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Post by CJ on Aug 29, 2013 9:52:35 GMT -5
I’ve had this idea for a while. Of course, let me clarify that this is an idea, not something I’m going to implement without a lot of thought, consideration and obvious input and approval from you guys.
I want to create a website like OPHQ with the idea of a text based version of thatguywiththeglasses.com. I always wanted to review manga and manga products but I didn’t really think too much about it until I was inspired by insights on the chatroom and Ky’s Anime reviews. Basically, each of us could write articles and columns on topics we’re interested in the manga industry.
The focus is not to generate more members for this forum or to gain anything financially. Now that I’ve graduated college, I want to do a little more with the spare time I have. Hanging with friends, writing posts for the RP and playing video games is great and all but I don’t want to live my life without trying to do something productive.
Of course, I would need a lot of help with this. I would purchase the domain name and service for the first year, with hopes that advertising revenue could cover future costs. But I would need some assistance with website formatting (at least in the initial stages), articles, content and updating. The problem is that I can’t pay you guys. I’ll already be spending a lot of money on the website and on another project a friend and I are working on. It's essentially going to be free lancing.
(If we did gain any minor sort of revenue, I would perhaps suggest we spend it toward products and materials toward reviews or improving the website. If we gained significant revenue, we could talk later perhaps about distributing.)
Now, this part is what everyone should be reading, no matter if you want to participate or not. I’ve always maintained that my Administrator status here was mainly that of a Figure Head position. However, my goal is to make it so that this forum is tied directly to this website. In essence, the website would become the foundation for this forum, just as OPHQ was. I will not go forward with this project until I get agreement for most of our current members. I don’t like to think that I own this forum, just that Hito and I run it together. So please, let me know if you have any suggestions or input. I’d love to see what you guys can come up with.
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Post by Hitotsumami on Aug 29, 2013 10:26:35 GMT -5
I think that's a really neat and awesome idea!
If you remember, I was the one who wrote most of the articles back in OPHQ. All the manga guides, character bios; I even uploaded a lot of images for a gallery. So I would love to participate in this as well.
What I think I would be most suited for it manga reviews, and I could cover the big 3, Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach, and maybe one or two other popular shonen manga. Of course, I could do other general information as well, such as updating the 'home page' with links to the new manga chapters or whatever.
So yeah, I've done this before, ad I would love to do it again in a new way! I'm totally on board. I also agree that any revenue we gain should totally go towards the website to make it better.
One very important thing we should consider is the website design. I don't know if anyone here, or maybe you CJ, has some html knowledge? I have some limited knowledge from my work on designing the forum, but not much more than that. I think one thing that really attracts people to websites and attracts people to our articles would be a really well designed and and a good lay out.
Anyway, I hope others will jump on this idea as well. It sounds like it has really good potential.
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Post by Kyubey on Aug 29, 2013 12:21:28 GMT -5
I'd love to make contributions, in any way I possibly could. This really sounds like an idea worth working towards.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Aug 29, 2013 12:53:06 GMT -5
I'd suggest there be some media supplement as well. Even if it's only audio, I think it would be more attractive than strictly text-based. Best-case scenario I think, that there would be like, a youtube video supplement every so many reviews or chapters, or like once a week/month or something. It's just that much more accessible to people, and adds another element for people to get involved in.
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Post by Hitotsumami on Aug 29, 2013 13:19:38 GMT -5
Alright, some random ideas:
For layouts, we can use a traditional layout, or maybe mimic tgwtg's style. For a traditional layout, we'll have a banner on top. Under that, perhaps a slider with links to the newest chapters, like we have on the forum. Below that, anime and manga news articles. On the left side we can have a bar with a list of article creators, where you can click their name and go to a new page with a list of that person's articles.
As far as articles go, I think it would be interesting to, in addition to having basic chapter reviews, to having specials. Like how tgwtg has a guy who reviews old movies, a guy who reviews comics, so on.
So, for example, perhaps there can be a person who works on VS articles, where two manga/anime go up against each other to see which is the better one. Or, a person who works on old animes/manga, discussing manga that came out pre 1990's. Or someone who specially does seinen. The possibilities, they are endless.
What I'm basically saying is that each creator runs their own little 'show', where they tackle specific subjects. I think that works better than everyone doing random reviews. It makes a person have a specific role. For example, the nostalgia critic wouldn't be that if he did all kinds of movie reviews, along with a few comics here and there. Not covering every subject and being specific is a good thing, I think.
Of course, a person can do a random review every now and then, if they like.
Also, for Shark, I think a video supplement may be really cool. I wouldn't be very good at it, but I'm sure someone who could do some kind of review or rant or chat about something in the manga/anime industry once a month.
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Post by Mise™ on Aug 29, 2013 13:25:36 GMT -5
I can help you with website coding and design and stuff like that, if you want.
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Post by CJ on Aug 29, 2013 14:13:22 GMT -5
This will be the toughest part. We need to somehow get a good layout going before we can do anything. This layout would have to allow us to post articles (or audio and video as Shark cooly suggested) into the website without distorting the format of the site. I really like Hito's layout idea and hope we can use something like that.
As Hito and I discussed, I'd probably be into writing articles about manga literacy and problems within the medium. I'm planning on writing several pieces on sexism in Naruto in particular.
I could see Hito taking over the big three for reviews, One Piece, Naruto and Bleach and me or someone else taking over if it ever needs a break. I could also imagine me writing reviews for Toriko and monthly series like Attack on Titan.
Ky, would you feel weird about sharing some of your Anime reviews? You've got some great stuff in there.
And thanks, Mise~
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Aug 29, 2013 14:14:16 GMT -5
I'm in the process of learning HTML, though I can't make an promises haha
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Post by Xero on Aug 29, 2013 17:22:51 GMT -5
I would love to contribute in any way I can. Don't exactly know how or in what way, but if there is anything. feel free to ask.
Also, if any of you have Nico Robin's email or whatever, she is a web designer. Maybe she can help out.
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Post by Kyubey on Aug 29, 2013 19:17:41 GMT -5
Ky, would you feel weird about sharing some of your Anime reviews? You've got some great stuff in there. Honestly, I'd rather not, or if I did, I'd like to be able to extensively edit and rewrite the reviews to better match the conventional review format. Most of them are written in a crazy informal style, and focused more on my personal reactions than on analyzing the work in any great way. The fact that, in writing the thread, I would only watch a series once before talking about it says a lot by itself. And most of the movie reviews, as well as the LoGH Gaiden bits, would be completely inaccessible to people not already familiar with the source material. While the thread was a lot of fun to write, and I saw a few cool things I might not have given a chance otherwise because of it, I consider it as more practice than anything I would want to actively show to the world. As for what I would write about, if you guys would have me as a reviewer, I'm not sure what my "thing" would be. I have a lot of ideas for potential columns, to the point where I don't even know where I should begin with them all. And either way, I really don't want to commit to one particular idea right away and then get tied down to it, so I'll wait a while before saying "this thing is the thing that I will be writing about." Although, if we're going with Hito's earlier analogy, if we were tgwtg, I wanna be Oancitizen. Audio and video components sound like the best thing ever, and if I could record for either and not have it be crap, I would so be into it. As of right now, I think, there are a handful of distinct directions we could potentially go with when doing this project, and as of right now, I would personally like to focus on churning out some really good articles. If they're good enough, and if they have any appeal to them, they will attract attention.
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Post by Mise™ on Aug 30, 2013 4:17:57 GMT -5
I guess I should add that I have taken classes about web design and coding and have made websites for a company as an intern.
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Post by Hitotsumami on Aug 30, 2013 8:48:23 GMT -5
Mise is our savior.
Also Ky, I think those anime reviews are good, and a little personality isn't a bad thing.
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Post by Shark a' Pult on Aug 30, 2013 14:20:19 GMT -5
As well as manga and anime, at least for video supplements, there could be some consideration towards lets plays. It might take some work at first to figure it all out and how to do it, but those things make a killing on youtube and stuff. And not even in terms of money made or anything, but just amounts of viewers, even crappy small channels get like hundreds and hundreds of people.
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Post by Kyubey on Aug 30, 2013 15:15:46 GMT -5
Personality is one thing, but the purpose of the Ky Watches Anime and Talks About it Here thread and what makes a good review are completely at odds with one another. Then again, this website seems to be in a totally different direction than what I envisioned when I first read this thread anyway, so it might be necessary for me to rethink my part anyway.
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Post by Kyubey on Sept 2, 2013 4:13:05 GMT -5
I hate to double post, but sometimes, one simply must push the limits, as Hito once said.
So I've given this whole thing quite some thought, and I have two suggestions to make, the first one is just a general thing that was bound to be addressed eventually whether I did it here or not, and the second pertains more specifically to the sort of article I would like to write, if given the chance.
So first of all, if it's views we're looking to have a whole lot of, something that could possibly get us a whole lot of that, perhaps even more than videos or anything like that, would be to have a strong social media presence, like on facebook and twitter. Obviously, this is only gonna come up much later down the road, but it might be a good idea to consider it now, as it could potentially be used as a good way to both stir up some attention towards our site, and connect with the audience. (If there's one thing an audience loves, it's being connected with.)
But anyways. Onto the main thing I wanted to talk about. So like I mentioned before, I really really wanted to do something cool to contribute to this website, but I was conflicted about what it was I actually wanted to do. But one of the ideas that constantly came up in my mind was to have a standard news section, for talking about the latest happenings in both the larger anime/manga industry and the fandom. However, the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that, as it currently stands, we don't really have the means to give much more news than what's already available elsewhere. As cool as the prospect of being Anime News Network might be, the fact is, Anime News Network already exists, and their sources and credibility as a news site are a lot better that what we could currently provide. So instead, I had the idea to write a purely editorial column, with a strong focus on the state of the industry today, how it's changed and grown to become what it is right now, where it might be going, and how it could possibly be improved. Considering this is already a topic of interest for me, I would love to have a chance to try this out. Right now what I'm thinking is, I'd write maybe one article a week, that focuses on some current anime-news related thing, and using it as a segue to talk about the general subject matter in greater detail, and give my own thoughts on it. With all the new tidbits of information that are constantly coming out, I highly doubt there would be a shortage of things to talk about. As an addition to this column, I'd also be following the new anime and manga releases, or most of them, anyway, and review those as well. There's this really pervasive opinion I've noticed amongst the anime community, where people seem to think that anime in general is a dying industry, with quality that's been consistently failing. I think that something along the lines of what I'm suggesting could potentially shift that opinion for some people, by putting a spotlight on all the really cool new things that are constantly going on and might have been previously overlooked, or, in some cases, the changes that still have room to be made. I know that this isn't exactly the newest idea in the world, but given that it would mostly be an opinionated series, there's a lot of room for possibilities. For instance, if we manage to get a lot of positive attention, it might be possible to get interviews with well-known and/or important names in the English-speaking industry, like editors, translators, directors, and the such. That last thing would obviously only be possible much later, but I do think we could have the potential to do things like that, if this is successful.
Obviously, this would take a lot of work and research on my part (like, a whole lot), but if it falls in line with what you want on the site, CJ, I'd be more than happy to try my hand at it.
Thoughts, ideas, anybody?
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