Tip 1: Setting up a Webtoon Page Directory

Tip #1: Clip Studio Paint EX has a neat little ‘page management folder’ where you can create multiple pages in one directory.

You can use it to preview thumbnail sof each page and navigate to any panels you want to work on.

Each page can be varying in size or can be kept consistent throughout.

To create this go to File: New, and select the webtoon strip format and choose your desired dimensions. There are defaults presets that you can use, or you can create your own custom preset.

I highly recommend working on a large canvas since it is always easier to downsize than it is to upsize digital works.

Webtoon’s size limit is 800x1280px per page which is quite small. I would recommend the width to at least be 2000px and the height can be however long you want it to be as it can be changed later on. Resolution should be at least 300. Each platform has its own size limit so remember to keep that in mind!

You can also divide one canvas equally into multiple pages or have multiple pages of the same sized canvas.

Once you’ve selected your settings, a page directory will be made. Clicking on a page opens up a new tab to the selected page.

If you right click in the page directory you can duplicate, delete or add a new page, alongside various other tools and settings.

And with that, you can now start drawing up your webtoon!

Tip 2: Creating Panels and Cutting Frames

Tip #2: You can easily create panels with the Frame Boarder tool located in the tools menu or using the keyboard shortcut ‘U’

In the tools property menu, there is an option to turn on ‘draw boarder’, ‘raster layer’, and ‘fill inside the frame’

[Draw boarder] creates a boarder around the shape you make. Its thickness can be adjusted as well.

[Raster layer] creates a new layer within the masked group.

[Fill inside the frame] creates a fully white background.

 

A masked group with the selected settings will be created in the Layers menu.

Selecting the masked group and holding down ‘CTRL’ allows you to transform your panel shape.

Clicking the yellow arrows expand the panel to the edge.

The top toggle rotates the panel.

Dragging the corner of the panel allows you to change shape.

The polyline or pen frame also help create unique shapes.

Cut frame boarder allows you to divide the panels and create new layer mask groups for each divide.

The divider’s thickness is adjusted in tools property. You can change the vertical and horizontal gaps.

‘Space of frame boarder in preferences’ creates a default thickness which is set in File> Preferences> Layer/Frame> Frame Boarder

Tip 3: 3D Tools and CSP Assets

Tip #3: Clip Studio Paint has a handy 3D tool to help create dynamic poses and backgrounds. These can be accessed in materials.

Clip Studio Paint has various other standard models, poses, backgrounds available. Even more assets can be found in Clip Studio Paint Assets.

Custom made pens, textures, tools, effects, models, photos made by other creators are available for download as well.

Some assets can be purchased with Clip Studio Paint’s coin system. You can also publish your own materials here.

All of these can be used for commercial or non-commercial use so be sure to explore these materials!

Tip 4: Speech Bubbles and Text

Tip #4: Speech bubbles can be made with the Balloons tool. Three different circular balloons are available.

A ‘tail’ can be made alongside the balloon. There’s the standard speech, thought and custom drawn tails that you can create.

Multiple bubbles are made in the same layer. If you want to avoid this, simply click out of the layer when creating a new bubble.

When creating texts they will be applied to the bubble layer. This means when the bubble moves, so will the text and vise versa.

 

Tip 5: Colouring

There will be 4 Sections to this:

1.) Colour sets is a useful tool to save a palette of colours for your character. This is accessed in Windows> Colour set

 

A new colour set can be created in the colour set setting. You can upload presets of your own or from CSP assets.

Once a new colour set is created, you can replace, delete, add your current colour to the set by right-clicking an empty box.

You can create as many colour sets as you want. This is super useful for colouring reoccuring characters in your webtoon.

2.) Using the Fill/Bucket Tool

You can fill the base colour with the bucket tool (G) and create a new layer under the lineart layer to make the base.

Make sure to set your paint bucket setting to ‘Refer to other Layers’ or ‘Enclose and fill’

[Refer only to editing layers] refers to the current selected layer

[Refer to other layers] refers to all the visible layers

[Enclose and fill] uses a lasso tool to circle around areas and fill any closed lineart it can find

 

3.) Blending Modes

Blending mode is useful for shadows, lighting and touching up colours.

Main ones that are useful for webtoons are the Multiply, Add and Overlay modes.

Shadows can be created by setting the layer as a multiply mode and clipping it to the base colour. I often use a dark purple as a default shadow.

Play around with the shadow colour to see which ‘mood’ fits the scene. Same with lighting colours.

Setting the layer as an ‘Add’ layer helps create highlights for your scene. Know where you light source is coming from.

Setting the layer as an ‘Overlay’ layer blends the colours applied on the above layer.

4.) Correction Layers

There are multiple [Correction Layers] you can use. In this we will only be using the [Gradient Map] effect.

Head to Layers> New Correction Layers (J)> Gradient Map

You can create your own or use the default colour maps. Shadows are mapped on the left, highlights are on the right of the spectrum.

You can add one or more colours that help blend and create interesting effects to the scene.

You can make new sets, duplicate, delete, replace, reverse, rename or upload existing colour gradients.

Be sure to play around with this setting! I often use this and leave it at a 10-20% opacity for illustrations. Mess around with the opacity settings once you've selected a gradient.

 

Tip 6: Creating Custom Brushes/Materials

Tip #6: You can create your own materials that can help speed up your sketching and lineart process!

You can save sketching time by creating reoccuring face shapes, expressions, hands etc by making them into a custom brush.

For example, I can reuse this head in the drawing above multiple times throughout the sketching process.

In Edit> Register Material (J) you can save a layer as a material.

Name your new material. Make sure the ‘Use for brush tip shape’ is ticked.

Create a new folder in materials to save those drawings into and hit ok.

In your pen tool, duplicate an existing pen, rename it and hit the wrench icon to edit the brush.

Go to Brush Tip> Materials and search for your material to make it into a brush. Have the thickness at 100. Hit OK

With this, you can increase or decrease brush size and transform it to benefit your workflow however you want!

Making a webtoon takes a lot of time so creating multiple assets like this helps speed things up.

Take your time to make these assets as good as you can, especially if they’re used for lineart purposes.

While this does help speed things up, it’s also important to remember that the more you draw, the faster you’ll get naturally!

Tip 7: Storyboard and Compositing

Tip #7: Storyboarding your webtoon is an important blueprint to map out how your webtoon will visually flow.

Webtoon is often read top to bottom, left to right. Your panel and dialogue should be arranged in the same fashion.

This process can be as messy or detailed as you want as long as you/your team can understand it.

Below are 6 examples:

Fig 1:

A general rule of thumb is to keep the characters on the same side that they are established in.

It’s important to know where each character is positioned so it doesn’t feel like they’ve suddenly teleported. Unless... they did...

Eg: A is always on the left and B on the right. This helps the interactions flow better and makes it easier to read for the audience.

Fig 2:

Another advice is to not feel constricted by the panels. Make characters feel larger than life by having them pop out from the box!

How characters are framed in a panel can visually show what type of person they are, and their relationship with others.

Be creative and intentional with how you frame characters within and outside of the panel.

Fig 3:

Webtoons are usually read on the phone in a scrolling down format so use that to your advantage! Draw side ways! Long vertical shots! Continuous long shots! Multiple Panels!

 

Fig 4:

You can easily create suspenseful scenes by simply having the viewers scroll down. Horror webtoons are a great example of this.

Close up panels can highlight certain emotions, and duplicated shots can slow the pacing or put emphasis on the action shown

Fig 5:

Vice versa, having less panels can make scenes fast paced.

This is useful for creating impactful action scenes or high intensity situations (such as competitive scenes, car chase scenes etc)

You can instantly change the pacing of your story with how you arrange your panels so be sure to know what kind of mood you want!

Fig 6:

Perspective also helps elevate emotions, whether it is for dramatic, comedic or calm moments.

It also just helps makes mundane scenes, like characters talking to each other, more interesting to look at.

Art in webtoon is just as important as story so have fun using perspective to make your shots more dynamic!

Tip 8: Previewing/ Companion Mode

Tip #8: You can preview how your webtoon will look in a specific dimension by going to View> On-screen area (webtoon) (5)

The width and height dimension can be changed in View> On screen area setting (6)

If you want an even more accurate preview, you can connect your webtoon to your smartphone with a QR code. This is possible with the Companion Mode on the CSP app. Make sure both your app and software are up to date for this to work.

The CSP app requires a paid monthly subscription but you can use up to one hour for F R E E every day.

Even more fortunately Companion Mode is an unlimited use feature.

Tap on Menu and head to Companion Mode. Have the QR code ready to scan on your main device.

And voilà! Now you can view EVERY SINGLE STRIP in your webtoon page directory!

Tip 9: Exporting and Publishing your Webtoon

Tip #9: Exporting your webtoon once you’re finished is very simple with CSP EX! Head to File> Export webtoon.

From here, you have a variety of settings to play with to see what best fits your needs. Make a new folder to save your webtoons to.

You can scale, choose the amount of pages to export, and choose the height and width to cut up each page equally.

The ‘File export setting’ is especially useful. Here is a demonstration of what each of the settings do:

Exporting ‘Pages serparately’ exports each pages as they are.

Exporting as ‘One continuous page’ exports all pages into one png/jpeg.

Exporting as ‘Divide vertically’ cuts up the pages into your inputted vertical dimension.

Now that you have your pages ready and exported you can head to the publishing site to submit your works!

You can also use CSP’s ‘Clip Studio Share’ feature to publish your work directly from your clip files or exported pngs/jpegs. It helps you format your work into a two-page spread or a webtoon format.

You can now also directly publish your work from CSP onto sites like Webtoon or Amazon Kindle etc.

Be sure to check this out to see which of these benefit you the most! Each section has instructions to help you upload your work.

After thoughts

And with that you now have 9 useful tips packaged in one video that will help you get started with drawing your own webtoon!

These tips cover mainly the basics of each tool. If you want a more in depth info on each of them I’ve provided useful links in my youtube description!

Clip Studio Tips is a whole website dedicated to tips and tutorials on multiples subjects, from illustrations and concept art, to animations.

Be sure to also check out my webtoon ‘Valiant Seven’ to see what your webtoon can end up looking like! Its got Action! Fights! Magic! and Demons!

Webtoons is definitely a lot of work to do but it is a super unique way of storytelling that can be very creatively fullfilling.

I hope this video/article has equipped you with useful tools and tips. Now, go out there and draw up your very own webtoon!