Hello everyone!

This is Inma R.

 

I’m a professional comic artist who publishes her comics on Webtoon but also gets them printed. There are different ways to do this and each artist has their way, but today I’m going to show you mine!

1. Start with the traditional printing format.

I start by designing the page in the traditional printing format. I do it this way because I think it’s easier to turn a traditional page into a Webtoon than it is to turn a Webtoon chapter into a traditional page.

 

I work on A5 size at 350dpi.

The most important rule is: you must draw everything, even the parts that are hidden by another panel. To do this, when I’m working on the upper left panel, I hide the panel on the right so I can get the whole panel drawn.

Make sure all panels are fully drawn to make the Webtoon format easier to make later!

2. Add speech bubbles.

I add all my speech bubbles on a folder I place on top of all the panels. Since I publish my comics in two languages, I keep a separate folder for each of them.

But sometimes you might want the speech bubble to be inside the panel, not floating around. There are two ways to do this.

 

First method is to drag that speech bubble into the panel folder.

The other method I use keeps all the speech bubble layers into the language folder. I create a selection of the panel folder by right-clicking on it and then on selection from layer - Create selection.

 

Then on the Select menu, I click on Expand selected area and I increate it by 2.

Then I click on the speech bubble I want inside that panel and I click on the create layer mask icon.

The result is this. I really like how it looks, but you can always use any of the other methods if you prefer!

3. Exporting files for Webtoon.

I’m done with the page, so it’s time to export the files.

 

I hide all the text layers and the paper layer to get a blank background.

Now I’m going to hide all panel borders. Why do I do this? Because when I format for Webtoon I want all panel borders to have the same thickness. Since I’ll resize some panels later, that would make the border thickness different between panels.

 

To do this, use the operation object tool and click each panel to unmark the “draw border” option.

Do this for every panel.

I’m going to export the panels in PNG to keep the background blank.

 

However! There are two panels overlapping, and I need each image separated from the rest. So I will export two PNG files by hiding the panels I consider.

 

Click on File - Save duplicate - PNG.

 

I created two files that look like this:

It’s time to put everything into Webtoon format!

4. Creating the Webtoon format.

I will have 3 (or 4) files open:

 

-My original page where I have the dialogue folders.

 

-The Webtoon format file (800x around 20000px).

 

-My PNG files (page07A.png and page07B.png).

 

Different platforms have different size limits. What concerns us is the width of the archive. Webtoon’s width is 800px, so you can choose to make your file this size or make it slightly bigger and then export smaller later. For this tutorial I’ll keep the width at 800px.

 

I will open my page07A.png file and, using the selection tool, will copy the first panel. Then I’ll move to the Webtoon format file and click on Edit - Paste to shown position.

*Because the file is super long, the easiest way to see where panels are being pasted is using this paste option rather than the normal one.

 

 

I will do this for all the panels from that page, so I get them one by one as separate files on my Webtoon file.

 

Some panels will appear very big, so I need to resize them.

As I paste and organize my panels on a scroll format, I click on layer property for each file, enable border effect, make the thickness 3 and the edge color black.

This will give each panel its own panel border.

Now I will go back to the original file to copy-paste the dialogues. On my Webtoon file I also keep dialogues separated by language so I can easily activate one or the other.

 

Just copy each speech bubble, paste it onto the Webtoon file and move it around until it’s where you like.

Sometimes you might need to edit speech bubble tails if they’re not pointing to the character that’s speaking.

 

We’re done! Last step is to click on File - Special export - Export webtoon.

 

Now you have two perfectly functional files: one to get your comic printed in traditional format and the other to publish on Webtoon. Share your stories with the world!