Manga Character Design – Creating Stories Readers Love by Ziki Masaya

Learn to make readers like your characters from page one, then keep them reading with solid three-act structure, honest dialogue, and staging that actually lands. You will finish a fairy-tale-based short manga while picking up a repeatable workflow for SNS posting.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Design likable characters using clear rules and controlled gaps
• Write convincing actions and dialogue that create emotional investment
• Build plots with three-act structure and cut what does not serve the climax
• Draw page-one hooks, conflict episodes, and endings with good aftertaste
• Use staging, wind effects, and flashbacks to sell character emotion
• Ink in CLIP STUDIO PAINT with analog-style pen settings and strong eyes and hair
• Revise names like a pro and publish consistently on SNS

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic drawing ability, interest in characters and short-form storytelling
• Tools: CLIP STUDIO PAINT, drawing tablet
• Hardware: PC or tablet capable of running CLIP STUDIO PAINT

📝 Description

This is not theory-only manga talk. Ziki walks you through his actual process: lock the climax first, pick only the episodes that lead there, and cut the rest. You will see how he builds a plot, turns it into a name (storyboard), revises it, and then inks it. Short sentences, clear examples, lots of redoing. That redoing part is the point.

Character work comes first. You will learn what makes a reader say “I like this person” in the opening pages — clear wants, relatable flaws, and a bit of gap / contrast that surprises without breaking believability. Then you get the tricky part: behavior and lines that feel earned. He shows how to tie what a character says to what they have lived through, so it does not sound like the author talking.

For craft, expect very hands-on stuff: page-one composition that sells the hook, panel pacing that avoids boredom in Act 2, wind and flashback staging for emotional turns, and dialogue trims that keep pages readable. The inking section covers CLIP STUDIO PAINT pen settings for an analog feel, how to add weight if you struggle with it, and why he puts extra work into eyes and hair for expression.

Last block is pure survival skills for now: how to post on SNS, what to decide before you start, what topics get response, how often to update, and what to do after something pops off. No hype, just what worked for him while building an audience from scratch.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Artists who can draw but get told their characters feel flat or hard to empathize with
• Beginners to intermediate manga makers who want to finish a short piece and post it on SNS with confidence

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Ziki Masaya is a manga artist known for warm, character-driven stories told with careful attention to inner feelings. After debuting in Weekly Shonen Sunday and winning a Shogakukan Newcomer Award honorable mention, he shifted to personal serialization on SNS starting in 2019.

Since then he has built an audience of over 300,000 followers on X (Twitter), self-serialized hits like Ordinary Romance and I Attended an Offline Meetup for the First Time at 53, and now serializes The Promise of a Cool Girl and 12cm on GANMA!. He teaches the same name-first workflow he uses daily, focused on making fiction feel lived-in.

🏁 Final Result

• A finished fairy-tale-motif short manga — from character sheet and plot to revised name and inked manuscript — ready to post on SNS and add to your portfolio.

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.