How to use CLIP STUDIO PAINT for Manga

How to Use Blur Filters for Monochrome Manga: Basic and Advanced Techniques

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ユキノコ(Yukinoco)

When watching this video, please enable subtitles in your preferred language.

For Japanese explanations, my blog is easier to read, so please refer to it here.

Introduction

This TIPS article is a tutorial on how to use blur filters when drawing manga.

Blur filters are often thought of as a feature for color illustrations, but they can surprisingly be used in monochrome manga too. This time, I'll introduce many practical tips that can be used when drawing manga. The first half covers basic screen tone work, and the second half, the highlight of this article, covers advanced texture and shading applications.

Basically, I explain it in more detail in the video. I've also added subtitles in various languages to the video, so please prioritize watching that if you like. Please understand that due to automatic translation, tool names and such might be incorrect. The explanations in this TIPS tend to be concise, so I plan to add more images and descriptions later.

How to Use Blur Filters in Monochrome Manga

Let's try blurring this black circle.

1. First, filters cannot be used on monochrome layers, so change the [Expression color] in the Layer Property palette from [Monochrome] to [Gray].

2. Next, select "Gaussian blur" from the [Blur] submenu of the [Filter] menu, adjust the [Blur strength] with the slider, and click OK.

3. Finally, turn ON [Screen tone] in the Layer Property palette to complete. If you are publishing on the web, keeping it gray is fine, but if you plan to print it, such as for magazine publication, screen toning is essential.

Also, on large canvases like manga manuscripts, filters can operate very slowly. Therefore, if you pre-select only the area where you want to apply the filter, you can work more smoothly.

Basic Technique 1: Edge Blur

This is a technique to add a blurred screen tone edge to what you've drawn.

It's often used for expressions like magic or beams.

First, draw a white circle, duplicate that layer, and fill it with black.

Apply an edge to the black circle layer using [Edit] menu's [Outline Selection] and make it thicker than the original line. Make it extend significantly beyond the original line.

Keep the white layer on top.

Change the [Expression color] in the Layer Property palette from [Monochrome] to [Gray], then apply blur using [Filter] menu's [Blur]-[Gaussian blur].

By reducing the layer's opacity, turning ON the screen tone effect in [Layer Property], and placing it below the white layer, you can create an expression like a faint glow, as shown below.

Duplicate the white layer again, apply an edge and blur it as before, then turn on the screen tone effect to achieve this result.

You can make it appear even more luminous.

Additionally, by overlaying an edge blur on a character, you can depict poignant or melancholy scenes, as shown in the image.

Overlaying screen tones like this can sometimes cancel out one of the screen tones.

In such cases, it's best to shift the mesh position of the overlaying screen tone.

The screen tone shift action below is useful.

Basic Technique 2: Motion Blur

By applying radial blur or motion blur according to the direction of an object's or body's movement, you can achieve an effect similar to photographing a moving object with a camera.

As an example, I will demonstrate expressing a gun's muzzle flash and bullets with radial blur, and a gun's recoil with motion blur.

Muzzle flashes and bullets may seem difficult, but all you have to do is apply the edge blur from Basic Technique 1 using [Radial blur] instead of [Gaussian blur].

For the muzzle flash, draw it in white, then copy and paste it, fill it with black, add an edge, and make it slightly larger than the original white flash. Create a new draft layer and mark the center of the muzzle flash. This mark ensures that both the white and black flash layers can be blurred from the same center.

After that, apply a slight [Gaussian blur] to the entire image.

Applying a small amount of [Gaussian blur] before [Radial blur] or [Motion blur] helps to create a clean blur. Without it, the boundaries of color extension can become too sharp.

When you activate [Radial blur] from the [Filter] menu, a red cross indicating the center of the radial blur will appear. Drag and move this to the mark you drew earlier.

Increase the blur amount and click OK to blur it as if a muzzle flash is emerging from the gun barrel.

Similar to the black flash, apply [Radial blur] to the white flash. Set the center to the same mark so that the center of the black flash and the [Radial blur] align.

It's good to make the [Blur amount] slightly less than that of the black flash.

Finally, turn ON [Screen tone] under [Effect] in the [Layer Property] palette to complete the muzzle flash.

Bullets can also be drawn using the same method. However, the center is not the same as the muzzle flash's center; it's placed on an extension line passing through the gun barrel and the muzzle flash's center. Aligning the bullet's trajectory with the direction of motion and perspective improves its appearance.

Sparks near the muzzle flash can also be drawn with blur.

By scattering sparks in black and white with a spatter brush, applying [Gaussian blur], slightly reducing the opacity, and then screen toning, you can easily create a nice effect.

Quality has been improved with minimal effort.

Next, I will draw the gun barrel's recoil with motion blur.

First, copy and paste the gun's layer folder, then un-screen tone all screen tones within the gun's folder, make them gray, and then combine the gun's folder into a single layer.

Since we won't be using anything other than the area near the muzzle, erase it. You could blur it as is, but it's better to add a little movement by setting a parallel ruler and drawing vertical lines, or by extending with the fingertip tool.

Using [Motion blur] from the [Filter] menu, set the [Blur angle] to 90 degrees to blur the muzzle vertically.

Finally, screen tone it to complete.

Basic Technique 3: Lens Blur

This is a method of expressing out-of-focus areas on the screen with blur, which creates a sense of realism.

Let's try blurring a previously drawn shrine painting, focusing on the Miko-chan (shrine maiden).

First, release the screen tone effect of the background, then combine the foreground and background into single layers separately.

Next, create a [Selection layer] using [Stock selection] from the [Selection] menu, and paint it so that areas closer to the focal character are lighter, and areas further away are darker.

By creating a selection with a [Selection layer] and then applying [Gaussian blur],

you can achieve an effect where the focus blurs as it moves away from the focal point.

When blurring after creating a selection with a [Selection layer], areas with higher opacity will be blurred more strongly, and areas with lower opacity will be blurred more weakly.

Varying the blur amount between foreground and background makes it easier to achieve a sense of realism.

The trick is to change the blur amount according to the distance from the camera.

Advanced Technique 1: Texture Blur

This technique naturally attenuates texture quality using Gaussian blur. By heavily blurring areas you want to partially attenuate, and then changing the layer's expression color back from [Gray] to [Monochrome], you can eliminate details in the heavily blurred areas.

First, apply a small amount of [Gaussian blur] to the entire image, then create a [Selection layer], paint the areas where you want to erase the texture, and blend them smoothly with the areas you want to keep.

Create a selection from the [Selection layer], and then apply a strong [Gaussian blur].

Finally, by changing the layer's expression color back from [Gray] to [Monochrome], you can eliminate details in the heavily blurred areas.

The degree of elimination can be freely adjusted with the expression color threshold in the [Layer Property] palette.

This allows you to naturally attenuate textures while preserving them, rather than erasing them with a cross-hatching brush. You can use it to fade out distant parts of a perspective texture or to remove details from areas illuminated by light in a textured shadow.

Advanced Technique 2: Shading Blur

This blur technique involves outlining a texture and then blurring it, utilizing the increased line density towards the back by reverting the layer's expression color to monochrome, consolidating it into a solid fill, and using it to draw shadows.