Hello! In this TIP, I'll teach you how to use EFFECTS for MANGA and 2D ANIMATION in Clip Studio PAINT.

 

We'll mainly focus on manga panels, but you'll realize that we can animate some of these effects to use them in our animations.

As you can see below:

Effect for a Manga panel

Effect applied in 2D Animation

That's why I invite you to see this and other effects that we can add to our Mangas, WEBTOON, and even our animations.

They will save us a lot of time!

TUTORIAL: EFFECTS for MANGA and 2D ANIMATION in Clip Studio PAINT

Remember to enable subtitles in your language, you'll surely find it :)

What did you think of the video?

You could see how easy it is to add effects to our Mangas, WEBTOON, and our animations.

Step-by-step Tutorial

Now I invite you to see a summary of the tutorial, you'll surely understand it even better.

Lightning Effect

For this first effect, we're going to use this panel from my Manga, where I need to add tension to the scene, so we'll choose the following effect.

Let's go to the Material window and choose the effect that we can download from Clip Studio PAINT Assets.

We grab it and drag it to the panel. Even if we want to scale it or find a better position, we can do so using the Operation tool.

Achieving the following result. Looks great, doesn't it?

Sweet Effect

Now we're going to choose another effect. This effect is included by default in Clip Studio PAINT, and it's very useful for highlighting romantic or soft scenes.

We select the Material window, choose the effect, and drag it to the panel.

Just like the other effects, with the Operation tool, we can scale or move the effect to achieve the following result.

Focus Lines

Scattered Focus Lines

Now we will select the Figure tool, because I want to add some focus lines that highlight the character.

We select the Figure tool, in the Sub Tool, we select the third option called: Focus Lines. And we choose the first option called: Scattered Focus Lines.

Upon selecting it, we can draw a circle where all the lines will point.

Obtaining the following result

If we don't like the position of the lines, we can move the circle we drew with the Operation tool.

Making the panel look much better :)

Dark Focus Lines (curved)

Now we will select the second option in the Focus Lines sub tool, which is called: Dark Focus Lines (curved)

With this tool, we can draw any shape we want so that the lines focus on the desired area. For this, I will draw a shape similar to the character's head.

The lines are automatically created, achieving a result I love.

The great thing is that we can also move the center of the effect's focus with the Operation tool, and we can also modify the points.

Making the panel look this way.

Looks great. Doesn't it?

Atmosphere Effect

Now we will choose another effect for the panel, and you'll see that it considerably changes what we want to convey in a manga scene.

For this, we'll use the following effect:

We grab it and drag it to the panel

Achieving a result even better than the line effect, but this will depend on what we want to convey in our Manga scene.

WEBTOON

If our project is a WEBTOON, we also have many effects that we can use, and they will save us a lot of time in our workflow.

 

For this, we will work on the same panel, the difference being that it will be a colored panel. To do this, we go to the Material window and select the following effect from Clip Studio PAINT Assets:

We grab it and drag it to the panel.

We can easily scale this background with the Operation tool.

Achieving the following result:

Dark Focus Lines (curved)

Now we will use the same effect we saw before, but this time we will highlight the expression of the girl in my Manga panel.

 

For this, we select the Figure tool, in the Focus Lines Sub Tool, and we select the second option called: Dark Focus Lines (curved)

We draw the shape following the size of the girl's face, which is what I want to highlight in this panel.

And we quickly achieve the following result, I love how it looks! It really looks like a real Manga :)

2D Animation with Manga effects

Now we are going to use this effect to create a 2D Animation. This effect is a typical 90s Anime effect, used to highlight scenes, and it's even used in current animations.

 

For this, we create a New Animation Folder named: Effects.

And inside this New Animation folder, we create a New Layer folder.

Now we go to the timeline and use the option Assign cel to frame.

And we choose drawing 1, which is currently empty.

Now we select the Figure tool, in the Focus Lines Sub Tool, and we select the second option called Dark Focus Lines (Curved)

And we start drawing the curve, guided by the girl's face.

Upon completion, we can even edit the shape, both its points and its size.

In the layer panel, we select drawing 1 and right-click to activate: Duplicate Layer.

In the timeline, we go to frame 3, activate Assign cel to frame, and choose drawing 2.

And with the Operation tool, we slightly move the points of the effect's curve that we drew earlier.

In the layer panel, we select drawing 2, right-click, and activate Duplicate layer.

We select drawing 3.

In this drawing, we can move the points or even the central focus point of the effect.

We select drawing 3, right-click, and activate Duplicate layer.

And we select drawing 4.

In this last drawing, we can move the points of the curve we initially created.

But now we need to adjust the rhythm of the effects animation.

To do this, in the timeline, we will make the effects animation last for 8 frames. We do this by simply taking the animation in the timeline from the right end and positioning it at frame 8.

Now, for the 8-frame effects animation, at the top, we right-click and select copy.

And in the next empty frame, we right-click and select Paste.

We do the same with the following frames to complete the animation's duration.

Achieving this simple but very useful animation.

We can even animate our Mangas without having to go to other software, as the vast majority of Artists or publishers do.

We can do everything in Clip Studio PAINT! :)

 

I hope this TIP has been useful to you and that you manage to give a great touch to your Mangas, WEBTOON, and your Animations.

 

See you in the next TIP!