Info on Mr. Miura

Woraug

A credit to dementia
Does anyone know where IO can find some info on Miura? I decided to do a report on him and I need like date of birth, life info, stuff on his work. Stuff I'll need to give a room full of idiots an idea of who he is.
 

ZKK

Sentient Entropy.
I've posted this over at Arctic Nightfall once, so I hope you don't mind me just rehashing and updating it a little... actually I'm quiet glad for the opportunity to run this little spiel past the experts here at SkullKnight.net just to make sure I've got my facts reasonably straight. Besides, I can't really call myself a Berserk fan without being Hagued and explicitly corrected over here at SkullKnight.net at least a few times now can I? Ha.

Now aside from the what’s actually written up on SkullKnight.net, I had a bit of trouble finding anything about him... in English at least. There’s a whole host of pages dedicated to him, and documenting his life in languages ranging from Italian, German to of course Japanese - just not much English. Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. Anyway, I grabbed some of the information from the sites I found and ran them through an online translator. As you'd expect, this made quite a mess of things, so I kinda combined the translations, reworded them and embellished a bit where I had to for the sake of making it understandable - not necessarily proper English, just readable English.

But as I said, I had to embellish a little bit, the gist of it is probably, hopefully still reasonably accurate; just don't take it as gospel. Hopefully or should I say definitely, someone will correct any mistakes here and maybe even elaborate on certain aspects... sorry, I hope its still some help as it is.


Kentarou Miura

miura01.jpg

Miura (right) with his Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize.
June 2002


Kentarou Miura was born in Chiba, Japan on the 11th of July 1966.

In 1976, in primary school and being only ten years of age, Miura has already began work on a manga. This first work titled "Miuranger" was said to be made for his class mates, and appeared in some of the school’s publications and books. As time progressed, "Miuranger" ended up becoming around 40 volumes. A year later, Miura was working on his next work entitled "Ken e No Michi" or "The Way Of The Sword" - his first work drawn using indian ink. By 1979 and in middle school, Miura had began using rasters for his work, and had oriented himself to use professional drawing methods.

In 1982 he enrolled in an artistic curriculum in high school, where together with his friends and class mates they had their work published in school booklets, as well as having his first dojinshi published in a fan produced magazine.

Busy times for Mr. Miura in 1985. Miura applied for, and was accepted into an art course at the Niho Daigaku University. Two more works are started this year also, “Futanabi” and “Noa” – which may have been the work he showed to gain entry to the University in the first place. “Futanabi” and “Noa” where also submitted to the Shonen magazine, the magazine awarding Miura a prize for the best new author for “Futanabi”, and they actually published “Noa” in their magazine towards the end of that year. However the publications were short lived; Miura had a difference of opinion with one of, or the editor, and no further work was published. This apparently starts some hard times for Mr. Miura.

With 1988 came the first appearance of his “Berserk”. The 48 page manga - which we know today as the “Berserk Prototype” - wins Miura a prize from the Comi Manga School and things start to look up.


miura02.jpg
miura03.jpg

Miura working away at Berserk - volume 14, episode 1.

Having finished his course, receiving a doctorate, in 1989 sees yet another work, entitle “Ohroh” or “The Wolf King” which is based on a script written by Yoshiyuki “Buronson” Okamura, creator of "Hokuto no Ken". “Ohroh” is published in the monthly Japanese Animal House magazine, in issues 5 and 7 for that year. The 10th issue of Animal House that year saw the first ever, and only publication for that year of Miura's solo work “Berserk”. The year ending with “Ohroh” being released as a stand alone manga volume.

From the 2nd to the 6th issues of Animal House in 1990, a follow up to “Ohroh” is published. Entitled “Ohrohden” or “The Legend of the Wolf King”, it too is based on a script by Okamura. “Ohrohden” receives a stand alone volume release that same year, but more importantly the first volume of what we know today as “Berserk” was released, though it only enjoyed limited success. It isn’t until a whole year later, with the release of the story arc entitled “The Golden Age” did “Berserk” find a degree of popularity and success.

Yet another joint effort between Miura and Okamura in the 1992 work “Japan”, appearing in issues 1 through to 8 of Animal House for that year, again with stand alone manga volumes following later in the year. The year ends with “Berserk”, currently only being released in volumes, again being taken up, but this time by the Japanese magazine Young Animal where it has enjoyed serialization ever since. That year, Miura decides to dedicate himself solely to working on “Berserk”.

1997 saw the release of various art books and supplements by Miura based on “Berserk” as well as Miura overseeing the production of a 25 episode animated series based on his “Berserk” to be aired on Nihon TV in Japan. Since then in more recent times, the "Berserk" manga has made its way to 26 volumes, and is still going strong and with no end in sight, as well as having picked up a cultural award, second place supposedly, for Miura in 2002. The series has also spawned a whole host of merchandise, both official and fan made, ranging from statues, actions figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game.

Both the manga and the anime have had success outside Japan, with both already available throughout Europe having been translated into various other languages from its original Japanese. America has just been privy to the release of the anime resulting in a push for more to be created, and possibly indirectly bringing about an official English release of the manga, the first two volumes available for purchase in the States as of now.

And that’s not mentioning all his dedicated fans, and the communities that have built up around his "Berserk".

I should thank the good people at the Berserk Chronicles, hope they don't mind me badging some of their images, and borrowing a little bit of their information - credit where credits due. I see they've been gracious enough to start up and English version of their great site since too for people like me who aren't lucky enough to be able to read Italian. ;D
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
Wow. That kicks ass. Thank you for going to such trouble! I'd been curious to know more about him but I'm not so good about sifting through mushy babelfished info pages.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Excellent work. I havent heard most of this information before. Do you mind if I innclude this in the new Berserk Enclyclopedia? I will of course, give credit to you and your source for the information.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
This is quite awesome, indeed. But is there any word on a special lady? A Mrs. Miura? Possible prostitution busts? ;D

-Griffith
 
Walter said:
Excellent work. I havent heard most of this information before. Do you mind if I innclude this in the new Berserk Enclyclopedia? I will of course, give credit to you and your source for the information.

As ZKK said he got most of his info from http://www.berserkchronicles.com/englishome.htm the best guy to ask for permission is Roberto999 his the moderator on that site.
 

roberto999

The Black Chick of Darkness
Well I am only a moderator there ( in wait to be banned soon or later for sponsorizing a english section of the forum and rebellious attitude ;D).

You better ask to Enzus( the lord and the master of the land,) this is the e-mail adress :
webmaster@berserkchronicles.com <webmaster@berserkchronicles.com>
 

ZKK

Sentient Entropy.
Exactly ZODDGUTS.

However, the Berserk Chronicles website was not the sole source of the information and while it was quite some time ago that I originally compiled this, I do remember there being a German language site, as well as a couple of other Italian language sites - all of which who's content was very, very simular aside from a odd little piece of information, or a sentence here and there. However, in my defence, the Berserk Chronicles had no English version of their site back when I originally did this.

So Walter, there isn't any reason to credit me at all, and I'll chase up the addresses for those other sites I used so you can credit them along with the Berserk Chronicles. Besides, I noticed there are still a few tenses out of place in that information, and as it was started out as machine translations back then, I would really appreciate someone just checking through it... I'm not a hundred percent sure if its all correct.

I'm quite sure you could probably find more in-depth information about him, ha, maybe even along the lines of what Griffith is after, on Japanese sites. I just find it a little hard to search for and through Japanese language sites, not knowing a shred of the language and more importantly its characters. Perhaps one of the resident talented linguists could have a look around for us?

Roberto999, give my regards to Enzus and Co. over there for me could you? ;D
 
ZKK said:
By 1979 and in middle school, Miura had began using rasters for his work, and had oriented himself to use professional drawing methods.

I'm a bit in the dark as to what "using rasters" means. I don't know shit about computers and digitizing graphics, but is this a technique that applies the different gradients onto the black and white? I always wondered how comic artists added all the tiny dot patterns, it makes it look more polished and I'd like to know how it's done and if that is indeed what is meant by rasters.

Thanks in advance.
 
NTSC-J said:
I'm a bit in the dark as to what "using rasters" means. I don't know shit about computers and digitizing graphics, but is this a technique that applies the different gradients onto the black and white? I always wondered how comic artists added all the tiny dot patterns, it makes it look more polished and I'd like to know how it's done and if that is indeed what is meant by rasters.

Thanks in advance.
Yeah, I tried looking for a clear explanation/example of what a raster is or how one uses it, and i gots nothins.
i couldn't find any connection to graphic illustration that didn't involve modern computer technology. it seems to deal with television and the cathode ray or SOMEthing.
it's been around for a while (the late 1800's, maybe??) and the term has been adopted today for the pixelation or something something.
BY the tiny dot patterns I assumed you meant the Benday Dots, which is a hell of a lot easier for my mind to immediately grasp at this moment.

So, in short, I'm sure it means something and i've only made this post to share in your utter confusion. :???: :???: :???:
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Well, I can't tell you how it's literally incorporated while doing a comic, but I know a raster is a pattern reproduced en masse that artists can overlay on black and white drawings to give the effect of "texture" without having to make 1000s of tiny dots.
 
Walter said:
Well, I can't tell you how it's literally incorporated while doing a comic, but I know a raster is a pattern reproduced en masse that artists can overlay on black and white drawings to give the effect of "texture" without having to make 1000s of tiny dots.

And this is the Benday dots? I'm sure the techniques on how to apply it have moved to computers nowadays, but if anyone here knows how it's done I would much appreciate it. I draw my own comics and have always wanted to add those textures and gradients.
 
The Benday Dots have more to do with color and shading.
It works in a very similar fashion to the Pointilism/Divisionism invented by Seurat. Tiny dots of varying color are placed closed together and when viewed from a "distance" they appear to be a different color entirely.
Does that make sense?

I think the raster (as described by Wally) is just something that gives the artist an easier way of applying a set texture to his image.
 
I think "raster" simply refers to Screentones

A traditional screentone sheet consists of a flexible transparent backing, the printed texture, and a wax adhesive layer. The sheet is applied to the paper, adhesive down, and rubbed with a stylus on the backing side. The backing is then peeled off, leaving the ink adhered to the paper where pressure was applied.

You can see some of it in Berserk, for example some of the shading and also Casca's skin, if I'm not mistaken.
 

Vaxillus

The one and only severed head
I think Chung nailed it.  I know they sell these sheets at places like Kinokuniya Bookstores.  They just look like transparent overhead sheets with patterns on them.  They can be a bit pricey if you buy a lot, so some people just do it on the computer.  There's a program designed for this, but I forget what it's called.

edit: could be wrong, but I think I also heard that screentones are a bit easier to reproduce and print than ink or pencil shading, hence most manga artists use them.
 
Score, thank you guys. I'll pick some up this weekend and do some experimenting, glad to hear it's so easy. I don't like to work on computers for my art, so the ability to do it manually is right up my street.

Re: benday dots, they finally do ring a bell. Roy Lichtenstein and his pop art I remember from art class, don't care for his work myself, but I do remember the pink/yellow/blue-only printing technique of older comics.
 

Raziel

"Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens."
I've bought and used screen tones before, and yes, they're typically what most manga artists use to give texture to their drawings.  Not to mention it's a helluva lot easier than doing everything by hand, although getting down the cutting and pasting process can be a bit tricky.

I can't remember the name of the exact place where I bought all of my screen tones (I'll post it here if I remember later on), but a couple of sites you might want to check out are: Comictones or Animenation.
 
NTSC-J said:
Score, thank you guys. I'll pick some up this weekend and do some experimenting, glad to hear it's so easy. I don't like to work on computers for my art, so the ability to do it manually is right up my street.

Glad I could be of some help  :serpico:.
I've never used those miyself, but I remember reading somewhere that when using them, you'll have to make sure the surface you're applying them to is clean. Otherwise, it will fall of.
Would be nice to see some of your work in Creation Station, if you're planning to do something. Other than that, have fun experimenting with it!
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Just some pictures of Miura and Inoue at the 2002 Osamu Tezuka Cultural Awards, where Inoue won the Grand Prix :miura: (That's Miura on the left, of course).
TezukaAwardMiuraInoue2.jpg

Miura's mom on the left?

TezukaAwardMiuraInoue1.jpg

Is that... milk Miura's drinking...?

Credit goes to Berserk Chronicles for the images.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Walter said:
Inoue won the Grand Prix :miura:

In fact it's just called "Grand Prize," and Miura got the "Award for Excellence." He's taller than Inoue too, it says everything. :badbone:
 
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