Tag Archive for manga studio

Clip Studio Tutorial Video

I think I first encountered this video at least a year ago. Maybe two. It’s one of a series that Smith Micro Graphics made to raise the profile of Manga Studio (now called Clip Studio Paint and Manga Studio Ex is now called Clip Studio Pro).

The presenter is an artist by the name of D.M. Cumbo, who has been working on an illustrated story called Dreamside. At about the time that Smith Micro released the video, D.M. Cumbo was also making a number of videos about different Manga Studio techniques, but he’s gone a bit quiet on that front lately.

Cumbo’s art really stands out to me because of the vibrancy of colour that he achieves. In a later video, he says that vibrancy is really all about contrast, and that picking colours that contrast well is the key to creating vibrant images. He also really pushes the idea of bounce-back lighting in a number of his videos: he says that things really look “in the environment” when you can see the colours of the environment reflecting back on a figure or object in that environment.

There are three techniques that Cumbo describes in this video that interest me:

Read more

Process and Templates

I’m starting the art chores on a new comics project, and I’m finding process to be an interesting thing to think about. First thing I did was spend a few hours putting together a template.

The page size for this project is different than the page size for the last project, so my template from that project doesn’t fit. Unlike the last project, this time, the book’s editors distributed a template, with page size, bleed and trim. And it’s just fine, but it has text and stuff on it, and I want something cleaner.

Read more

Manga Studio FTW?

I’ve been experimenting with Manga Studio recently. There’s some stuff about it that I like (vectors and raster on the same drawing!), but every once in a while, I’m gobsmacked by the dumb. Like this:

Manga Studio rulers

If you turn on the canvas rulers, it marks out the measurements in whatever unit your canvas uses — I tend to go with inches. But it doesn’t give you, say, eighth-of-an-inch increments. It’s whole inches. Yargh.

Sure, I can switch over to cm or pixels, but why?