I had such a hard time judging my Cover This Challenge that I decided to give myself a more difficult task: judging a manga challenge.

Here's the details:

You are to create an original short story - roughly about 30 pages long (though I will accept longer or shorter if the story demands it). It should contain only your original characters in an original story created by you. Please do not do a story with your OC and a Naruto or Inu-Yasha character. I want to see how you create and bring to life your own vision. Pretend that your story might get published - and you don't want Kishimoto-san to sue you, or similar....(however, if you are very clever, you could re-name Miroku "Jimmi" and make him a wandering sage instead of a monk, if you get my drift....)

You may use any medium you wish - pens, pencil, coloured pencil, manga studio, photoshop - I will not be judging on how slick the finished product looks (reason being, if you were submitting to a publisher, polishing can be done later). What I will be looking for is the following:

Art. I want to see how consistant your style is. I'm not looking for perfect artwork, but I will be looking to see if characters are in proportion and how they relate to other characters in the panel.

Story-telling. The story needs to grab me and keep me reading until the end. The short story is more challenging because you have very little time to introduce your characters and the plot. A good story can overcome so-so art.

Character presentation - how is your character introduced? Are they easy to warm up to, or will they be the kind of person you're rooting for by the end of the story? How well you know your character is also important. You don't need to tell me they chew on the left side of their mouth, but you should know that fact.

Panel layout - panels can speed up or slow down a story, depending on what that part of your story demands.

Plot - is the plot consistant? Engaging? Or am I still confused by page 10 (not good, not good. A publisher who is confused by page 10 will send you a thank you but no thank you note). Remember, you only have a limited amount of pages. Spending the frist ten pages on getting your character ready for school is going to cause a reader to put your story down and a publisher to send you the thank you but no thank you note again.

As for genre - select any genre you want. It can be shonen, shojo, comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, martial arts, fiction...even non-fiction, if you wanted to do a biography of a famous person (think Vagabond).

Prizes will be medals, of course...but who knows what else a great short story could bring.

I will allow the longest possible time for this. If you want to enter but find you won't be finished by the deadline, please PM me and let me know. If I get a lot of the same PMs, I'll extend the deadline. I will also be creating a world for this, so you can post questions or check for updates there.

Good luck and have fun!! And make it so I have a hard time selecting three winners out of all the majorly cool entries.