Me: Don’t do it don’t do it you’re rusty af and everyone is the tag is so good and they’ll find you rip you apart oh god
Me: Yes, but, the sheer meme power though?

Hi #HowToDrawMangaRedraw. It's me. I'm late to this kinda overwhelming hashtag but while you're here, thread time:

Seeing as this tag kind of exploded this weekend, I figure it was as good a time as ever to actually talk about these books! I’ve been kind of avoiding it for a while but enough of you have found me now that it’s probably time.

Also good lord that is probably the most intimidating basic 3/4 headshot I’ve ever drawn in my life. I'm still internally screaming a bit.

First off, thank you to everyone I’ve seen coming to my defence about how young I was when I made these books, and for all the kind words and stories or where you are now that have flooded my notifications this weekend. I appreciate it more than I can ever hope to really explain.

I’ve been blown away by how much amazing art I’ve seen in this tag and realising the how many people those books helped get started is an overwhelming honour. But anyway, time to talk a little bit about making them. Buckle up, text wall time.

As some of you might already know, I was in high school when I did these. A small sub-publisher approached me because they found the website I’d made myself and my work was accessible for their audience and also not full of tits and violence:

The UK anime scene back the skewed heavily adult compared the the US I think. We didn't really get kid friendly anime much until Pokemon. And me being a baby webdev nerd meant my stuff was up there to find.

I did the blue one while studying for my GCSE exams (16) and the red one while doing my A-Levels (18). It wasn’t until I was older the “it works because it’s rough enough kids can achieve it” really registered, at the time I was just really excited to be asked.

I wrote it and did all the illustrations and then a designer put it together. They didn’t think I’d know how to scan things properly (because I was a child) so everything was traditional, I even had to redraw out every step again for each one (except one big piece in HTDMM).

Incidentally, the blue guy? Not only did I never intend him to be a cover illo, but the designer even flipped the drawing, much to my protest at the time!

(My biggest argh in them is there's a backwards hand somewhere in HTDMM that nobody caught and I will never live down. I have been paranoid as heck about every hand I draw since!)

I also had to fight pretty hard to keep HTDMM as emphatic about “There are lots of ways to do things, here are some options, now go find your own style” as it is. That’s always been important to me. Even as a kid, I only ever really wanted to be a springboard for people.

The books never really had a big release here so I basically saw very little of their effects until much later which made the whole thing very detached and surreal. Being published in like 3 languages before going to uni felt like something happening to some other me.

I didn’t get royalties, but a decent advance (probably?) and some occasional bonuses. The sub-publisher went under eventually and I haven’t made anything on those 2 books in long time aside from ALCS. I have no idea if I got a good deal financially, nor the final sales figures.

Because I was doing this on the young internet, I was lucky in that things were not as vicious as they are now, but unlucky in that nobody knew what they were doing or how to handle themselves in a safe and heathy way. There were costs to that.

It took quite a few years for me to register that “Haha I can take mean comments, someone once made their Deviant Art ID image a pic of my book on fire with the words ‘burn the evil one’, and that takes some beating” was maybe not a super normal thing to just internalise.

And I hadn’t really realised I was barely drawing for myself any more, and was just generally background terrified of the newer harsher internet finding me and ripping me to shreds if I posted.

I did keep going for quite a few years through and did actually make a third book while studying for my MA. That one, "How to make manga characters", was with Harper Collins and got shortlisted for the Society of Authors Educational Writer’s Prize (I lost to Charlie’s War so hey)

(Incidentally, the commissioning editor for that one first got in touch with me on a live journal post of “Anything Can Happen On Halloween” from the Worst Witch so I think the moral of this entire story is my life is ridiculous?)

I soldiered on for quite a few years after this and also got into doing album art and graphic design, and did some really fun projects along the way. But years of bad work life balance meant I eventually crashed real hard in my mid 20s. I still drew for work but rarely for fun.

If you ever find yourself thinking “If I just work hard enough, it’ll stop hurting”, it’s time to check yourself. That plan never works. Take care of yourself. It’s taking me a long time to undo the damage. I’m still not there, even if I have made some progress.

This has gone on a lot so I just wanna close out with some stuff on teaching, which I still care a lot about. First, I’ve never been someone who thinks they can lead a masterclass. I’m most about teaching beginners. Helping someone realise they can do something new is the best!

I kinda don’t think you should learn polish from a book, you get that by doing the work. The books were about sharing a love of art, and love is what gets people to DO the work. Everyone has to start somewhere and a teacher’s job is to give them fuel to get where they’re going.

Also you don’t get good artists without them being rough first. It costs you nothing to scroll past art you don’t like or better, to encourage them. It costs the future a potential cool artist when you crush a beginner. Be kind. We’re all works in progress, forever.

But yeah, 16 year old KT would never believe that she’d managed to touch so many people’s artistic lives, and even 2020 KT would never have believed those people would show up with the kindness and support you have. Thank you so much.