Nana Li – life of a manga artist

This is an Issuu player, click on it... we double dare you!

Last year we published the simply breathtaking Manga Shakespeare title, Twelfth Night by Nana Li. As with all the titles in our Manga Shakespeare series, each artist is provided with a script from the series editor, Richard Appignanesi, then the visual style, character design and setting for each manga adaptation is very much in the hands of the artist (with assistance from the SelfMadeHero editorial team).

Nana's steampunk-styled adaptation soon attracted attention from the great and the good:

"the text is abridged so things fairly rattle along [giving] Nana Li's perky, vibrant pen something to play with" what The Guardian had to say about Twelfth Night

Richard Brtuon at the Forbidden Planet International blog had this to say about it:

"a great opportunity to approach this wonderful comedy from a different perspective" read more...

Demanding publishers that we are, we suggested that Nana pen a production journal while she drew and this became a five-part feature called 'life of a manga artist' that ran in NEO Magazine in 2009. You can read the whole feature (for the fist time!) on screen via Issuu in the handy player above.

The feature gave a better insight to more people than ever into what it's like to live and work as a mangaka in Britain. If you're considering the glamorous 'life of an artist' then we recommend you read this feature from start to finish. It isn't all author parties and queues of adoring fans wanting your autograph. NEO is full of advice and tips from a huge variety of professional manga and anime artists and we recommend subscribing (especially as it is £35 a year, at the moment).

Nana was particularly brave in baring her soul to her readers in the name "publicity". Not only did she write the regular feature for NEO; she also posted Work in Progress or "WiPs" on our Manga Shakespeare Ning; set up a live webcam on top of her computer for a week as she toiled towards the deadline; gave talks at graphic novel events; signed endless copies at cons; hosted workshops at literary festivals and recorded video tutorials on how to draw characters from Twelfth Night:



Now that's dedication! But that is, as someone once said "what you need".

If you like the look of Twelfth Night, then you might like to buy the printed version from Amazon for £5.06.

If you own an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch you might prefer to buy the digital version for £2.99.