How to go about making a manga?

If you struggle with backgrounds and such you should really read or watch Bakuman because it's about making manga and they explain a lot of useful things there such as the whole process of drawing and editing and how do people get published.

For drawing manga I recommend program Manga Studio which is really good but if you want to draw only by hand you should find some shop with manga pens and inks. I'm not sure how to get published if you don't live in Japan though.

It's good to use other famous mangas for reference. As for layout and panels, it's mostly experience. I've been reading manga forever and this helps, I can just think "Oh! This kind of panel/background should work here!" For that, I'd suggest to continue reading manga, not just for fun, but studying how the mangakas use their panel placing and backgrounds to convey certain emotions, etc.

:( Getting published in America or other countries out of Japan is hard. From what I know, you need to send a manuscript or take one to a meeting with a manga magazine/book publisher like Viz or Shojo Beat. If they accept you, you can get serialized in a monthly magazine or something like that.

Finishing a manga is all about keeping track of your deadlines. Usually monthly magazines are... 30~40 pages a month. There are usually around 4~6 chapters in a book, so to get a book out, I'd say.. half a year, and thats IF you're serialized in a monthly magazine. It'll take a long time. For example, sophiechan she does a page every 2 days, and she's just finished her manga. It's been quite a while since she started (well, she's a student, it's understandable).

Programs.. You should try out lots of trials and see what you like best :)

Supplies. If you're going to illustrate traditionally, you'll need inking pens or nib pens. You'll need manuscript paper, and the right media. You'll need basics like watercolors and such, but I would recommend copic markers on the long run. They're expensive, but they're really worth it, loads of famous manga artists use them! :) Good luck!

I have read up about this not that long ago :) and I found out how to start out.

First you should draw your manga panels and drawings on full peaces of A4 paper, scan them in then digital draw them on Photoshop or gimp.

Maybe look at tutorials of youtube for help of the property's of Photoshop/Gimp or other related program's, use sites or manga's to look at other people art as references . The other this you should do is decide o how you are going to create the digital art, as in Computer Mouse,Laptop Pad or Pen/Graphics Tablet.

Hope this helps :]

Gimp is a good start. It's like photoshop with the basics. It's great to start off a manga and it's FREE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgjDPHUsCFQ