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Hello!

 

I’m .avi. I work as a professional game illustrator and creating comics and webtoons is my hobby.

 

One of my favorite aspects of visual storytelling is using backgrounds and effects to enhance characters emotions.

 

In this tutorial, I’ll share some of the tools and techniques I use in Clip Studio Paint to achieve various effects—featuring examples from the webtoon I’ve been working on.

This guide is intended for users with some basic understanding of vector layers, masks, and brush settings.

🟧 TOOLS

💥 Saturated line

This is one of my all-time favorite tools—an incredible and versatile time-saver!

 

You can explore various downloadable sub tools or stick with the default ones.

⚠️ Just keep in mind that after applying the effect, you need to switch to the Object Operation tool to make adjustments. ⚠️

🔸 Use the rectangle to resize the area:

🔸 The red center point defines the convergence point of the lines:

💡 Hold Space to temporarily hide the control circle.

 

In the Sub Tool Detail palette, you can:

 

🔸 Change the length and thickness of lines

🔸 Set random distribution using Disarray and Grouping

Rotate the overall position of the lines by dragging the square handle attached to the center:

👉 For a double color effect:

 

🔸 Duplicate the lines layer

🔸 Change its color

🔸 Offset the lines a little by moving the square handle

🌀 The lines don’t have to be straight! 🌀

👉 To make a circle of thunder:

 

🔸 Right-click the red line

🔸 Add new points on it

👉 To turn sharp points into curves:

 

🔸 Select the points

🔸 Right-click on the line

🔸 Click Switch corner

✨ But that’s not all! ✨

 

Change the brush shape of lines for unique styles!

 

You can pick from the various presets or set your own brush:

This tool is far from limited to only focus lines and speed lines; go ahead and experiment with all these possible settings!

 

Make a cartoon flare for an explosion, a poster-style background for your heroic characters, a pop effect after something suddenly disappears, a halo of stars, angry spiral, or even a flower!

The only thing you need to worry about is what the characters have to say about it…

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🧩 Official tutorials on Saturated line tool:

💥 Stream line

Stream Line tools work like Saturated Lines but follow a line or curve.

 

The Gloom preset is fantastic for adding tension, speed lines, or even something ridiculous—like a rain of hearts!

💥 Special rulers

Rulers are powerful allies in drawing dynamic effects.

 

Here are my favorites:

📐Parallel line

Great for speed lines and impact lines. I love combining it with blend brushes for cartoon speed background effects.

📐 Multiple curve

The handle of the Multiple curve allows you to set it into perspective, and draw speed lines for objects moving in a curve.

 

For example, I use this ruler for the movement of the windshield wipers :3

📐 Radial line

Radial line is a quick solution for drawing a few focus lines as an alternative to the Saturated line tool, or for setting quick guides for hand-drawn radial effects.

📐 Concentric circle

Excellent help for drawing shockwaves of explosions.

 

I often use it in combination with the Radial line, like in the case of this shattering glass effect:

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🧩 Official tutorial on Special rulers:

💥 Straight line tool + vector layers

Simple but powerful and versatile when combined with vector layers and Correct line sub tools!

👉 For example, this flare was made just by drawing several straight lines roughly radially…

In the Correct line tool, Control point check the Adjust line width option:

⏪ Click and drag a point to the left to decrease thickness of the line.

⏩ Click and drag to the right to increase thickness.

 

… And quickly create random rays of light for your explosions!

👉 Another example is this maze background:

I used the Straight line tool to make a grid on a vector layer, erased some lines to create a maze pattern, which I then transformed.

💥 Liquify tool

This tool is pure magic! Not only can you make subtle adjustments to any raster layer, you can use it for interesting background effects, like marbling!

👉 Marbling background:

 

🔸 Paint some random blotches of colors on the background.

🔸 Play with the Liquify tool to make swirls and waves.

 

… And in a moment you have an original background for your distressed character!

👉 Cut-out-like borders

 

Another way I use the Liquify tool is to create borders around characters in comedic scenes, as an alternative to the Layer property palette’s Border effect:

🔸 Make a selection of the character’s silhouette by Ctrl-clicking the layer folder icon

🔸 Expand it a few pixels

🔸 Fill it in a new layer behind the character

🔸 Use the Liquify tool to further expand the border

 

This way the pointed shapes don’t turn round and the border gets uneven, giving it a cut-out feel.

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💡 You can download a set of selection expand and shrink auto actions that I use to speed up work here:

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💥 Brushes

Brushes have endless possibilities, just take a look at all the ingenious effect brushes people came up with and posted to Assets!

They’re great time savers for signs like noticing, sweat, anger, and the like. Another great group consists of speed lines and impact effects.

⚡ Painterly Brushes with Particles

Since I like painterly effects, for the snow wind I made a lot of dual brushes consisting of a painterly stroke and particles:

I love using them for gusts of wind and the snow splash effect with motion lines that the car makes :3

⚡ Figurative Brushes

Metaphoric effects are great for comedies, which led me to make a bunch of figurative brushes.

 

Apart from common question marks, I love using contextual metaphors, like when the guy wonders what the top secret mission could be about, or when he’s suddenly faced with a flock of little kids:

In this case the vector layer is especially helpful because it allows me to precisely place the chickens at angles that make them look like they’re walking over the character, and evoke the feeling of goosebumps.

In this panel, where the character thinks he’s getting paranoid, I used a downloaded Halloween ghost brush to inconspicuously mix little ghosts into the snow as a candy for attentive readers 👻

⚡ Particle Sprays

Sprays of particles are a category on their own – they can add a lot of fluffy, comedic or intense feeling to your scene just by varying the shapes, colors, density and placement.

Flying unspecified particles, especially with motion blur, can significantly contribute to the dynamic movement and intensity of the scene.

⚡ Bokeh Lights

While generally used for gentle and positive emotional scenes, I often use them in exaggeration, like here where I wanted to show the childish admiration of the character’s boss…

… Or in this scene, which was meant to be like melting sugar, because the guy learns that the kids found cigarettes which he had been deprived of.

 

But the bokeh wasn’t nearly enough, that’s why I added metaphorical images like birds chirping and unicorns sliding down rainbows to make it look as ridiculous as possible 🦄

⚡ Sparkles

Sparkles are priceless, especially when it comes to comedy. I love using them for all kinds of effects, like glowing eyes or circles of excitement!

I’ve made many kinds of sparkle brushes for circles and spray, they’re available for download in Assets:

In my comic, these five pointed stars have somehow become the kids’ signature effect. Even if the children are off panel, the sparkles show that they are present, excited and more than ready to get on the guy’s nerves…

⚡ Flat Rotation-Responsive Brush

My go-to for general drawing—it gives a dynamic, expressive touch to everything.

💥 Blur

Blur brushes are destructive, so I leave them for the very last stage on merged duplicates of layers that I want blurred.

 

👉 To emphasize movement in the scene, I use this great motion blur brush from Assets. Perfect for blurring flying particles!

👉 In darker and disorienting scenes I often combine blurring the out-of-focus parts of the panel using the basic blur brush with a softly textured haze.

💥 No effect

Sometimes, no effect is the best effect of all, like when the character is lost in thought…

… Or here, where the empty background is used to emphasize the emptiness of the cigarette pack:

🟧 LAYER TRICKS

💥 Masks and clipping layers

Use layer masks to tone down effects in certain areas:

Alfternatively (with usually more colorful results):

 

🔸 For layers on Add glow, Screen, or other lightening modes, clip a normal layer on them and paint in black (which is invisible in lightening modes).

🔸 Similarly, layers in darkening modes (Multiply, Darken) can be “masked” with white.

With the clipped layers, you can also add subtle color shifts to your original effect.

 

💥 Brightness to opacity

Want to use an effect image but it’s without transparency?

 

🔸 Go to Edit > Convert brightness to opacity, which turns light colors into transparency:

To use the bright part of the image:

 

🔸 Invert the image colors (Ctrl+I).

🔸 Go to Edit > Convert Brightness to Opacity.

🔸 Invert the colors back (Ctrl+I).

⚡ Extracting effects with colors

🔸1. Duplicate the layer:

🔸 2. Invert colors (Ctrl+I) of the duplicated layer (in this case, the flare turns black):

🔸 3. Go to Edit > Convert brightness to opacity:

🔸 4. Ctrl-click the black flare layer icon to create its selection:

🔸 5. Switch to the original layer.

🔸 6. Add a layer mask to it using the selection by clicking the Mask icon in the Layer palette:

Now your colorful flare is ready to make your scene even more epic!

💥 Gradient map layer

Is your epic effect the wrong color? Just clip a gradient map layer on it!

 

🔸 1. Right-click the target layer.

🔸 2. Choose New Correction Layer > Gradient map.

🔸 3. Hit Enter (doesn’t matter what the gradient is now).

🔸 4. Right-click the gradient map layer and select Layer Settings > Clip to Layer Below (my shortcut is Num* but I have no idea if that was the default shortcut, if not, I recommend setting it).

🔸 5. Double-click the gradient map layer icon to open its settings.

🔸 6. Set the gradient to fit your scene.

 

You can use it not only to adjust the colors but contrast as well!

For example, these painterly brushes work with background and foreground color, but the result doesn’t have the desired effect. That’s why I just use them with any dark and light colors and clip this gradient map on their layer to make it colorful:

💥 Combining everything!

Combine all these tools, various brushes and images with your imagination to create epic effects!

 

Most of the examples shown are made up of several saturated lines, glow brushes and particles, like the explosion.

This panel was intended to refer to the trope of getting struck by lightning to come alive, but not in the positive subtext...

 

I modified the bubble of the kid’s remark that the guy takes as a grave insult into a lightning bolt.

 

The background was made by stacking loads of images, lightning brushes, particles and blurred copies of these layers on various blending modes.

🟧 Conclusion

This tutorial was created to spark your creativity and show just how fun it can be to express emotions through visual effects using Clip Studio Paint.

 

Now it’s your turn—go wild and create the coolest, most expressive effects in your comics! 💥

🌟⭐✨ 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 where I could improve :) ✨⭐🌟

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For those who wanted to support me, I don’t have a Patreon nor I plan to get one. I’m doing this purely for the fun of sharing knowledge :)

I appreciate your messages and thoughts very much, though, thank you!

(´｡• ◡ •｡`) ♡