward to some great Doujins. 8D

I wish I could draw decently, I'd enter if I could. Dx

Let's draw stick figures together! 8D

Yes! Sakura can be pink and Naruto can be orange, and then we can make them kiss and go on dates and lub each other! 8D

this sounds great! I only wish my drawing wasn't limited to two dimensions...

Ugh i have great ideas for stories but i can't draw to save my life Oh well.

Sounds interesting. I'll see what I can come up with. Just don't judge me too harshly, please

What I'm really trying to say is give me first place, or THERE WILL BE BLOOD!!!

Use your own blood, dude.

You'll need it to get past us critics. xD

The plushies are so dang cute I wish I could darw really well but at least I cant . At least I can buy them yayz

That's the problem for many of us it seems
I would love to enter too, but I can't draw to save my life

Wow, this looks awesome!

I've just posted a link for it at NarutoForums.com. Has anyone made a post about it at DA?

To everyone, don't worry too much about the art! Story is a very important part of a manga/doujinshi, so if you have a story you want to tell, try it out!

You can use any style you like, even chibi-style is fine if you want to do a parody/comedy/cute doujinshi!

Here's an idea. If you want to go for it but have no confidence in your drawing skills, why not team up with someone who can draw but may not be confident in their own story making abilities? There are two plushies, which means the prize can be shared between two people who work equally hard. One could do the story, editing and dialogue and the other does the art. Just a suggestion off of the top of my head!



I haven't done that, no. Just at LiveJournal's NaruSaku community. I'm also considering sending out a mass PM to alert members who don't always visit regularly, I know there are a few artists amongst them!

Thanks for linking it at NF, Nick.

That's a good idea, Smiter. I have a good story in mind, but I just can't draw.

Yeah, I saw the LJ one. That's another one of my pages that automatically comes up when I open the browser.

You're welcome. I have a Favorites account at DA where I've tried to just fave all of the good NaruSaku fanarts that are around. It has a few watchers so I made a journal entry about the contest there, too. Maybe a few more people will notice it there and at least come to check out the entries, if not make some themselves.

Oh man... I think I've been watching too much dragonball/z because all of a sudden i have an idea of a cross-over naruto/dbz thing again!

I WANT THOSE PLUSHIES!!

Must practice must practice... uh, this could take a while...

Ditto!

I'll give you a hint. Daffodils.

XD

I hope I don't royally eff this up.

*SNARFLE* NOMNOM NARUSAKU COMPETITIONS

also, y'know how I have that baaaaaaaangin' SOS club on dA (and here you lazy bums) right?

Well since we've got about a million and four watchers (not really, more like 10) full of narusaku-y youth and spirit and all that is shiny inside, and as soon as I get the password to the account lolol I'll go ahead and post up a journal entry pimping out this contest too! BD

Can't wait for the word to reach out! Hopefully we'll get a awesomesaucey turn out owaa

I'm tempted to try it out, though I am not interested in the prize (Me and my apathetic brain! Pshaw! Shame on me! ), but I'm sure everyone will definately make some magnificent entries!

Good luck to everyone!

Good luck to all the participants!

I am going to whip this out like nobody's business (i'll keep myself hungry in case i end up eating those words).

Update!

In response to Kodachi Claw's PM question, I have boosted the maximum image size in the Gallery to 1000x1500 (widthxheight) pixels. This is slightly bigger than the manga pages you see on One Manga, and you'll need to click on the image to see the full size!

This should allow you to create nicely sized doujinshi pages for the Gallery.

maybe i missed it in the original post and i may sound stupid, but can one person (me) submit more than one entry for the contest?

Well, I didn't expect anyone to submit more than one doujinshi, but I don't think there is any harm in creating a couple more.

One entry so far from jworks!

Hope to see some more!

What the heck is a 'doujinshi'?

Doujinshi are self-drawn manga, or fan-comics.

I can't exactly draw very well, but I may or may not scrap something together... maybe not. I'm horrible at drawing. Good luck to those that do enter!

Quick 2 question: I've run into a bit of a snag. The doushinji drawings are done, but the paper I drew them on is a tad too big for my scanners at home. Will a simple trip to Kinko's help me? Also, for what I have managed to scan, the drawings in the back of the page show, just a little bit (hey, I just don't like to waste paper!). Anyone have an idea of how to deal with this? Cause while I'm aware it doesn't have to be 100% professional, I do want to make it look as good as I possibly can. Thanks.

Heh, I've run into problems like that all the time. To be honest, there's not much you can do with them physically. How bad is the bleed through? If it isn't too bad, you should be able to edit it with a photo manipulating program (e.g. Photoshop, Gimp, etc. heck, even Paint works, though I wouldn't use that one XD) by clearing out all the black w/ white (make sure you scan it in with Black and White mode if there's no color.). Now, if there's color, your best bet is to go over it with the other color. But at that point, I'd admit defeat and trace the paper.

As for scanning them in, I'm sure you could get it done at Kinkos. I've had the same problem before when scanning in other drawings, so I just have to make a mental note that it doesn't like my paper's size. Just something for the future.

Hope that helped, and can't wait to see what you came up with!

It's not that bad, really. It looks like a faint shadow in the background, and yes, it is in black and white (I know for a fact that if it was color I'd be royally screwed). I've got Photoshop, so could you just list the steps to take in order to not make it look as bad as it appears (I haven't used photoshop before, so I'm new at it).

Good. Well, I'll try, but I don't have Photoshop (too much money for me, I'm a GIMP user for that reason), so I can't tell you what controls to use. BUT I can tell you the basics. Go in there, and pick the white that is in the background. Now, choose a size that isn't too large, but not too small, depending on the smudge lines (you don't want to affect the good line-art). Just carefully wipe over the black, and that's all there is to it. Now, if you have shading, that's when things get complicated. Take the color under it, and use than instead of white. However, this might change the look, but hopefully you don't have that problem. If there's a few gaps in the lines that aren't supposed to be there (sometimes a side-effect of the scanning), go ahead and finish the line this same way, but with black.

That should be everything. Sorry I'm not much help, but again, I don't have that program... Though I wish I did XD.

Uh, what counts as PG-13?!

If I could draw I'd totally draw
but I can't wait till the next NaruSaku contest I hope it's a fic one

Where can we see the drawings that people make?
Or do they get in on a certain date?

So far there's a section in the gallery dedicated to the contest, so check that that out. Probably more art will start piling in by the end of the month so check back then.

I don't even know if I'll have time to make an entry, so it's nice having this much time to submit something.

Deadline is ticking!

Get those entries in, people!

It's now just over a week to go until the deadline! It's a little worrying seeing only one entry in the contest gallery, you know. ;

If you're working hard on an entry, let us know! That way, we can gauge how many entries there will be and, if necessary, I can extend the contest deadline by a week if people are having a lot of difficulty getting things done on time.

Thanks!

Please don't force me to draw something to make up the numbers.

Knowing Smiter, it'd be all Cammy or Chun-Li comics instead of a NaruSaku topic.

Mate, you don't know me that well then. XD

I created H&E. I breathe NaruSaku.

NaruSaku >>>>>>> Cammy or Chun-Li.



Knowing myself, I would have drawn a funny/suggestive/naughty NaruSaku comic. XD

Fair enough, Smiter.

Still, you'd find a universal paradox and include Cammy and Chun-Li in there.

Awww, why not? We'd love to see your work, Smiter!

I'm ALMOST finished! Just working with photoshop to make sure everything is okay. There may a few blemishes here and there, but it shouldn't bother people too much (I hope). I'm also learning a few things the hard way, but if anything positive comes of it it's that I'll do the comic I've been meaning to do the right way.

get it in dude! i want to see it! and at least your learning, even if it is the hard way.

woo!

Yeah!

And now, it's almost like a challenge. We'll have people declining to enter just to see what Smiter-sama comes up with.

I'd still rather have as many people entering as possible, so let's get those entries in people!

DONE!!!

For some reason, I could not get my pages to be 1500X1000 without major distortion, so instead, I submitted them into the closest size possible. However, I noticed that if for some reason you still can't see them very well, it will magnify the image further. But please, if you think I can make any minor improvements on the presentation, let me know.

Also looked at jworks' entry, and I must say, I am very intimidated. I always said I could draw...just not other people's work

I think its important to keep one's style, even when using other people's stuff. so don't be down over it, your awesome for evening doing this.

dude i just went and checked it out...totally sweet. I really like how yours actually had some deep meaning to it. i thoroughly enjoyed reading it.