Thread: Just saw the Patreon page. Just have a few questions.

This is more or less directed at Mantis, but I'm throwing it out in a post so people can chime in and generally do that thing that forums do haha.

First things first, I'm glad to see you're out of the hospital seemingly unscathed. Hospitals are scary as shit.

Second, I'd like to thank you for your work with the scans/translations. I looked at the teaser PDF and your stuff is clean man. Like, wow clean. Just to be certain, you are translating these as well? Follow up, WHEN CAN I BUY THEM. SERIOUSLY TAKE MY MONEY.

*erhem*

Does anyone know if they'll be .cbr format, or .pdf only?

Either way, if this gets translated this'll be better than Star Ocean: Blue Sphere finally getting translated.

Hey man. Thanks for the nice words. I've been in a bit of an awkward spot with the Patreon for a short while. You see, two days before the surgery was going to happen it was cancelled. After waiting years it's been quite devastating. But since I put my Patreon on hold and already sent my patrons two e-mails about the surgery it would be awkward to do the same thing if it's rescheduled to later this year.

I've been thinking of a different method to Patreon, but I'm unsure at the moment.

I've been thinking about translating the art books, but it would eat into my budget a bit. With the manga I have three other European versions to work with, but I'd probably hire a translator for pure Japanese.

I'm glad you liked the teaser. I'll complete the full clean in the near future, but at the moment I've returned to the manga translation as well the second website. I show drafts of the manga behind closed doors, so if you're interested in that let me know.

I'll distribute everything in PDF and CBR.

Is there anything we can do to help out with the translated pages? Need a boost in the signal for more translators? Any photoshop work/cleanup?

Thanks for your interest and offer, Wessuri. There are various things that go into this process. There are different difficulty levels in the Photoshop work. On most pages it's pretty easy and just a matter of replacing the text in the bubbles. There's more going into the public release. I'll be changing the SFX in that, whereas SFX is currently being ignored on draft pages. There are also pages that kind of require heavy Photoshop work in the draft and public versions.

This is usually restorative. I've prepared an album that contains a few of the more difficult pages. The first example is SFX which isn't always that difficult. That tends to vary a lot. Maybe these will demonstrate the process somewhat.

Zemekis does have a plan B to continue the manga translations. If that fails I might try to find someone on Fiverr. It isn't cheap but we don't have a lot of options. Ideally I'd like to maintain the translation quality we see from our main translator as he does it as a profession. His plate's often full, unfortunately. I'm guessing you know your way around Photoshop having seen the kind of art you produce. More than difficult, a lot of the manga work is relentlessly tedious and I guess that goes for a lot of restorations in manga scanlations in general.

I think many people are happy with the draft quality as it does the job. As a public release, I want it to be (to the best extent possible with the scans we have) at a similar standard to an official release. The European releases have SFX and I think it looks great.

By the way, there's a BIG release (not the manga or light novel) coming by the end of the week. If you're into Outlaw Star lore you'll love it.

Originally Posted by Wessuri

Is there anything we can do to help out with the translated pages? Need a boost in the signal for more translators? Any photoshop work/cleanup?

I can't speak on Photoshop help since Mantis does that, but as for translators we are all set. I have a plan B and a plan C. I was giving our original translator extra time because we are close friends and his work has been excellent thus far but I think he's too busy to help us much anymore. I have another friend who is a native Japanese guy, he has translated doujins for us in the past. Some of the manga translations are his as well.

I've made no secret on these forums that my wife is Japanese as well. She's not really into manga or video games, but 2 days ago I asked her if she'd be willing to help because things have been going too slow for my liking. So if all else fails, my wife will translate for us. thanks for the offer Wessuri, but as far as translation goes we are okay for now!

ok, good to know! The photoshop work does still look within the realm of what I do, a lot of my work-work involves photo retouching among other things, so if there is ever a call for help on that end, I'd be happy to lend a hand. I know it's a pretty closely guarded project too, so I hope it wasn't too forward to ask haha.

Originally Posted by Wessuri

ok, good to know! The photoshop work does still look within the realm of what I do, a lot of my work-work involves photo retouching among other things, so if there is ever a call for help on that end, I'd be happy to lend a hand. I know it's a pretty closely guarded project too, so I hope it wasn't too forward to ask haha.

Not at all! We don't get offers like that often so it's really nice to see. I'll drop you a line if things get too hectic on my end!

That's how I got my foot in the door too, so we appreciate it. I wouldn't be surprised if a situation arose down the line where some photoshop work would be helpful.

The best way to help at this exact moment is via the Patreon though. That said, i think payments are on a hiatus? I'm on mobile atm, i may come back and edit this later once I check if Mantis doesn't ninja me.

I asked about other options previously and was told they would be waiting on their translator. There are probably a few people I could reach out to that know Japanese versus finding someone random on fiver.

So does this mean we need to wait longer for the European versions or are you going to finish the Japanese version first and release that? You guys have only a few (lol) pages left.

Originally Posted by Zemekis

The best way to help at this exact moment is via the Patreon though. That said, i think payments are on a hiatus? I'm on mobile atm, i may come back and edit this later once I check if Mantis doesn't ninja me.

I should provide some of that history. There was a time when I decided to refund my backers months of pledges. I had trouble with this because of how Patreon's refund system and policies work. So in a couple of cases I refunded them manually via PayPal. It turned out that a lot of people didn't want a refund and were happy to support the projects regardless of the rate of content. I did the refunds because I felt bad that backers weren't getting the content I said was coming.

I did pause the Patreon for probably six months or more afterwards anyway until I felt I was putting out enough content to justify financial support. It was probably soon after you and our translators formed a team that I resumed the Patreon. All things considered we were doing pretty well for content, especially given how practically nobody else has been working on any official Outlaw Star media.

Originally Posted by Kirby81

I asked about other options previously and was told they would be waiting on their translator. There are probably a few people I could reach out to that know Japanese versus finding someone random on fiver.

So, about the translators. We've been working with our main translator because he's a close friend of Zemekis, but he's also a professional in the literal sense. We do have a good level of communication there from the get-go. We pay him because while he does think Outlaw Star has a good story he isn't passionately invested like us, so it's more of a favour that he puts a lot of heart into. But we do have to respect the times he can't work on it and given that he's a pro he gives us a great discount. It's still an expense, hence the Patreon. (And other things, for instance the OSN server.)

Our second translator is native Japanese so he's pretty good at it. He translates sometimes when he visits Zemekis in person. So he's doing this completely free, but I do usually send a little money for him to buy some beers. Recently he's been working on the translation of an Outlaw Star art book/doujinshi called SW. There's loads of great stuff in that book so we decided on going for a full translation of it.

Then like Zemekis said, there's the extra option which is his wife and she probably will help us with where we're at in the manga. This is because the main translator is more focused on translating the El Dorado Covered with Clouds light novel when he gets the time and Zemekis' Japanese friend has worked on SW. So as things stand we're probably doing okay at the moment.

We'd run into the same issues as with Fiverr if we recruited random people. There'd be no prior relationship of some sort between us and unless they have passion for Outlaw Star they might not be very interested to spend many hours free of charge. Fiverr is more of a last-resort backup plan. If you do know people to recommend, that's cool but I think we're okay.

Originally Posted by Kirby81

So does this mean we need to wait longer for the European versions or are you going to finish the Japanese version first and release that? You guys have only a few (lol) pages left.

I was wondering what you're talking about for a while. Maybe it's a misinterpretation of what I said about the European SFX. I was only saying that I think that the SFX (onomatopoeia) on the European manga pages adds to it and that I wanted to replicate that on English pages like I did on the first example in the Imgur album. There's no separate version. I'm creating the SFX myself and we're still working with the Japanese pages.

Edit: I just saw what I said in my first reply to this thread. That's an old post, lol. Yeah, prior to Zemekis finding me in mid-2018 I was working with the European manga as the source material, but since then it's been a complete switch to Japanese. Having seen that post again I can see why it would confuse some people.

We still have a third of the manga left when the extra chapters are counted. That's over 150 remaining if I'm counting it right. Over 150 pages to translate, translations to proofread and edit, a portion of those pages (extra chapters) to scan and dozens of pages to heavily edit with Photoshop. It's not like all of this can be done in a few hours. All the while we're working on the light novel, art books and other projects. Most importantly it isn't a full-time job.