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Diorama-style illustrations are a great way to depict a world and its inner workings in a compact, immersive format. They can be used as concept art for games, educational visuals, or stand-alone artworks.

In the first part of this tutorial we’re going to explore how to work with ideas, camera angles, perspective, composition and object placement to create a clear and engaging scene.

The second part focuses on utilizing Clip Studio Paint’s tools, features and hidden tricks to bring your ideas to life efficiently!

🟪 Types of dioramas

🟧 Interior diorama

Often used in game design, interior dioramas focus on crafting engaging spaces by carefully arranging objects, colors, and lighting to create an inviting environment for the viewer.

🟧 Exterior diorama

On the other hand, exterior dioramas feature small, self-contained landscapes—such as floating islands, cityscapes, or castles.

🟧 Combined diorama

Combining both types adds even more depth and story.

 

You can expand an interior diorama by integrating exterior elements:

… Or uncover a part of an exterior diorama to show what’s happening inside, such as creatures’ cozy homes or fantasy workshops:

The possibilities are endless—even a cupboard, cave, or crystal geode can become a miniature world!

🟪 Camera angles

Choosing the right camera angle for your diorama is important for readability and storytelling.

 

The most common angle, a 45° diagonal view, generally provides the most clear visibility of objects in a 3D space.

However, depending on the structure of your scene and the mood you aim for you can try different angles, even from below or a level view:

Just be careful with views too close to the ground or wall as some objects may be hidden behind others or even hard to identify:

The chosen angle also influences the viewer’s perception; higher angles feel observational, while lower view creates a more immersive experience.

Later in this tutorial we’ll explore how to make a quick mock up of your scene with Clip Studio Paint’s 3D primitives and test different viewpoints!

🟪 Perspective

🟧 Isometric projection

Common in pixel art and games, isometric projection keeps all lines parallel…

… Allowing you to combine various scenes and move objects around freely:

Example of the classic 30° isometric perspective - the silhouette of the cube forms a hexagon:

🟧 Perspective projection

Perspective projection creates a more natural depth.

 

High perspective distortion enhances exterior landscapes…

… While interiors look clearer and more inviting with minimal distortion.

Very strong distortion or even fish eye view are great for horror scenes!

🟪 Composition tips

🟧 Tell a story

Characters bring life, add scale, and create movement. Use their poses, line of sight, and object placement to guide the viewer’s eye naturally through the illustration:

🟧 Vary the sizes of objects

Place large and tall objects in the background and smaller ones in the foreground and on bigger objects so that everything important is clearly visible.

Having most objects of similar size may end up visually plain. Additionally, the tall object in the front obstructs the view.

However, large foreground objects can also create hidden spaces, enhancing the scene’s storytelling, like the grandpa cuckoo’s clock workshop hidden behind the stairs where he’s immersed in his precise work, not paying attention to the noisy grandkids outside:

🟧 Create a lived-in space

Fill up the scene to make it look rich and lively:

Overlapping objects enhance the 3D illusion:

Avoid tangents, which are points where two objects touch without overlapping, as they flatten the image:

Break up straight lines and bare surfaces with details like irregular beams, bricks or planks.

 

Hanging plants, lanterns or signs are a great way to make wall edges interesting.

 

Don’t be afraid to play with exterior elements popping inside the room, like vining plants, stairs or grass.

🟪 Coloring tips

Just like with any other landscape painting, make the most of the atmospheric perspective!

 

Divide the scene into foreground, middleground and background planes with each plane gaining more of the atmosphere’s color the further it is from the viewer.

Adding a soft mist effect between planes separates them further:

More landscape painting tips:

In fantasy scenes you can experiment with hue-based depth.

 

In this geode illustration I separated the planes by the colors of the rainbow. From the farthest plane to the foremost they go from yellow to orange to red to purple to blue to green:

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💡Quick tip: Floor plan for interiors

If you find the room with furniture difficult to visualize, try starting with a floor plan to position objects efficiently. I suggest keeping the items aligned with the walls as they will share the perspective ruler with the room.

You can rotate one object for more variety, like this armchair, but keep in mind that you will need to have a separate perspective ruler with different vanishing points for it.

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🟪 Clip Studio Paint’s tools for efficiency

🟧 Mesh transform

Mesh transform makes it very easy to raise a floor or tweak the overall shape and perspective in the sketching phase:

🟧 Layer color

If you worry about getting lost in all the lines when sketching and inking, use the Change Layer Color feature to separate objects visually.

🟧 3D primitives

The cube, prism, sphere and other default 3D shapes are quite the dark horses among drawing aids once you know the tricks behind using them!

 

⚠️ Note that for any adjustments to 3D layers switch to the Operation Object tool.

In case you’re new to working with 3D objects, I recommend this tutorial:

🟨 Perspective rulers set up in a flash

Are perspective rulers hard to set up? Just drag and drop the cube primitive from the Material palette > 3D > Primitives onto the canvas and adjust the viewing angle to your liking:

The 3D layer comes with perspective rulers, just Shift-click the smaller crossed out icon on the layer to make the ruler visible!

To hide the cube, set the 3D layer’s opacity to 0 and draw on other layers.

 

If you enable snapping, drawing tools will follow the perspective rulers:

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‼️UPDATE: Isometric ruler

A kind reader warned me that the isometric camera view of 3D objects doesn’t create isometric rulers (I apologize for the confusion, I was under the impression that at least earlier versions could do that).

 

Since adjusting a perspective ruler into isometric isn’t easy, I created a material which you can download and drag onto your canvas. It contains a classic 30° isometric ruler to which all drawing tools snap, and a scalable isometric grid which you can hide:

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🟨 Building with 3D primitives

The main strength of primitives lies in their customizability.

 

Not only can you scale and rotate them, in the Sub tool detail palette the Primitive tab allows you to change the number of divisions!

 

Turn the hexagonal prism into triangular to make the roof of a house or a pyramid into a cone shaped tree!

Building the scene from primitives is fun and can help you decide on the angle, perspective and object placement in the draft stage, as well as create precise guides for final drawing based on your sketch.

 

The primitives snap to each other, making accurate placement easy.

To quickly make an array of objects, like stairs, select the object, hit Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V and move the copy into the desired position…

… Hitting straight Ctrl+V again adds new copies in the array:

Use these buttons in the Sub tool detail palette, Camera to switch between perspective and isometric projection:

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💡Quick tip: Multiple cameras

Save the chosen camera angle by duplicating the camera and locking the original. While the duplicate camera is active, you can rotate the view as you need for building your scene and easily switch back to the original camera angle.

The EX version has the All sides view which you open from Window and where you can build your scene while seeing it from four different angles!

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🟧 Tools snapping to rulers

You’re probably already aware that brush tools can snap to the perspective ruler, and when you draw on vector layers, you can easily clean up the lineart with the vector eraser and use the various Correct line tools to adjust the lines.

But that’s just the beginning! The Direct draw tools can also snap to the rulers, both on vector and raster layers, making it easy to add elements like tables, bookshelves or plant pots!

Drag the tool along the longest diagonal of the desired shape. When you let go and move the cursor, the app lets you choose from two possible angles which you confirm by clicking:

While holding shift you get a perfect circle, square or polygon in perspective:

Selection tools work the same way as the Direct drawing tools.

 

You can also paint while snapping! Using a flat brush with a perspective ruler makes painting walls of bricks, stones or boards super easy:

🟧 Transform into perspective

Draw patterns separately and transform them into perspective. During transform hold Ctrl, drag each of the points in the corresponding positions according to the sketch.

 

In version 4 the points snap to the perspective ruler.

For tiled patterns use a layer mask or clipping mask to define the visible area.

🖌️ You can get this and similar textures here:

You can use this trick to easily draw more complicated objects, like a cupboard with a bookshelf!

 

Keep all objects on separate layers, the frame, shelves, books, etc. Transform all of these layers at once according to the perspective:

Nudge each of the layers roughly along the perspective to create depth:

Fill in the gaps using brushes or direct draw tools:

This trick is a great solution for simple objects that are positioned at a different angle from the rest without adding extra rulers, like the clock or the ladder in this example:

The thickness effect was made by moving duplicates of the layers along the perspective and drawing in the ending parts:

🟧 Liquify straight shapes into organic

The Liquify tool is very helpful for tweaking the perfect shapes drawn by snapping to the perspective ruler, to make them feel more dynamic and organic, like the wooden planks and beams.

🟧 Assets materials and 3D objects

Check out the Assets for brushes and other materials to add interesting details to your illustration!

🖌️ As requested, here are the books brushes for download :)

For complicated objects like the cogs you can use a 3D model…

… And incorporate it in your drawing either as lineart by quick line extraction…

… Or as a colored object by setting the lights of the model to fit your scene:

🟧 Enhance with filters

To unify 3D elements with the painting, I apply the Edit > Smart smoothing filter to get a painterly base before refining them manually.

Lastly, applying Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur or Lens blur in the foreground and background can enhance the diorama’s miniature effect and draw focus to the scene’s most important details.

🟪 Conclusion

With the help of Clip Studio Paint’s features, drawing an immersive diorama that tells a story has never been easier!

 

🌟⭐✨ If you enjoyed this tip, it will make me happy if you give a like so that I know I’m doing things right, eventually leave a comment on what you liked or didn’t and where I could improve :) ✨⭐🌟