Minnie: Hello everyone! This is Minnie, the Dictator of HSA! It’s been a looong time since I’ve typed a short post entry like this but I believe this one is necessary for both the other members of my blog as well as our loyal readers. First of all, thank you so much for taking time to read this entry. You guys are amazing. I love you all~

Let’s start off with the bad news so that we can be more at ease with the good news. The bad news is that two of our bloggers will be leaving HSA. Sad right? We’re like one huge family so we’re always sad whenever someone leaves. First of all, Oni will be leaving indefinitely. Good luck with school Oni! Second of all, our loli Kaitlyn will be leaving forever due to circumstances I cannot  reveal here. Thank you so much Kaitlyn for bringing so much joy and cuteness into our lives. *bows*

Another bad news is that a lot of our bloggers will remain inactive for the rest of the summer season. I won’t reveal names but it’s pretty obvious who they are. However, once the fall season starts, they will all come crawling back. Believe me. There’s a lot of pretty awesome anime this upcoming season, including Fairy Tail above.

Speaking of the fall season, there’s actually a handful of guarantees from our members. Personally, I’m looking forward to Winter Sonata and Kimi no Todoke the most but that’s just me. As soon as we have our hands on a really updated Fall Season schedule, we’ll have who will be posting what post out! Please look forward to that!

The last good news is that HSA will be concentrating a lot more on doramas and mangas from now on relatively to before. Actually, we’ll be having more posts on stuff other than episodic blogging, such as Miken‘s brilliant post on scanlations. ^_^ Look forward to those in the future as well!

That’s all for now~ Minnie’s done rambling! ^^

P.S. What do you think our next theme should be? Think of large cast of characters please. XD Maybe Fairy Tail? =3

Miken: Since I’ve been so late recently…I’ve decided to detail the activity that killing my schedule other than the whole procrastination thing and Tales of Hearts *points to the above art of the gracious Lady Richia*. Also, it’s nice to add some posts that aren’t on new episodes, right?

Let’s start with the definition — Scanlations are those things you find on OneManga/Mangafox or uploaded to Mediafire…and then you go bitch about the link not working and they get uploaded to MegaUpload. Or, if the scanlator is lucky, the group has its own server to dish out the downloads. Anyways, they’re the fan-translated form of the many manga series out there with translations entered in the place of the Japanese text on the art.

Disclaimer: I am most definitely probably not 100% right on the process. There are obviously multiple ways and orders to reach the same conclusion. Please also remember that this is a basic rundown of the process and not a full-on tutorial — go to Mangahelpers for that. I’m sure other bloggers out there who know the insides and outsides of this process probably know more than me too. XD;;

I also know that PNG is not the only format used in scanlations and that JPG is popular too.

Scanning

We start with the ever important step that gives the end product the name of “scanlation”. The scanner buys his/her own book and scans it. However, it’s not that simple — this is the step that defines how the end product appears. If the scanner does something here to lessen the quality of the images, then the other processes may be affected. A couple general points are:

1 – The Quality of the Scans: If the scanner scans and resizes them to something like a 600xWhatever size image, the text will be hard to read later on. In addition, for the cleaner to be able to properly redraw and join pages, the scans will usually have to be larger than the actual end-product image size. One of my acquaintances has possibly the best scans I’ve ever seen with the largest image size I’ve ever seen too…even though the file size is atrocious.

2 - The Quality of the Original Material: Ever wonder why the weekly manga scanlations are more likely to look like absolute crap compared to series scanned from tankouban or a higher-end magazine? The problem lies directly in the paper that the art is printed on. Weekly magazines often have the art printed on low quality (and sometimes colored) newsprint-level paper or something like that.

3 – Did the scanner debind?: I know what you’re thinking — why would you purposefully kill your own precious manga in order to scan it? Well, there’s a pesky thing called a gutter shadow that I’ll explain later on that make the debinding step here important. Sure, debinding isn’t necessary, but to prevent said gutter shadows and icky blurs on the image, this step makes the cleaner’s life a thousand times easier.

4 – Is the scanner using a piece of junk?: On top of all of that, there’s also the question of what kind of scanner you’re using. For the most part, all of them can get the job done, but in terms of image size and quality, a nicer one always works better.

No real picture I can think of…so here’s some pretty fanart? — I give Ric 3 guesses as to who this is.

Translating

Then, we tackle the other half of the word “scanlation“. Quite simply, the head of the group or whoever has the reigns over the project hands over the scans (hopefully resized to a more acceptable file size) and gives a nice rundown on how the honorifics, certain terms and the template for the translation should be handled. A short process of proofreading here may also be needed, but is not always implemented. Depending on the quality of the translator’s English skills, the skipping of the proofreading process can become apparent.

*Note: Not all translators translate alike — some are more prone to taking liberties to make things sound “natural” while others like to go with by-the-book translations.
*Note#2: Translations for speed-releases are usually done first by a translator unaffiliated with a group working on the manga and posted for free use for any group [usually on Mangahelpers]

Cleaning

At approximately the same time as the translation is being worked on, the editor (title applicable is he/she cleans and typesets) or cleaner will clean up the scans for use in the scanlation. This step gets increasingly difficult for weekly/monthly publications in magazines.

For the most part, it’s leveling, cleaning up leftover specks of dust, and getting rid of the the text in the bubbles, but there are certain processes that usually get on cleaner’s nerves depending on what they have to tackle

Redrawing
It can range from anything with text overlaying it, and depending on the art that needs to be redrawn, this can take a helluva long time. For the most part, the cleaner uses the pen tool, a selection tool of his/her choice and the clone stamp tool to get it to look like the art was never even covered by text at all. If it’s something simple like part of the trunk of a tree, it’s bearable, but hair and hands are a big personal no-no.

Two-page Spreads
This is basically redrawing taken to a larger scale — and depending on the publication, the spread may also be missing art in addition to the gap already there. The cleaner has to guesstimate what the missing art is and where to get it to join together. The redrawing can be simple or just simply godawful depending on what’s missing. If it’s a bunch of lines detailing action, then the redrawing can be handled relatively simply…but if it’s a character beating up another? Ugh… You can also tell that a number of speed groups don’t even attempt to join the pages since they can take quite some time. I think the most I’ve spent so far on a 2-page spread is 4-5 hours.

Gutter Shadows
The other bane of my existence. Not only is it hard to completely get rid of, but it’s usually accompanied by a blur to a corner/side of the page and the lines may also curve around the shadow. Other than the unfortunate mix of complications, though, this is also just redrawing.

Typesetting
Once everything else is all said and done, the editor continues his/her job or the cleaner hands over the work to the typesetter. For the most part, the typesetter copy-pastes the text from the translation into text boxes placed neatly over text bubbles and boxes. There is usually a preferred choice of fonts per group or project…because no one really likes to read Arial or Times New Roman when other fonts could help get the mood of the words across much better.

Some groups may also choose to also translate SFX. This calls for a ton of redrawing in the cleaning step…but I digress. Here, that means the typesetter must use more fonts and place them creatively to give the general sense of action given by the original SFX.

Quality Checking (QC)
This is a mostly optional process — since pretty much all speed groups skip this step in order to release the chapter faster than their competition. The QCer can be anyone from anywhere in the above process or a completely different person pulled in to check the work. He/She will scan through all the pages, checking the quality of the redrawing, text placement, any wording problems that are still there, improperly cleaned areas, etc…

Release
Afterwards, the images are all bunched together nicely in a RAR or ZIP file along with a credits page, since the group obviously wants readers to know who did the work and return to the site for further releases. Then, after waiting for the file to load onto the free hosts and/or the group’s private FTP server they can spread it throughout the world!!!!

……PROFIT!!!
Well, not really, since scanlations are supposed to be for free.

Well…back to procrastinating~<3

[All fanart used is from Side-A]

Minnie: I know I haven’t been blogging Bakuman a lot lately. When was the last time I blogged Bakuman again? I have no idea. I am not going to make excuses about why I haven’t been blogging it but I’m probably not going to consistently blog Bakuman like I do with my anime. The reason is not because I don’t like it (I really love this manga), but the real reason is I want to spend most of my time on anime blogging and opinionated posts instead. This chapter though is too good to pass up so I have to blog it. Go Bakuman!

(more…)

The Hey, Say, Anime! team are proud to present two new writers who are brave enough to join us. Katt or Ion will be blogging Vampire Knight Guilty to replace Minnie/Saime team and Soul Eater from now on. Katt may blog other animes once she has decided on them. Jory or Mieu (and Pamela as an inside joke) will be blogging manga chapters from now on. Jory has informed the team of two mangas thus far: Bamboo Blade and Eyeshield 21. Her first entry however will be on the NANA movies. The team will be very happy if she will provide us other movie reviews in the future.  Now, a couple of us want to write manga updates ourselves. Thanks for the inspiration Jory. Sad news though, as depicted in the picture above, Saime or Jade might not be able to review until his Finals are over. Junior year is tough and we wish him luck.

Ah, let’s talk about the new forum. The Hey, Say, Anime forum has been up for around four days now with over 300 posts already. This is a good sign since we only have five official members at the forums. Hopefully, the other five members of the team will register there soon and join in the fun. Of course, there will be a category dedicated to this blog just in case there are any questions in regard to anything. We will be happy to have any of our readers sign up there as well. The membership is free! I hope.

Last but not least, the new options. Because Minnie has decided on titling her episode entries from now on, a couple of the other writers have asked questions about it. The answer is it is up to you. If you want to write a title for your episode review, please do so. If not, it is not mandatory. Minnie and Garrick have decided to go pro-title. Please make a decision soon everyone and stay consistent with the choice. Another option we like to talk about is the new colors! So far, Minnie has claimed pink, Garrick blue, Ric green, Angel purple and Katt red. Before all the good colors are taken (no one wants yellow right?), please also make a decision in regards to that by commenting in this entry. Remember, black is a nice font color while white is not. Haha. Have fun everyone and thank you for reading!

                   -Party Members of Hey, Say, Anime!