Hello everyone

In this new tutorial

Today we are going to learn how to make a comic book character with Clip Studio Paint software.

 

 

Introduction

 

 

To begin,

 

Let's figure out what kind of story our character belongs to in order to more easily visualize the psychological profile of the character and his universe.

In this case we are going to draw a girl who has an initiatory quest.

Let's make a young character with determination and courage.

These 3 elements already give us clues about the character's gaze, posture, and emotional state.

The look matters a lot because it says a lot about the character's tenacity in the face of adversity.

For his universe, we are going to a fantastic universe, from this element we will be able to reflect on his accessories or powers.

 

Be sure to think about all of this when creating your character.

 

 

Graphic Research

On a new layer with the realistic pencil tool I will therefore start the graphic search for the character

By relying on the pre-established psychological profile.

This graphic research, also called, draft or study of the character, will serve as a first visual overview.

Now that we have a more concrete idea of the character

 

The sketch

Let's create another layer again to pose the character for a full presentation.

To do this, I advise you to export your draft in JPEG format in order to inspire you for the presentation drawing step.

 

And so on this new layer with the realistic pencil tool we're going to sketch.

Make sure you get as close as possible to the pre-established profile,

The most important elements are, the look and the posture.

 

The character must exude a certain assurance from his posture and his gaze.

Don't hesitate to start over if you are not happy with your sketch.

I advise you to take inspiration from a photo as a reference,

Either images taken on the net, which seem particularly interesting to you,

Or either using your smartphone, you can take a picture of your friend or ask your friend to take a picture of you.

 

The idea is to just take inspiration from the posture.

 

Inking

Once the sketch is complete,

 

We're going to create a second raster layer on top of the sketch for a line art.

Drawing our character on a separate layer from the draft will allow us to effectively change the data so that only the line art is displayed, simply by hiding the layer from the draft.

 

Let's start by changing the color of the sketch layer to set it to blue.

 

Let's reduce the opacity of the draft to make it easier to see the lines for inking.

You can double click on the layer name to name it "Line Drawing"

Preparation of the pen tool

 

Inking is done with the [Pen] tool. Let's adjust the [Pen] tool before we start.

Let's select the [Pen] tool from the [Tool] palette and select [G Pen] from the [Sub tool] palette.

 

Let's adjust the brush size of the [Pen] tool. Let's adjust this in the [Tool Properties] palette, we can also select a size in [Brush Size].

 

We can ink our illustration using the sketch below with the opacity reduced as a guide.

The colour

Now that we've finished inking,

We can hide the draft to better visualize the line art

And better prepare it for color.

 

 

Select the auto selection tool (w) then on the line drawing layer

 

Select an empty space on your work surface

Then on the option bar of the selection tool choose "invert the selected area"

This technique will allow you to select your illustration as efficiently as possible.

Once your illustration is selected, create a new layer below the line art (the ink).

 

Select your first color, it must be the basic color of your character.

 

With the selection still on, with the paint bucket tools, colorize the selected space.

Deselect with CTRL + D keys

 

Depending on the number of items to color, such as clothing accessories or the like, create new pixel layers above the basic color layer.

 

Then put each of its new ones as a clipping mask on the base color layer

 

So anything you do will only appear in the form of the basic color.

 

Now that each element has its own color as shown in the drawing with the arrows

 

 

Group all the layers into a single folder,

Then duplicate this group for security reasons.

 

 

Hide the first group as in the following example

 

The second group, merge it into a layer.

 

You get a layer of several different colors.

We have just installed what is called a solid color.

As in the following illustration.

 

 

We are now going to shaded which will give volume to our illustration.

 

With the selection lasso, draw on the color layer, the shapes or the areas that will contain the shadow.

 

 

Then in the option bar of the selection tools choose the COPY AND PASTE option

Finally in the layers window, change the mode of the layer that was copied to PRODUCT

 

 

You then get part of the colorization which is now much darker.

Reduce the opacity of the layer

 

The details

Repeat the same process on the other parts of your character.

 

By going to the Edit / Hue Correction / Hue-Saturation-Lightness window, adjust the hue and saturation to bring some pizzazz to your illustration.

 

You are now ready to create your own characters.

 

 

You can follow my work as well as my progress on CLIP STUDIO PAINT from my Instagram account