1. Introduction

Hey there fellow artists,

 

Are you having trouble trying to figure out how to make a comic/manga digitally? Feeling overwhelmed with the idea of transitioning from traditional methods to using digital skills? Then look no further my friend!

 

My name is Inkinator, a wannabe artist who is learning and improving my skillsets of creating illustrations, comics and manga one sketch at a time. I’ll be your guide to helping you through your journey of creating digital comics and manga.

2. What hardware and software do I use and why should you use them?

Do other artists use digital software to create comics and manga?

Short answer, yes.

Why?

Two words, work efficiency.

 

One thing that artists can have trouble when going through the process of creating comics and manga is the time and resources required to achieve the result that they want, especially when using traditional methods which requires going through the effort of finding the right materials within your budget spending which can be time-consuming.

 

Whereas, using digital software i.e. Clip Studio Paint, it takes the effort away from finding and experimenting with new tools and materials without burning your bank account, as well as reducing the number of man hours used to create a comic/manga making it a quicker process for you. (Whether you are a beginner or a professional artist, time is never on your side.)

What materials do I need when starting my digital journey?

Three things:

 

1. PC/Laptop – This is required as you need to download the digital software to create your comic and manga. Required specification in the link below:

System Requirements | Clip Studio Paint | Clip Studio.NET

 

2. Drawing Tablet – You might feel overwhelmed by the selection of tablets to choose from. To make easier for you, there are two types, a graphics tablet and a display tablet.

 

A graphics tablet is a screenless drawing tablet that allows you to draw on the tablet and it displays on your computer screen, which requires hand-eye coordination.

 

A display tablet is a screen drawing tablet that allows you to draw directly onto the screen like pen and paper, except digitally; this can include using an IPad or an Android tablet which you can use to draw just using the software without using a PC, however they can be expensive to purchase.

 

There are so many brands to choose from when purchasing your tablet, if you’re unsure, your best starting point is researching from credible companies such as, Huion, Wacom and XP-PEN. When it comes to the budgeting, if you’re a rich person who doesn’t mind spending a lot go for a display tablet. If you’re on a tight budget like me, a graphics tablet is a good starting point.

 

3. Drawing software – Pretty self-explanatory, but to be clear, you need Clip Studio Paint. There are two types of licenses that can be purchased through different methods, Clip Studio Paint PRO and Clip Studio Paint EX. The PRO license is a cheaper license that can be used to create single page comics and illustrations, whereas the EX license does what PRO does, as well as allowing you to create multiple page comic/manga and 2D animations.

 

For a guide of what I use, I use:

-          Huion Inspiroy H580X

-          Clip Studio PRO

3. Knowledge, Skills and Tips to creating your digital comics

Now that we’ve got the difficult part out of the way, time for the fun part!

 

I’ll be creating a simple and random one page comic about a character named Joe who is on a scavenger hunt that his friend Sarah set up, where he is looking for the next clue which is located in a coffee shop.

 

 

Canvas Size and Resolution

Resolution - When you start figuring out what size to make your pages, I suggest working in at least 300 DPI. For anyone who doesn’t know what DPI means, it “Dots Per Inch” where resolution is basically how many pixels fit into an inch of printed paper, the higher the resolution/ DPI, the more pixels per inch.

 

Canvas Size – This can vary if you want your comic to be printed or not. It’s recommended to research and pick a page size that is easy when printing your comic. If your books deviate from standard comic sizes, you’ll either have to reformat your pages or pay more when it’s time to print. See typical sizes below:

 

For a Japanese manga page size, its typically 2953W x 4169H pixels (B4 paper size).

For a US comic page size, its typically 2480W x 3508H pixels (A4 paper size).

Comic Template

A comic template outline the location of different borders in a comic page when printing. There are three types of borders:

 

Safe Area – Where all the art, text, dialogue balloons, etc. should stay within the boundary of the safe area to avoid it being cut off when printed.

 

Trim Line – Where the pages will be cut when your comic book is made. Anything that goes past this line will be cut off when your pages are trimmed.

 

Full Bleed Area – Where your art to go all the way to the very edge of the page. While anything that goes past the trim line will be cut off, your art should go all the way to the edge of the bleed area, since the exact cut line might vary slightly during printing.

Tools and Shortcuts

Once your page is set-up and ready, you’ll be able to access different tools within different menus.

 

Tool Icon Menu – Located on the far left where you can choose your desired tools from the icons.

 

Sub-Tools and Colour Palette Menu – Located next to the Tool Icon where you can choose your desired tool with a specific property, such as tool size, opacity, stabilisation and colour choice. This can include any downloaded materials and tools from the Clip Studio Assets.

 

Sub-View Menu – Located on the top right, usually used to see the overall page design as a locator or placing any image references that have been imported when drawing.

 

Layer Menu – Located on the bottom right, same as Adobe Photoshop, this allows you to add and separate your design of your art and work on them one at a time, without permanently changing your original image. In the context of creating a comic/manga, separate folder layers for each panel should include “Draft/Sketch”, “Inking”, “Flat Colour”, “Shading/Rendering”. More to follow below.

 

When connecting your drawing tablet to your PC/laptop, custom keyboard shortcuts can be placed to boost work efficiency, where pressing a button is a lot faster than digging through menus to find a tool. You can check the tool keyboard shortcut by hovering over the tool icons. With what shortcuts that should be assigned to your tablet, depends on your personal preferences; from my experience I would say assign the tools that you would typically use for drawing. See example below:

Creating Panels

To create comic panels for each page, I use the “Frame Border” Tool. It’s like using the shape tool in any other art software, where you click and drag to create the panel. Once these panels are created, they create automatic panel layers under the Layer Menu with the corresponding names “Frame 1”, “Frame 2”, etc.

A tip to customise your borders:

-  By selecting the panel border and holding the “CTRL” and drag the points of your panel border to customise your panel size

- By selecting the “Divide frame border” to split a panel under the same panel layer or using the “Divide frame folder” to split the panels and separating it as a separate panel layer

Folder and Raster Layers

Usually when I create a comic/manga page, I would create multiple folder layers for each panel, to keep my comic layers organised. As explained above, see below the different types of folders I uses containing multiple raster layers:

Draft/Sketch Layer

Within this layer for each panel, I would sketch my rough idea of what the panels should look like. The tool I use to create rough sketches is the “Mechanical Pencil” tool that Clip Studio provides, but feel free to experiment the sub-tool properties of what desired look you want to achieve, heck you can even use the pen tool – whose said you can just sketch using a pencil.

 

Handy-Tips:

-  When sketching different images under the same panel, I would recommend separating different sketches under different raster layers, allowing you to keep your drawings organised and also makes it easier for you to make future changes to your designs.

 

- If you have trouble on what or how to sketch a certain background or difficult poses, always use reference photos and Clip Studio’s 3D models as much as possible, as it’s easier to draw a thing if you actually know what it’s supposed to look like. Don’t believe me, see below.

Inking Layer

After creating your sketches for all your panels, I would ink my rough sketches to give my art a clean and professional look. The tool I use to ink my drawings is the “G-Pen” tool that Clip Studio provides, but feel free to experiment the sub-tool properties of what desired look you want to achieve.

Handy Tips:

 

- For anyone who fears of making the line art clean and smooth, never fear, a very handy tool that I use to this day is the “Stabilization” sub-tool. What this tool does is that it provides stability to your line art to make your line art, well, clean and smooth. The higher the stabilization value is, the smoother your lines will be.

 

 

- If you have doubts about certain line arts you want to re-draw, feel free to use the undo button or eraser to make the changes. I would recommend for any major changes to the line art, I would duplicate the same layer and edit the new one, in case you want to revert back to the original

Flat Colour Layer

After inking all your panels, I would place in my flat colours in. The tool I use to colour my drawings is the “G-Pen” and “Fill” tool that Clip Studio provides, but feel free to experiment the sub-tool properties of what desired look you want to achieve.

Handy Tips:

 

-  A handy tip when colouring with the “Fill” tool, is that when you click and hold on one area when colouring and dragging your digital pen around to a different area, it will automatically colour the new area without you having to lift your pen and click on a different area.

 

- If you want to use a certain colour from the sub-view menu, use the “Eyedropper” tool then hover and click on a certain colour from the reference image to use as your flat colour.

Shading/Rendering Layer

After colouring your flats on all panels, I would place in my shading and renderings. With this step, this is the most experimental part where many artists go crazy using various methods when shading and rendering using different tools such as “Pen”, “Fill”, “Brush”, “Airbrush” and “Blend” tools – there no fixed style, every artist has a unique style.

 

But for this guide, I would use flat shadings using the “G-Pen” and “Fill” as I find it simpler to follow, however feel free to experiment.

Handy Tips:

 

- For creating a flat shadows, I make a new layer on top and set its style to “Multiply”. Multiply layers will darken colours, which makes them good for shadows! When creating a “Multiply” raster layer, place it above the “Flat Colours” raster layer. Be aware that the colours you use may change depending on the lighting of the scene!

 

- For creating a flat highlights, it’s the same process except you use the “Overlay” or “Screen” layer.

 

- For building textures, I would use the “Airbrush” tool, and selecting a darker shade of the flat colours. Then lightly applying a soft spray to the buildings.

 

- When creating shadows, the colour of the shadows will be the opposite of the lighting colour, such as blue shadows for orange lighting, etc. Try playing around and seeing what works best with the colour palette of your scene!

Speech Bubbles

After finishing off your rendering, it’s time for creating speech bubbles, I use the “Balloon” tool. Similar to using the “Frame Border” tool where you click and drag to create the speech bubble shape. Then, I use the “Balloon Tail” sub tool to create the tail; just to note, click the “Enter” button once you’ve created the final end of the speech bubble tail. This will automatically connect the speech bubble shape and tail together as one image and create a “Speech Bubble” layer under the layer menu.

For adding the text, click on the “Text” tool. Once selected, hover and click on the speech bubble, this will allow you to enter your text under the “Speech Bubble” layer. If however if you want to change the text, you can click on the “Speech Bubble” layer and it will highlight the text within the speech bubble for you to edit.

For combine two or more speech bubbles, create separate speech bubbles with the text included and position them where you want to combine them. Once ready, hover over to the Layer Menu and select the two speech bubble layers, right-click and select “Merge selected layers”.

Exporting Comics and Manga Pages

You’ve made it to the end of your comic making… hooray! Now its time to print out your masterpiece. Located on the top-left side of the screen, click on File > Export Single Layer. There it will give you the option to select the type of file you want to export your comic as, typically I would use PNG file, where it provides a higher quality image in comparison to JPEG.

4. Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, congratulation. We’ve now reached the end of the tour where you are now armed with essential knowledge to creating your own digital comic/manga.

 

The biggest takeaway from all this is that, whether you’re an amateur artist like me or a professional artist, every artist will always finds ways to improve their art within their skillsets and the environment that they work in.

The best way to learn is to practice, practice MORE, and practice EVEN MORE! The more you make your comics/manga, whether original or fan-made, the better you become at creating your comics (even I make fan-made comics and I’ve learnt a lot from comic-making and still do to this day).

 

Final words, push yourself forward, overcome any challenges that you may face, and soon there will be a comic creation that you will be proud of. Heck, don’t hesitate to share your creations on social media – a great way to grow, receive praise and constructive feedback from others.

 

Hope this helps and wish you all the best in your comic-making journey artists! 😊