Humility

I've just finished inking my second comic, and once more I experience humility. Indeed, in the face of all actual manga graphic novels or comics of any sort, including the badly drawn ones, I am nothing. Perhaps my nibs are subpar. No, I think it has more to do with the fact that I am rushing through the inking job to get it done, not taking my time. It also doesn't help that my rough is all sketchy. At the end of the day, I'm left with only the one fact: As I am now, I have less than zero percent chance of going pro.

To Do:
Create a few pages of manga exercising the utmost of my ability to see where my actual limit is.
Raise the limit. Practice practice practice.
Improve speed.
(and the rest. Tones, crosshatching techniques, fix pc to use photoshop & scanner)
Apply tones to isolated drawings first to get a hang of the techniques.
Practice until my fingers melt off and burn.

[Edit: It's just occurred to me that I might one day outgrow manga. Even though my comics are miserably bad, I have most of the basic skills. At this stage of the game I'm good enough to redraw almost any character in any style (given an image to work with) and on less complex styles (not josei or seinen) I can redraw them in other positions. If only I could master the correct folding of clothes and the pen nib, I would have mastered the basics. 

So what I really need to focus on is my background style, and patience. Alot myself more drawing time (ugh...) to make better art. Also, layouts and framing are a big weakness of mine.

So the new list: -Master clothing
-Master pen nib
-Master Layout style
-Master framing
-Master correct placement of dialogue.
-Master scene description panels.
-Master In/Out, Fades and Flashbacks
-Master Inking
-Master Tones and cross hatching
...Solution : Practice!]

[Edit: On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being top tier pro and 0 being total n00b, I would say I'm about level 5. At level 7 I can enter the pro! world, maybe, if my stories are good, if I'm lucky, if, if, if...]