Notes on how to achieve an old manga scan look, from inking to screentones and effects

You can watch this tutorial on youtube (with extra inking tips)

Notes on style

No two art styles look the same and a single design does not define a decade or an era. First study your favorite retro references. Mix and match elements to find a unique style that still evokes the aesthetics you’re looking for.

 

My favorite design choices are:

 

1. Heavy use of screentones

2. Pointy highlights

3. Lined shadow edges

4. Graphic simplification of nose shadow

Inking

This drawing started as a sketch on paper. Then I lined a clean sketch over it, already using the Real G Pen brush. It helps me to decide on my line’s width early on.

 

Then I get to the final lineart.

 

I already lined my shadows and highlights, to make applying screentones easier

Values

If you’re not used to screentones and their values, it is a good start with different values in different layers to get a feeling of the shading you want.

 

Make sure your lineart doesn’t have too many gaps and your bucket tool is set to “refer other layers”

I like to use a marker brush with no pressure sensitivity to close gaps directly on the layer I want to use the Bucket tool.

Screentones

With all our values set up we can use their layers to create selections for our screentones

Right click on your chosen value layer and create a selection from it

When selected, click on the second to last icon on the selection menu to create your screentone layer

Tinker with the settings until you find a satisfying value for your work

Aging with textures

To make my drawing closer to an old scan I’ll apply some effects

Fist merge your visible layers to a new layer. You’ll get a copy of all your work on a single layer

I went to filters and set my new layer to Gaussian Blur

Set it as a small number

 

Set this blurred layer under your work. Lower it's opacity and shift it from it's place just enough to create the illusion of a faulty print or scan

Now to finish our effect we will add a paper texture

Choose your texture, select it and drag it to your workspace

Set its opacity as lower as you would like... and we’re done!!

I hope this tutorial has been useful.

 

If you use this technique on your work feel free to share it with me in the comments! ^-^