If you can master the brush pen, it produces lines that really flow in a way that I like a lot. Keeping it traditional: a brush pen I've seen some really amazing brush pen work…from other people. It can be difficult to get everything in the right place on the first try, but move too slow and your lines gets shaky - not to mention you usually lose the difference in pressure that makes your inking look dynamic. Cons: My main problem with the brush tool arises from not having a very steady hand. You have all the advantages of digital media like clean lines and endless re-tries, but you're working freehand so you can keep the liveliness of traditional art.
You see a line on your sketch layer, you draw a line. Keeping it lively: the brush tool The ol' tried-and-true brush tool. This also takes a heck of a lot longer than any other technique, and certain shapes (like circles) can be difficult to do nicely. Cons: Your sketch has to be fairly complete as well as neat for this technique to work - and as you can see in the image above, mine often are not (see the hand). You can follow your sketch down to the pixel. Lines can be made more or less thin to convey a sense of movement, and your lines are always crisp and precise. For me, this is usually the technique that give me the best results. In this newspost I'll lay out some of the techniques I've used for inking, and their pros and cons! Keeping it precise: the pen tool I'm being a bit of a photoshop elitist here - hopefully whatever programs you all use have a similar tool, in which you select an area and fill it in.
A well-inked image can make a sketch look professional, dynamic and ‘finished,’ while my own work often ends up sapping the life out of my initial sketch. I don't think I'm alone in saying this is one of my least favourite parts of the comic-making process. Look there are probably loads of other features missing, and many people will probably think these features hardly matter – but honestly, I think these are things that could really improve workflow.This is building a bit on ozoneocean's previous newspost on developing a sketch! For most comic artists, after having perfected a sketch (or at least getting it to an acceptable point) the next step is inking. JUST GIVE ME SAVED/SHARED PRESETS – I can save and share brushes, why not this one thing?
I use two document presets, 2000AD and US Comics, and every install of clip studio I have to recreate them (and it’s not easy since the numbers try and automatically correct themselves which means you key it in right, but then find the numbers have changed themselves and now you’ve to fix those) every time I recreate presets it’s a 20 minute job laden with mistakes. OKAY ONE MORE BONUS – please for the love of god, give this to me – feature request:
I realise there are people out there earning money as professional flatters, and I suspect they still will – because any automated flatting will never be as smart as a human flatting (esp if you’re working with a colourist for a long time) but for me who does the odd colour job, what I wouldn’t give for an AI flatter.
But I’d love it as a standard feature in clip studio. Clip Studio in Japanese apparently has a plug in feature and this (or something like it) exists as a plug in. Let me select a layer, ask for flats, and get a new layer with flatted fills in one smart go.
Come on! I can do PDF export on the ipad but not the desktop.
Smarter perspective rulers – let’s see the perspective line you’re about to draw before you draw it – there’s precedent here both Paint Tool Sai and Lazy nezumi Pro (both windows only) allow you to see the perspective line you’re about draw before you draw it (great for ensuring you’re following the same perspective of a building when you’ve drawn it with gaps).Clip Studio is smart enough to allow you to ignore draft layers when you use the fill tool (so if you have four layers and a draft and fill on layer three, it will look at the four layers as a complete unit and ignore the draft, super handy for digital inking) – but sometimes i want to see the lineart with the clutter of the pencils, and I have to go to the layers option and turn off draft layers individually (though, if you’re smart you keep all your draft layers in a single folder) Give me a toggle to automatically hide/show draft layers.I do both from the export menu, but I need to remember the settings between the two – please let me save those settings so I don’t forget and have to redo exports. I export for two reasons: one is to send preview png files to editors/writers and the other is to send tiff files. Auto Actions expanded to include settings for export / print options.
I love Clip Studio and have been using it for years, it IS full featured – to a remarkable degree, but there’s things it doesn’t have (and, unbelievably things it used to have too) and here’s my person wishlist: