INTERVIEW – Mr TA, creator of the TVHLAND website

 

TVHLAND is both a community site for manga fans and designers and an e-shop for the material needed for drawing

You can discover tutorials, videos, competitions… Graph’it wanted to ask the website creator, here is his interview.

Mr TA, you are the founer of TVHLAND website, dedicated to manga in all its forms. TVH Land is both a community site and an e-shop. What prompted you to set up this site?

I started working in video games. I was working with a team of talented graphic designers. I could see that they were all working in a different way and that they were willing to share their knowledge. I learned a lot from them. With a handful of friends, TVHLAND began to transmit what we had been taught. It’s a kind of handover.

 

There are alcohol markers on TVHLAND, including the Graph’it Marker range. What can you tell me about the close link between manga and markers?

Alcohol markers are great tools for working fast and well. Manga artists do not have a lot of time, so many of them use alcohol markers like Graph-it to make beautiful illustrations that they very often use on the cover of manga.

 

What are the most commonly used techniques that require the use of markers?

The great thing about alcohol markers is that you can superimpose colours to create new ones. With a few colors, we have a multitude of possibilities. It is necessary to dare to associate colours.  For the more experienced, we can also stretch the colors to obtain gradients or more shades. This technique is called blending because it is very often done with the blender, this alcohol marker that doesn’t contain any colour.  I recently discovered the Mix’it it palette of the Graph’it range which makes blending much easier.

 

France is one of the countries that consumes the most manga, do you think it influences young people to go into drawing?

Yes, very much so, when you read an interesting manga, you really want to draw pictures of your favorite characters. Some manga fans go further by creating their own story. Seeing dreams passed on from one generation to another is magical. On TVHLAND, in a way, we accompany them until they fly to other horizons.

 

Most of the mangas published are in black and white, what is the major use of markers? Coverage, entertainment?

Mangakas use markers a lot to make superb illustrations. Some of them are used as hedges. And then in the weeklies, the most popular mangas are given a few pages in colour. Markers are also used in animation at the beginning of the project to create concept art: they are illustrations made very quickly to convince investors to produce the cartoon. And there are also in video games. The creation of game characters often begins on paper. They are quickly coloured to quickly obtain the approval of the game producer. The choice of marker is motivated by the quality of the rendering and the speed of application. Video games necessarily use computers a lot and it is surprising to see them using traditional tools anyway.

 

Are you « mangaka » yourself?

Mangaka! I’d like to, but no. I’m just a professional manga artist.  Being a French Mangaka is a very young concept in France. Some French people have tried with more or less success. It’s very brave because it’s not easy to convince the public that they are legitimate. At TVHLAND, we are happy to help them.  Will I ever get involved in a manga project? Maybe, but that’s not the way it is decided. I have ideas, but they’re not yet ripe. In the meantime, I accompany the young designers and enrich myself with the great professionals I meet.

 

Your site has many drawing lessons, what can you tell us about them?

At the time, there were sites that offered tutorials with text and images. We opted for video lessons because it is a quick and effective way to show how to draw. The difficulty of the lessons is to find the right balance. This should not be too difficult or too simple.  We have chosen to offer these videos for free to our visitors because we trust them.  This is important because TVHLAND exists thanks to its audience. They buy from us because we know the products and we offer services that go beyond the contributions of an online store: contests, reports and exclusive content.

 

To conclude, a word to the users of Graph’it?

Although the Graph’it tool seems simple to use, it offers a multitude of possibilities. After years of using alcohol markers, I continue to discover new possibilities. The boundaries of an artist are not his tools but his mind.  Working with tools like graph-it is a lot of fun. And you can see it in the drawings!