Making a Webtoon from Start to Finish: My Complete Workflow
Hello everyone, I’m dogdog5500 and I’m a webtoon artist and the creator of the webtoon Death to Divine Blood <3!
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how I create a full webtoon episode using Clip Studio Paint, from start to finish. Webtoons take a long time to make, so I rely on CSP tools and small shortcuts to make the process faster and more organized. If you’re a beginner, don’t worry, I’ll explain everything step-by-step!!!!
STEP 1: Drafting your episode
When I first make my episodes, I always start by drafting my episode by using a script, setting up the canvas size, using frames and adding dialogue.
A. Have a Simple Script or Outline
Before touching CSP, write a quick script or at least have a bullet list of some general ideas of your episode. You don’t need a perfect script, just enough so you know what to draw.
Before I would make my episodes without a clear script in mind, and this caused me to waste a lot of time because later on I would discover that I’m missing a panel/have an unnecessary panel or that the story flow is not right. I know this might seem time consuming, and as someone who hates writing I usually dread this step but I promise!!! It makes all the difference especially when it comes to speeding up your webtoon making process.
Some things that I usually take into consideration when writing my episodes are:
1. The purpose of this episode: What am I trying to convey in this episode is it to characterize, worldbuilding, plot driven, etc. By the end of every episode, try to make it so that the reader learns something new, either about the character, about the world, or about the plot.
2. What is going on: I usually struggle with this step because it’s difficult to always have something going on while juggling the purpose of the episode, but what I mean by this is to always have something happen every episode. It doesn't have to be a big thing, or some dramatic event, its just that episode should start somewhere and end somewhere else, even in a small way.
For example, in one of my episodes of my webtoon, nothing major happens but I wanted to focus on characterizing my MC while developing the story lore and the plot (aaaa its alot but bare with me)
So my character starts by complaining about the rigid aristocracy and wealth inequality in his country >>> then he interacts with a few people >> then he shares a story that drops worldbuilding lore >> and finally he is spotted by the ML who happens to be a prince and is awed at his audacity.
Now this might make no sense at all, but the purpose of doing this was to combine step 1, PURPOSE with step 2, WHATS GOING ON. Lore is dropped, my MC’s political views are characterized, and the ML is introduced. The episode progressed, there is a flow from one narrative point to the other (or at least that’s what I intended idk if the readers got that hahahahah TToTT).
TIP: Whenever possible, try to end on a small cliffhanger or an intriguing moment, so that the readers feel motivated to read the next episode. In my case the episode ended with a new character introduction.
3. Motion: You don’t have to have a lot of things going on but always try to have a mix of dialogue and action, sometimes an episode will just be characters standing and yapping and readers (myself included) don’t like that, other times an episode will be just yapping and readers (by readers I mean me) get lost as to what on earth is going on. So try to keep it in mind when scripting your episodes.
B. Setting Up Your Canvas
Ok, now enough with the writing yappery, let’s start the actual webtoon. The first thing you literally do is set up your canvas size. I usually do 800 x 30,000 px with a resolution of 600.
Why this size? — 800 px width is the maximum width for webtoon episodes (this differs per platform, idk what tapas, global comix, namicomi, etc. is so check that).
30,000 px height usually gives me enough space for a full episode, you can always change this later in the canvas settings by going: edit >> Change canvas size or edit >> canvas properties
TIP: If you prefer to work with larger canvases for cleaner lines, etc., choose 1600px, 3200px, etc. just keep the episode width ratio in mind.
TIP2: Your height can literally be whatever, CSP can slice the episode for you when you export it later, so don’t worry about height limits.
C. Making Your Frame Layout
Now we start shaping the episode visually. Now sometimes people first make a general sketch layout of what they want, but I’m lazy so I skip that step and go straight into making the frames.
Using the Frame Border Tool
I always use the Frame Border tool to create my frames. The great thing about this tool is that it automatically creates a folder for you for each frame.
Additionally, it adds a masking layer to prevent you from drawing outside the frame, which helps with keeping things clean.
TIP: The purple hue can be removed by right clicking the Frame folder and deselecting ‘show selecting’
TIP2: Dont worry about perfect heights and lengths, the frames can always be adjusted at any time by selecting the object tool and readjusting it.
TIP3: You can adjust the frame thickness or line color in the tool properties, clip studio also offers different panel shapes if you prefer that.
Spacing between Panels
Try to keep the spacing between panels in mind, sometimes with webtoons the panels are either too crammed together or so far apart that your finger hurts from scrolling. So to improve the readers experience, I use the grid tool (View >> Grid) and keep 5 squares of spacing between my panels.
IMPORTANT TIP: You can adjust the grid size by going to view >> grid/ruler bar settings, I have mine set at gap 100. The 5square rule applies to a gap of 100, if your gap differs then your 5 squares might be larger or smaller than mine.
D. Adding Dialogue First
Usually, I first place all the dialogues before I draw the characters, the reason I do this is because it helps me plan where characters should look, who is talking, what emotions they should express, how big each character should be in their panel, etc. But the most important reason I do it is because whatever area that has the speech bubble is an area I don’t have to draw.
Speech Bubbles
To create a speech bubble, use the ellipse balloon tool and place bubbles roughly where you think they’ll go, I usually have mine at the top left/right. Don’t stress too much about the placement or size, because you can always move and change these later.
TIP: Similar to the frames, you can adjust the lineart and color of these too in the tool properties. If my character is shouting I use a more aggressive lineart, if a character is thinking in their head I invert the colors so that the lineart is white and the bg is black. But you can adjust them to your liking.
TIP2: You can also change the shapes, clip studio has different speech bubble tools that you can use.
Text
Use the text tool, and place a text box in your bubble (or outside if its narration or sfx)\
Something to keep in mind is to not have your speech bubbles be too wordy unless its for a deliberate reason (e.g my character is yapping here). If your character is saying a lot of important things, try to break up the speech bubbles, instead of one big one have 2 or three and connect them. Personally, I try to have no more than 2 sentences per bubble.
TIP: CSP has many fonts to choose from, but you can also import your own. I use Anime Ace.
TIP2: If there are certain fonts that you use specifically for your webtoon, create Font Lists to help organize them. I use different fonts for regular speech shouting, narration, fantasy/genre-specific text.
Balloon tails and connections
I add these near the end of the drawing stage using the Balloon Pen, because character positions often change later.
STEP 2: Blocking poses with 3D Models
When it comes to illustrating the panels, instead of having sketches, I jump straight into using 3D models, which is great for beginners who struggle with anatomy or perspective (me).
Why 3D Models Help: 3D models are great, I love them. I hope whoever added this feature to clipstudio lives a happy, healthy, and fruitful life, I love you actually. Clipstudio has a bunch of different 3D models that you can use, such as objects and characters. The reason I skip the entire sketch process is because with 3D models, I can help visualize all my scenes and experiment before committing to the final drawing.
You can drag different characters, objects, and rotate and pose them quickly either by doing it yourself or using a premade pose. You can also play around with the camera angles until you find one that you like the most.
The best part is that unlike sketches, these are always adjustable, in the next step I usually add the background so for now I just use them to play around with my scenes and have a general idea of what's gonna be in each scene.
TIP: From the asset store you can download 3D clothing that you can put onto your character, props, and my custom 3D character if you want your character to be ripped (shameless self promo)
STEP 3: Making the Backgrounds
I always create the backgrounds BEFORE finalizing the character art, because the environment affects the lighting, mood, character placement, color schemes and panel composition
Background tools in CSP
The asset store has a bunch of tools you can use to create backgrounds, such as 3d buildings/rooms, LT conversion for line art backgrounds, background brushes, panorama images, material assets (e.g trees), gradient tools, etc.
I wont be going over all of them in this tutorial because that would just take way too long, so instead, lets make a background together!
STUDY: Lets make a background together!
In my panel, my character is in a field, so lets make that field together.
I first started by adding some grass/hey in an orangey-yellow color using a grass brush. I also added some 3d mountains in the background. For both the mountain and the grass I added a yellowish orange gradient using the ‘add glow’ blending mode to create lighting.
then I added a sky image material. On top of that image material using the overlay blending mode I also added a lens flare image material. Finally I added another ‘add glow’ yellow gradient to the bottom of the sky
Finally I added some prisim and halo’s using a brush and the ‘overlay’ and ‘softlight’ blending modes.
Ok then what?
After I make my backgrounds, I usually go back to the previous step with the 3D models and readjust my models if needed to make sure that they match the perspective of the environment.
I also readjust the speech bubbles if I need to. After this stage, the layout of the panel should feel mostly locked in.
STEP 4: Drawing the Final Art
So now that our backgrounds and poses are done, it is time to draw the actual illustrations. When drawing the final art, first I make sure to organize my workspace, then I create my line art, and finally my colors.
A. Organize your layers!!!
When you’re making a webtoon, you usually end up having a bunch of layers and it can get very overwhelming. There have been numerous times where I’ve lost something, and even if I use the object tool I still cant find it so I end up having to go through a bunch of layers, turning them on and off until finally I find it. This is why I always first organize my layers.
TIP: You can use the object tool and select whatever you’re looking for to find it sometimes (but if you have a low opacity layer on top of that object then usually that is highlighted instead)
When we made our frames using the frame tool, it automatically created folders which is great. But inside those folders, I organize things like this:
TIP: There are auto-actions available in the asset store that do this automatically, but personally I just set them up myself
C. Lineart
For lineart, just do what you normally do. Personally, I use a soft watercolor brush in size 3-4pxl. I adjust the line thickness anytime I want to add depth or emphasis.
TIP: I use the layer color feature to change the 3dmodel color to blue so that I can trace it easily
TIP2: You can use vector layers to help adjust the line art, it is generally better to do these too but I’m not sure how to use them to be honest haha
C. Colors
So in my color folder, I always have one layer that’s the base color layer, this is so that I can clip the actual color layers onto it later so that I never paint outside the line art.
TIP: Remember to always clip these layers onto your base color layer!!
TIP: Use this Auto Fill tool to quickly create a clean base color layer, and then clean up small errors with the Eraser if needed.
Other than the base color, I split my colors into the following categories: skin, hair, clothes, accessories.
Then I add lighting and shadows where needed. If you struggle with lighting I have some other tips on rim lights and night lights available that you can see. But in general, try to take the background into consideration. In my panel the lighting comes from the window on the left side, so the light will be strongest there.
TIP: I use blending layer modes to add lighting and shadows, especially multiply/difference (shadows), add glow/ glow dodge (highlights), and overlay (for saturation)
TIP 2: I also add gradients to add directional lighting, sunlighting moodshading, etc. Gradients help unify the whole panel with the background lighting.
STEP 5: Special Effects
Special effects are great for giving your panels the umph that it needs. Idk how to better explain that but you’ll see. In general, these add depth, motion, and drama.
Effects I Use
There are a bunch of SFX that you can use to make your panels more nicer, and going over all of them will take a lot of time TToTT, but some of the main effects that I use are blur filters, brushes, and correction layers.
FILTERS: Blur, fisheye, etc.
The filters tool in clip studio offers a bunch of different ways to distort your illustration, causing some pretty nice effects. The ones that I usually use are Gaussian Blur, and Motion Blur but there are many others that you can explore and play around with!
I use the blur tool to focus my audiences attention on something, or to create depth. In the example before the main character is in focus and the rest of the ‘extra’ characters are blurred. Because of this, the readers attention goes straight to the main character.
I use the motion blur just to show action, when a character suddenly moves, is running, fighting, etc.
TIP: How to use motion and gausian blur
BRUSHES!!!
Using different types of brushes are a great way to add special effects to your webtoon, in the asset store there are a bunch of different sfx. brushes, nature brushes, texture brushes, etc. that you can use to add cool effects.
Correction layers
You can use correction layers to add a number of different effects to your panels. I usually use the color balance and hue/saturation correction. You can use these two to change the color scheme, I often use this if I want to make sure that my illustration color scheme matches that reflected by the environment.
STEP 6: Final Checks & Export
Ok so we are almost done, now the art and everything is done in this step I just check everything one last time.
Preview on Phone Feature
CSP has a Connect to Smartphone feature, you can instantly preview your episode on your real phone. This is important because webtoons are designed for vertical scrolling, and most readers read on their phone so you can use this as a tool to check if your panel spacing is right, if your text is too small, if there’s something you forgot to color/add/do, etc.
NOTE: You need to have the Clip Studio App on your phone to do this
Webtoon Exporting/ Splitting
For those like me who have very long canvases, you can use the special export feature to slice your episodes so that they fit webtoons requirements (or Tapas, namicomi, etc.).
Those who use very large canvas can also use this feature to resize everything.
Then upload everything to your platform of choice!!
THE END
Now we are done yesssss wooooo!!! I hope this tutorial was helpful, if there is anything that I missed or glossed over please feel free to let me know and ill add it!!!
If you liked the work here please consider checking out my webtoon its called Death to Divine Blood (its a fantasy BL if you’re into that).
Thank you for reading live laugh love xoxo
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