FULL GUIDE ON MAKING A WEBTOON IN CLIP STUDIO PAINT

Hi everyone, welcome back to my post! Still all about comics and webtoons, as always.

Even though in my previous posts I’ve already shared a lot of tips and tricks on making webtoons, this time I’ll be focusing more on how to create a webtoon from start to finish.

If you want a clearer explanation through hands-on practice, just watch the video I linked. The explanation there is more detailed, since in this post I’m summarizing everything to make it easier to read.

A. Webtoon Creation Phase

Before getting into the main topic, let me explain the general phases of creating a webtoon.

If you work in a studio, the process is usually more complex because it involves many people. The phases generally look like this:

1. Pre-Production

This is the phase before actual production begins, where all the planning happens.

It usually covers story scripts, character sheets, and deciding which assets will be used (both backgrounds and decorative elements in Clip Studio Paint), and more. At this stage, Clip Studio doesn’t play a big role yet, since the focus is mostly on discussion and planning.

2. Production

This is the phase where the webtoon is actually created. Here, Clip Studio Paint plays a major role with all of its features. This phase is all about visualizing the written script, starting from turning the script into a storyboard, then converting the storyboard into line art, coloring the line art, and finally finishing it into a readable webtoon.

3. Publishing

Publishing is the process of releasing and promoting the comic you’ve worked so hard on. You can post it on social media or upload it to platforms specifically made for publishing webtoons.

This post will focus mainly on the production and publishing stages, since those are the parts where Clip Studio Paint plays the biggest role.

B. Clip Studio Feature to Help Making Your Webtoon

So, what features does CSP offer to make creating webtoons easier? Once again, if you want a clearer and more complete explanation, just watch the video I linked.

Alright, let’s start from the beginning, starting with setting up the canvas.

1. Page Management

For this part, there’s a feature that differentiates Clip Studio Paint EX from PRO.

Let’s talk with the POV of PRO features first.

The image above shows the size requirements from the official Webtoon website for publishing. It’s best to match these requirements so your images don’t end up damaged, pixelated, stretched, or distorted in any way.

Let’s talk about the recommended dimensions: 800 × 1280 px. This means each image slice you upload to Webtoon should ideally follow this size. That’s why, when creating your canvas, I recommend setting the width to 800 px.

To make the process more efficient, I recommend creating longer sections within a single canvas, whether that’s 5, 10, or even 15 slices. This makes it easier to manage readability when the webtoon is viewed on mobile later on.

If you’re an EX user, you can use page management. When creating a new canvas, simply select the second tab, Webtoon format. Set the width and height, then adjust the page settings as needed.

If you want to add a new page, just right click the page and choose add page or add page(advanced) where you can edit the settings, so it will be different with the previous page.

2. Layer Management

When making a webtoon, dealing with hundreds of layers is completely normal. What’s not normal is surviving hundreds of messy, unorganized layers.

There’s a simple way to keep your layer structure neat without renaming every single layer, by assigning color labels to each layer folder.

As you can see, I assign different color labels to each section of my webtoon folders.

So if I need to find the line art folder, I just look for the yellow-colored one.

Simple, right?

If you prefer renaming your layers, there’s another very useful feature in CSP called Search Layer. To use it, simply go to Window → Search Layer, and the Search Layer tab will appear. You can then type the name of the layer you’re looking for.

3. 3D Model for Storyboard

Next, we move on to the storyboarding phase. A storyboard is the initial sketch used to visualize your webtoon script. To create it, you can make a new folder specifically for the storyboard and start drawing the sketches.

However, there’s a feature in CSP that makes this stage much easier: 3D models. You can use them to create your storyboard simply by adjusting and changing the character poses.

The steps are simple, just open your 3D Asset Library and drag the character model onto the canvas.

Maybe some of you struggle with changing the poses, right? To make things easier, you can simply open Posemaniacs, a website that provides a wide variety of pose references for drawing.

You just need to find a pose you like, select it, and click the Open in CSP button.

That’s it, super simple. Just keep in mind, you’ll need an internet connection for this.

Just like that, your model will instantly change.

4. Converting 3D Model to Lineart

As you may know, in today’s overloaded webtoon industry, not everything is drawn manually anymore, and most creators already make use of 3D features. Let’s take an example by learning how to create a carriage scene commonly seen in historical romance manhwa.

Same as before, you can just drag any 3D model into your canvas.

Adjust the camera angle as you like, you can set the light source too. After that, make this layer to raster layer.

The first option to make it as line art is with extract line feature. All you need to do is only enable the extract line after making it as raster layer, so it will become your line art.

Second option, you can use artistic filter. Just go to filter -> artistic and adjust the setting. Your 3D model will instantly convert into a lineart.

Here is the comparison between two methods. Actually, I prefer using the artistic filter though, cause my line art is thinner.

With this feature, you can speed up your webtoon making process by using any 3D model.

5. Close and Fill Tool for Faster Coloring

Next, we move from the line art phase to the coloring stage. This is a tool you can use to speed up the coloring process of your webtoon.

Download the material I mentioned first, because we’re going to use it. Here’s how it works: prepare the line art you want to color, and make sure it’s clean, no broken lines or gaps.

enable the set as reference layer to your line art. For the close and fill tool setting, also turn on the refer multiple reference layer. After that, all you need to do is just choose a color and circling the area of your line art.

6. Gradient Tool

Let’s see the example first.

As you can see, in the webtoon I made above, there’s a color transition from warm to cool tones. How did I do it? Simply by using the gradient feature and layer modes.

Once again, if you want more detail, just watch some of my video on youtube.

You can just make a new layer and clip it to your coloring layer. Change the mode into multiply/overlay/darken/etc adjust it to your liking. Turn down the opacity a litte if the color is too strong.

After that you can just give more lighting, to make lighter and darker contrast into your panel.

7. Custom Brushes

Next is the use of custom brushes. Clip Studio provides a feature that allows you to create your own custom brushes. In my case, I use it to make custom eyeball stamp brushes for my webtoon characters.

Okay, the first step is to prepare the eyeball variations that you want to turn into a stamp brush.

Select the area of your eyeball. After that, go to edit -> register material -> image.

Rename your eyeball file so it will be easier to find later. Don’t forget to checklist the ‘use for brush tip shape’ and choose the file location.

Duplicate any brush you have. Go to the setting and search the brush tip setting. Go to material tab and click the plus material. After that, search the material you just made, select and ok.

Your new eyeball material stamp done~. Now, you can color you character eyeball with just one click.

8. How to Cut Your Webtoon

FYI, not every webtoon region setting have the same interface. In EN version, webtoon have the feature to upload from CSP, but the ID version doesn’t have that feature.

That’s mean, you need to export and cut your webtoon yourself. But since we’re using CSP it’s so easy cause we have the special export feature.

Open your finished webtoon file. Go to file -> special export -> export webtoon.

Choose your file location first, after that select all pages if you want to export all of your webtoon pages. Checklist the divide vertically by 1280 px, as that’s the dimension in webtoon requirement description.

Finally, you only need to select the file you want to upload in webtoon. Don’t forget to check any exported file!

I just mention some of the full tips here, if you want to know about other tips, check out my video guys~. That’s for today post, see ya~