Hi guys! One of this month's theme is comic sound effects, so I decided to share my humble thoughts about it. I hope it will be helpful.

Let's start!

Sounds in comics are quite important, I think! Different artists approach them differently. Someones don't pay enough attention the others push it really far, especially in action panels. It is important tool which makes your comic richer.

So here is our page.

And as you can see, the last panel looks a bit empty.

 

 

 

Time to add sound FX!!!

I'll start with a hand-drawn, but we will talk about another option later on.

Is it bad? Well... I don't think it's bad. I've never heard anyone complaining about sound FX, how it placed or drawn.

Is this better?

On my personal taste, it is. The placement is better, and I also like how it follows the action lines.

By the way, I consider you as a bit experienced user of clip studio, so you have to be familiar with the interface. But if you don't, I drew sound fx on a separate layer with border effect enabled.

It helps to separate it from the background.

Ok. But what if we want to go even further?

What if we want to emphasize our panel more?

 

 

Well, guys, it's time to go beyond the frames and borders.

Great! I'm already satisfied. Call it done, move to another panel.

But what if we want it thicker?

Easy!!! Just hold Ctrl+click on the layer, then Select ---> Expand selected area

Then choose how far you wanna go, and that's it

Is it thick enough?

Ok. What if we don't want it black? In some cases, you may need it.

No problem!

The same process as before - hold Ctrl+click on the layer, then Select ---> but now we need to Shrink selected area.

Fill with white and there you go!

But what if it still looks boaring?

Pfff, not a problem at all! Just pick up your brushes or patterns and make it more interesting.

 

 

Just in case I want to tell the way I did it! So, in the previous step, we filled our selection with white, right? I did it on a separate layer and then created another one and clipped it to the layer below. Or we could've just made a mask out of our selection. Also a nice way of doing it.

Here are a few examples

What else can we do?

 

 

Maybe add impression like it moving with the character.

Something like this!

And here is the final result.

I decided to stop on this variant.

Ok, let's move on to another example.

How can we handle this first panel?

We could've done something like this.

Those are fine.

 

But I want to show you something cooler!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn't it!?

Of course, it is!

It has much more impact!

Ok. But what if we have some problems drawing sound fx by hand?

Again, it's not a problem at all!

We can use a text tool!

Then you just have to arrange it, transform it, distort it, and modify the way you want it.

We can even imitate the one I drew.

Ok! I hope you are not bored yet. We are almost done.

 

The last thing I'd like to show you is how to stylize your sound FX.

You can draw it or use a text tool. In this example, I used a text tool.

And I got this.

Now, this is where all of your artistic capabilities comes in!

And as we talked earlier, take a brush and paint over it.

This is what I ended up with.

Black or...

 

white

That's it! I hope it was useful.

Oh, one more word. A good way to learn is to study other artist's work. Go through your favorite comic/manga and take a look at how they implement sound fx in their work.

Now that's it! ;)

Good luck and take care!