Preface |

Hello, we are i-BOOM Creative House.

Halloween is approaching. Whether you're preparing for it or not, we wish you a happy Halloween in advance.

 

Inspired by the call of Halloween, i-BOOM decided to do a little something related to it—the visual novel currently in production might be a good foundation. It will likely be a lighthearted and cute side story. To achieve a relaxed, pleasant, and peaceful feeling, something akin to a picture book would work very well, and using watercolors to create this effect seems excellent.

 

However, if produced using traditional paper-based watercolors, the cost would increase with more pages, and modifications would be extremely difficult;

At the same time, a significant amount of daily time is consumed by crowded commute times, leading to very little creative time.

 

This is where the 'smartphone version of Clip Studio Paint' and 'digital watercolors' come into play.

 

 

*This TIPS includes two themes: 'Smartphone Finger Painting and Creative Assistance' and 'Watercolor Style Drawing (Smartphones and Tablets)'.

The article and video sections complement each other; both provide more detailed explanations of the other for comparison and reference.

Tablet Computers and Smartphones

In the past, the space for digital drawing was limited by environmental factors: for example, computers and drawing tablets were inconvenient to carry.

But since the advent of portable tablets and smartphones with pressure-sensitive screens, outdoor sketching or creation has become as easy as when tube paints first appeared.

 

In Hong Kong, it's very common for commutes to work or school to take one to two hours per trip. However, the severe shaking and crowdedness on public transport make commute time not an ideal moment for working on a tablet. Instead of sacrificing their rest time, I-BOOM chose to install the Clip Studio Paint drawing application on smartphones when it was released.

 

Finger painting on smartphones is very suitable for quickly recording sketch ideas. And CSP's features allow finger painting to go beyond mere sketches in terms of completion.

The smartphone version of CSP, whether for iPhone or Android, has an interface very similar to the desktop and iPad versions, so there's no need to worry about difficulties in use due to different platforms.

 

For collaborative assistance with the desktop version:

If you're creating a relatively complex color illustration, you can sketch on your smartphone, upload it to the CSP cloud, then download it to your tablet for further processing. Alternatively, you can ink lines on your computer, upload to the cloud, and then color it while you're out;

For comics, sketching and dialogue input are relatively convenient.

Depending on the phone model, remember to be careful not to overload it, as it's not a computer after all.

 

A friend who can complete an entire illustration using only a phone, and is very skilled at finger painting, once said: 'Finger painting is like playing Fruit Ninja.'

The i-BOOM team members still haven't fully grasped the true meaning of this sentence, but it's already sufficient for collaborative work during creation.

Sometimes, the stability of finger-drawn lines can be affected by the state of your fingers and the screen. To maintain line stability, draw lines on a vector layer, then use 'Redraw vector line' to correct them.

Check 'Connect lines' and increase the 'Simplify' value. 'Simplify' helps prevent noticeable jitters in lines.

Odd lines can be handled using 'Operation' > 'Object'.

Accidentally connected lines? You can use 'Control points' to cut lines or delete excessive control points.

 

When using the eraser on a vector layer, you can select 'To intersection point', which makes it easy to erase unwanted lines, whether you're just starting finger painting or drawing in a shaky vehicle.

 

The smartphone version of CSP cannot use auxiliary preview, but it can use file objects. When you need to pick colors, you can import reference files as file objects to save storage space.

 

When filling in base colors on your phone, the following gapless fill and paint tool is very useful.

It can quickly color enclosed lines, which is very suitable for finger painting operations. Just use this magical little tool, draw a circle around the area you want to color, and the base coloring process is complete. It's a very suitable base coloring tool for Halloween.

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When operating CSP on a smartphone, keeping your fingertips and the screen dry is very important. Grease and sweat can prevent your fingers from sliding smoothly across the glass surface, making it difficult to draw smooth lines.

Sometimes, finger painting can lead to inaccuracies because it's hard to precisely see where your fingertip lands on the screen. Without a screen stylus, some unconventional and ineffective methods have been tried, such as sticking a damp tissue piece to a pen tip to draw... or perhaps it just wasn't successful this time?

It makes one really wish the iPhone could support iPencil.

 

If you have any successful attempts, you are very welcome to leave a comment on how to do it.

Gouache and Transparent Watercolors

When painting with watercolors on traditional paper media, one thing often comes to mind:

What should be used for outlining?

 

Outlining directly with watercolor paints (single medium), retaining pencil lines, or drawing ink lines (mixed media) each yields different effects.

But what happens if it's handled on digital media? Let's look at the intersection of tradition and technology.

 

Gouache, also known as opaque watercolor, is characterized by its opacity and high chroma. It's a drawing medium often seen among beginners;

Watercolor, or rather transparent watercolor, offers a wide range of effects due to its transparency and lower chroma.

In the Ver.1.10.10 update, a large number of brushes simulating transparent watercolors were added to the 'Realistic Watercolor' category. The drawing effects are very transparent and beautiful.

When drawing realistic watercolors on a computer, if you consider the flow of watercolor paint and process its edges, the effect will be more authentic.

When a puddle of watercolor paint dries, due to water tension, pigment particles accumulate at the edges of the puddle. After the paint dries, the color in the middle will be lighter, while the edges will be darker.

The brush set below is beautifully and realistically made. The color deepens at the edges where brush strokes intersect, and the brush effect can also serve as a reference during drawing.

Single Medium vs. Mixed Media

Many digital watercolor artworks use pencil or ink to outline (mixed media), while traditional paper-based works often use only watercolors to complete the piece (single medium).

 

What kind of effect would it have if the entire artwork were completed solely with watercolor brushes?

| Single Medium

This is one of the CG illustrations from the short side story mentioned at the beginning.

It's an illustration where the sketch was drawn on a smartphone, uploaded to Clip Studio Paint cloud, and then downloaded to an iPad for further processing.

 

Mimicking the traditional paper watercolor process, after 'applying masking fluid' to the character with color blocks, 'Blurry Watercolor' is used to lay down the base colors.

Without the friction between paper and brush, if you feel the color is wrong or too dark, you can confidently 'wash out' the base. Even if you erase the color, you don't have to worry about the paper pilling.

On the 'Masking Fluid' layer, create a new layer and set it to 'Clip to layer below', then lay down suitable colors to adjust the tone.

 

For subsequent coloring, the default brush 'Watercolor Round Brush' will be used.

This brush is set to 'Multiply' by default, meaning each stroke will deepen the color in overlapping areas. Sometimes this feature can make the luminosity too low, so i-BOOM set up a 'Watercolor Round Brush 2' with the blend mode set to 'Normal'.

 

Use the 'Watercolor Round Brush' to color the skin while outlining the edges with a deeper color. Because of the 'Multiply' blend mode, overlapping strokes when coloring will create an inking effect.

Even when painting skin, you can freely move between light and dark shades without worrying about picking different colors from the color wheel each time. One of the charms of watercolor lies in the intermixing of pigment particles.

 

When using brushes like 'Watercolor Round Brush' with a Multiply blend mode, if you want a flat color, you need to complete the desired area in one stroke. This situation can unexpectedly provide practice in understanding shapes, which can be utilized more.

 

By the way, the ghost was completed using the Watercolor Round Brush and a water brush.

If direct coloring is difficult to control, pre-dividing the components with color blocks will prevent confusion.

Directly use the watercolor brush 'Dense Watercolor 2'—the default 'Dense Watercolor' brush with opacity set to 100%, which offers a softer expression than a dipping pen—to outline the color block areas.

Since the paint bucket or lasso fill tools are not used, large areas are also colored with a brush, allowing for an uneven base color effect.

After coloring the blocks, change them to the paper color, and then you can render the base colors.

Color blocks can also be used for color positioning, meaning you first paint the local colors, and then process them to create watercolor effects.

| Mixed Media

Having seen cross-media single-medium works where sketches are drawn on a mobile phone and completed on a tablet, what possibilities arise if an entire piece is finished on a smartphone?

 

Below, we will discuss a watercolor mixed-media artwork created using the smartphone version of Clip Studio Paint, featuring pencil outlines.

 

Different pencil brushes have different characteristics:

Some pencil brushes look like they are drawn on dry paper, while others look like they are drawn on wet paper. Through different combinations, you can achieve effects such as drawing pencil lines > applying watercolor > then adding more pencil lines.

At the same time, different layer combinations also affect the outcome. Placing a pencil layer beneath a watercolor layer will look like opaque watercolor; while placing a watercolor layer beneath a pencil layer, or directly applying watercolor on a pencil layer, will appear as transparent as transparent watercolor.

 

The brush used for the sketch is the same as the one used for outlining.

During the coloring process, especially on smaller screens, it's very important to define areas with color blocks.

Blurry Watercolor, Wet Watercolor, and Rough Watercolor are the three most commonly used brushes for coloring.

Colored ink is a somewhat tricky medium.

Although not watercolor, its properties are similar to watercolor and it is often used in conjunction with watercolors. When downloading brushes in the Ink category, you might find brushes that can also be used for watercolor painting.

 

The brush set below, though a pen brush, has a texture similar to the Watercolor Round Brush. It is suitable for coloring—and also very suitable for highlights.

The title illustration was originally intended to be completed solely with watercolor brushes. However, its beautiful brush strokes made i-BOOM unable to resist introducing it even at the end of the video.

Since it's an ink-based brush, it blends well with watercolor-style scenes. But when drawing highlights, it really looked too much like correction fluid, and this contrast was surprising.

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The convenience of digital watercolor lies in the freedom of drawing methods and workflows. Whether it's mimicking the drawing process of traditional paper watercolors or using technology with layers to achieve effects difficult to accomplish with traditional media, both can be beautifully realized.

 

We hope you enjoy this Halloween.

Have fun playing these two games—smartphone finger painting and watercolor style—which are trickier than candy.

Game is on.