Webtoon

How to Make Historical Webtoon

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How To Make Historical Webtoon

Hello guys, in this post we’ll once again talk about the process of making a webtoon. But this time the topic is more specific to a genre that has been trending lately. We’re going to discuss the process of creating a historical webtoon. What makes this genre different is actually the amount of decoration and accessories used in the making process.

A. Video Tutorial

If you want to learn and watch my process in making it, you can watch the video below.

B. Webtoon Structural Process

First, let’s talk about the structural process of making a webtoon. The first step is finishing the story, then creating the character designs. After that, you build the 3D backgrounds for the world, followed by making the storyboard, doing the line art, coloring, finishing, and finally publishing.

However, this time I’ll only focus on tips that make the process of creating historical webtoons different from other genres. The focus is on how to draw clothing with lots of decorations and accessories quickly.

The webtoons you read that feature highly detailed outfits and backgrounds are usually not drawn completely by hand. Instead, creators often use template brushes available as assets in Clip Studio Paint.

That’s why, if you want to work in the webtoon industry, Clip Studio Paint skills are usually listed as a requirement.

C. Storyboard

The first step is preparing a canvas that already has the storyboard layout. This storyboard is a rough sketch of your comic, containing the placement of panels, characters, poses, expressions, even plans for text balloons and dialogue.

I’m starting from the storyboard stage because I assume you’ve already prepared a story for your webtoon and only need to focus on executing the artwork

D. Line Art

For the line art stage, you can gather several clothing references that match the era and setting of the story you’re creating.

1. Draw the Line art without Decoration

For the full-body character in this first panel, I used references from 18th-century footman uniforms. If you look at the references, you’ll notice there are a lot of decorative details that would normally take a long time to draw, such as embroidery patterns and frills around the collar and wrists.

The tip here is to ignore all those small details at first. That means frills, embroidery, buttons, and decorative cords. Just focus on drawing the main shape of the clothing first.

2. Preparing the Assets

Next, we’ll move on to the stage of adding decorative elements that require line art. First, we need to prepare by downloading the brush assets we’ll use. You can go to the Clip Studio Asset Library and search for “decoration” to find these brushes. You’ll see many recommendations for decorative brushes there.

Find the brush assets that you like and want to use to decorate your webtoon character's clothes.

Download the brush and wait until the download finished. After that, go back to your clip studio paint tab.

Open your material tab in Clip Studio Paint. If you're having trouble finding it, go to Window > Material > Material: Download. Then, find the Download tab to find the previously downloaded material. Once you've found the brush, drag it to your Brush tab. You'll have a new brush ready to use.

3. How to Draw Decoration

Once you have the brush assets to add decorations and accessories to your webtoon, the rest is just a matter of using them. You can use the brushes as usual. Just click.

To keep the clothing decorations from looking monotonous, try to use more than one decorative brush. For example, the footman outfit I made this time has two types of embroidery patterns along the edges of the clothing, as well as another pattern on the vest. I also used a brush to create the buttons so they stay consistent and can be drawn more quickly.

However, remember not to add too many decorations to the point where the outfit looks overly crowded and uncomfortable to look at. Royal-era clothing was indeed rich in decoration to show social status, but the decorations should still be placed thoughtfully and in the right proportion.

Not only that, you can also use the frills brush to decorate your character's shirt which uses a ruffled or frilled shirt. Men usually wore a ruffled shirt as their inner garment before putting on the vest and coat. To create consistent wave patterns, you can simply use this brush.

Frills on men’s shirts are usually located around the neckline and the wrist area. You can simply make one stroke to create the frills quickly. After that, do some adjustments to the line art so it blends well with the line art you drew earlier.

E. Coloring

Regency-era women’s clothing usually features decorations like ribbons or embroidery rather than heavy structural details. Because of that, we’ll move on to the coloring stage first, since the decorations for the female character’s outfit will be added during this phase.

1. Base Color

For the first coloring stage, we’ll focus on applying the base colors first. Fill in every part with its base color according to your chosen color palette. In this stage, you’ll add base colors to the skin, eyes and mouth, clothing, and hair.

2. Giving Clothing Pattern

Next, we move on to the stage of decorating the clothing with patterns. The brush I’m using here also comes from the Clip Studio Paint asset library.

Adding patterns to the clothing is done during the coloring phase, because the decoration is applied directly on top of the clothing color. Create a new layer and set it as a clipping layer to the female character’s dress color. You can also adjust the opacity so the pattern doesn’t look too overpowering.

3. Coloring the Decorative Assets

You can download an Auto Action called “Bottom Color Separation.” After downloading it, place the asset in your Auto Action tab in Clip Studio Paint so it’s ready to use later.

Once the Auto Action is ready, go to the asset you want to color. I usually group the decorations that share the same color so they can be placed on a single layer. After that, choose the color you want to apply to the asset. Then go to the Auto Action tab where you added the downloaded action and double-click it or press play. With this method, the asset will be automatically colored according to the color you selected.

4. Shading

After the clothing decorations are finished, it’s time to move on to the shading phase. Apply shading to the objects in your comic. Everyone has their own shading method. Personally, I start by using one universal shading color, then later adjust the shading color so it matches the base colors better.

In simple terms, I group the skin, clothing, and hair into separate folders. Then I set the shading layer as a clipping layer to each of those folders. At this stage, the process doesn’t stop at shading. I also adjust the color of the line art so it blends better with the overall coloring. However, this step is optional, since it’s not strictly necessary.

F. Adding Accessories

Before moving on to the finishing stage, I will add accessories for the characters. Normally this could be done during the line art stage, but since I just remembered it now, I’ll add them before the final step.

For the male character, I’ll add a brooch. The brush for it works like a stamp, so it’s basically done with just one click.

For the female character, I want to add a tiara and a necklace. The tiara is available as a 3D model asset, so I’ll just use that. As for the necklace, it’s quite simple to draw because there’s a gem-shaped brush, so I can just place the gems quickly.

G. Finishing

This finishing process is actually just to enhance your webtoon so that the results are more presentable. There are many things to pay attention to, so I suggest you just watch my video for the speedpaint.

1. Background

Adding the background can actually be done at any stage, whenever you prefer, as long as the proportions still follow the correct perspective. Usually, the background is already planned during the storyboard stage so it fits well with the line art later.

In today’s webtoon industry, artists commonly use 3D backgrounds, usually from Clip Studio Paint assets or from other applications like Blender or SketchUp.

In this example, I’m using a manual background because I didn’t prepare a royal-themed 3D background. So I’m drawing it from scratch using shape and line tools to finish it more quickly.

2. Floral Decoration

Make sure you add these decorations with the purpose of enhancing the panel, not covering the character, interfering with the speech balloons, or becoming the main focus. These are only decorative elements. So usually, they are placed around the edges of the panel, such as along the borders or in the corners. You can also use various plant and flower brushes so the result doesn’t look repetitive or boring.

Place the floral decorations in the empty spaces within the panel. Also pay attention to the placement of the speech balloons so the flowers don’t block them and make the text difficult to read. Also, avoid making the decorations too large, as they shouldn’t become the main focus of the panel.

For example, if the character is on the left side of the panel and the speech balloon is on the right, place the decoration on the right side of the character, then continue it diagonally to create a sense of flow.

Another example: if there is a large panel and the character is positioned in the center, like in this example, you can place the decoration curving along the bottom, as if it acts as a frame or border for the panel.

3. Textured Background

There are many types of brushes you can use for this. You can search the Clip Studio Paint asset library with the keyword “textured brush.” Some examples of brushes I used are dappled light, feel, hatch, gauze, halo, sparkle, and others.

When applying texture to the background, make sure it doesn’t overpower the characters. Keep it more subdued, but still clear enough so the texture remains visible.

Choose texture colors that help make the character stand out more. You can also combine different texture brushes together to achieve the effect you want.