Hello everyone!! I’m Anda and I am currently working on my comic. Welcome everyone to this guide and I hope that this will be helpful for you and your journey.

 

If you are writing comics or manga with clip studio paint, you probably know some basic text tools right now. These 5 tips are tips that I wish I knew earlier, and I think might be useful for beginner comic artists!

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1. Editing balloon tails

Apart from a straight-line balloon tail, we can make it more interesting by changing “How to bend” in “Tool property” mode. Then, change it into the mode you like!

In Polyline, you are able to create a zigzag line as your balloon tail by clicking the direction that you want the tail to be, then press enter to finish the adjustment. I often use this for screaming and shouting scenes in my comic.

Similarly, in spline, it results in a curved line instead.

This tip can also be applied to “Thought balloon tail”!

2. Using Manga Material in Clip Studio Paint’s material

In the Balloon sub tool, there are only 3 types of balloons available. Let me introduce you to more styles available in “Manga material.”

Click "Manga material” in the “Materials Tab,” scroll down and drag the balloon that you like to the canvas. Then, add a balloon tail to them if you want.

There are also more types of materials inside including flash line circles, frame templates, elements, and many more!

Interestingly, you can also adjust each panel of the framing template by simply clicking at the box and moving it in the direction you want.

 

PS: You can play around with other materials aside from Manga Material like 3D models and patterns.

3. Making the Text Stands Out More

In some scenes that I want to highlight a certain word, I usually change its color, size, make it bolded, italic and underlined.

 

Starting with typing the dialogue into the balloon with Clip Studio’s Text tool and selecting the word you want to highlight.

Next, select the color you want from a color wheel/color set. I usually use red.

If you want to make it stand out more, you can also change the text size and other properties.

4. Outlining texts

For onomatopoeia, minor text, or descriptive text, I usually don’t put it in the speech balloon but outline it instead.

First, create your text by the text tool, select the text, and go to the “Sub Tool Detail” either by clicking at a wrench symbol or a pen symbol.

Then, click “Text” and adjust the edge thickness and edge color as you like!

5. Adding Reading for Text

Let me introduce another cool Sub Tool Detail “Reading for Text”!! This feature is helpful for explaining abbreviations and jargons.

 

Starting with writing the entire sentence, selecting the word that you want to explain, and clicking the Sub Tool Detail. I hope you now know how to enter the Sub Tool Detail from the previous tip!

Click “Reading” and “Reading Setting”

Make sure that the “Target string” is the word that you want to explain and write the explanation in “Reading string.”

It might be messy at first, but you can later adjust the reading string’s size and spacing.

This is my final adjustment!

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That’s all from me!!

I hope you had fun reading these tips and I sincerely hope that these tips will help you more or less. There are so many other tools that I didn’t mention that might be beneficial for you, so don’t forget to play around with Clip Studio Paint’s tool, Sub Tool, or even Sub Tool Detail! Wish you all the best in your journey!!