Manga Studio: Saving Your Work and Beyond

If you haven’t done so already, make sure you save your work by clicking on File > Save As…. Type in the name of your work and press OK. This will create a file with a cpg file which is associated with Manga Studio, a thumbnail image of your work, a layer folder and a pff file. Save a lot and save frequently! If you want to be extra careful, you can make a backup of your work whether it’s via a Flash drive, CD or online.












Print out your work to see how it looks but before your hit the Print button, check out the Print Setup which will bring up this window with lots of printing options.

Select what you want to show up or not show up and hit Print at the bottom to send it to your printer. Hit OK if you would like to keep those settings for future print jobs.



























Luckily, there is a preview of how it will look like on the screen so use it to your advantage.

If you click on File > Export, you will get two options. You can either export by size or by pixels. Either one will bring you the same results so choose one that makes more sense to you.

Check off and adjust what you want the exported file to be then hit OK to start the conversion. When it’s done, a bmp file will appear at the location you specified with the specs you choose.

Note: If you resize your image after the conversion, the resulting image may not be as clean as the original particularly if you used tones.

Now you know all there is to making your own manga through Manga Studio. Go create something and most of all—have fun with it!

The finished image (tones have moire due to resizing):

 

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-saving-your-work-and-beyond

Manga Studio: Lettering Your Work

Lettering your work is as easy as typing in a word processor. All you have to do to get started is to hit the Text icon in the Tools palette indicated with the letter “A”. Then click on the area you want to place your dialogue. This will pop up a window which has multiple options from font type, font size, alignment and so on.




























Type your text in the box at the bottom which will appear in the page automatically. If you want to change the font type or size, you may have to highlight the text first and then set the size and font type before it’ll make the change.

Line spacing will fix the distance between lines. Double spacing, for example, is a very common line spacing.

Letter spacing, on the other hand, determines the space between each letter so words will either have letters close together or far apart.

Tip: Almost all dialogue’s in comics are capitalized. Also, the first letter of a sentence is generally bigger in size than the remaining letters. Keep that in mind when lettering your manga.

<< Text options. Double click on the text layer to bring it up again.

I’d like to take this time to remind you to keep your text and all important images within the main blue box at the center. This is what’s called the Safety Zone. Anything beyond that may get cropped off when you’re printing and publishing your work.


















The space beyond the Safety Zone is called the Trim and beyond the Trim is called Bleed. Anything beyond the Trim will be lost. Drawing are drawn to the Bleed area to create a consistent look when in published format. If artists don’t draw their images to the Bleed area, you will get panels where the images just stops and overall, that looks unprofessional and incomplete.

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-lettering-your-work

Manga Studio: Making Word Balloons in EX

Unlike the Debut version which I mainly cover in these Manga Studio tutorials, Manga Studio EX has other extra features that the standard software does not. Aside from sporting extra tones, images, and 3D assets, EX also allows it’s user a time-saving feature when making, using, and placing tones.

To use this feature, you have to open up your Material Folder. At the Tool Bar, you will see a yellow folder at the right side. Click on that to open up the Materials Folder window as seen below. On the left side under Default, you will see a folder called “Word Balloons”. Click on that to see some ready-made balloons that comes standard with the software.

To use the balloons, just select the word balloon you want and drag and drop it into the page. This automatically creates a new layer under Images and you can now move it around and place it where you want it to go (but make sure you select the Move Layer tool first or it won’t budge). Next, let’s place text in the balloon by selecting the Text tool and clicking in the balloon.

Type in your text and hit okay when done. The text will now be centered in the balloon. To fiddle with it some more, double click on the word balloon layer which will bring up the window shown above right. If you changed your mind regarding the shape of the word balloon, hit the drop down arrow under “Select Word Balloon” to easily change the word balloon currently in use. Check the Fit Text box if you want the balloon to automatically resize itself or if you prefer, you can resize it yourself by dragging and dropping the indigo- colored boxes surrounding the balloon.

Note: Resize your balloon before you hit the “Add Tail” button because once you select that, you cannot go back and resize the balloon!

Now, let’s add a tail by hitting the “Add Tail” button. A small box will pop up in the center of the word balloon. Select it and drag and drop it to the place where you want the tail to end. Once you drop it, a tail will automatically be generated for you. If you made a mistake or don’t like it, hit “Delete Tail” to get rid of it. If you want to rearrange your text, you can easily do that too by hitting the Text tab at the center.

Now that you know how to use the word balloon, let me show you how to make your own! First, make a new page. Next, draw a shape using the Lines, Curves, Ellipse, Rectangle or any other tool you want to. When you’re satisfied with your word balloon, click on File > Save Pattern as Word Balloon. This will bring up a window like below. Name your balloon at the upper field before hitting OK. You will then receive a message that says “The Word Balloon has been registered to the Material Palette”. If you click on the Material Folder and go to User > Word Balloon Materials, you should see your own creation sitting there ready to be used!

 

If you want to rename your word balloon or do anything else to it, click on the icon that looks like a ruler with an arrow next to it. Click on Properties to bring up a window. One of the options is to export and import word balloons which is pretty neat if you want to share your balloons with other folks* (51KB). ;D

* This set will ONLY work with EX! If you have the standard Manga Studio, then you will not be able to load this.

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-making-word-balloons-in-ex

Manga Studio: Making Word Balloons

Word Balloons allows your characters to talk but not only that, it is also is a way to represent how they are feeling. The three most standard balloons are the speech with it’s round shape, shout with multiple sharp edges and the thought balloon with it’s cloud-like visual. Balloons can also be used for sound effects though that is much more rare.



To create standard balloons, you will have to use the Ellipse tool as mentioned earlier. Before you start making them, create a new layer. Create the outline of the word balloon, then hit the Fill icon (i.e. bucket), select the white color underneath and click inside the word balloon you just created. This will create a nice word balloon… which is usually spoken by someone outside of the panel.

To show someone in the panel has spoken, you need to add a tail—the little triangular point at the side of a balloon by using the line or curve tool. After creating the ellipse, add the tail, erase the line that separates the tail and the word balloon and fill it with white. This will create your average tailed speech balloon.

If you don’t like the placement of your balloon, you can move it around by using the Move Layer tool as seen on the right. Make sure you select the layer where the balloon or else something else will move which you don’t want to happen.

Making shout balloons will require mostly the line tool while thought balloons will require the curve and ellipse tool. After you’ve made the basic shape, fill them in with white.



















You can take things a step further by overlapping balloons over each other for text-heavy conversations to make one big word balloon.

I should also mention that there are some dialogue that occurs outside of the word balloons. These are usually “mumblings” that the characters say to themselves. There are also cases where the creator didn’t use word balloons in their manga and all that denoted what someone said was a line coming from a block of text.

All in all, use word balloons or not. Create as standard or as unusual a word balloon as you want. What really matters in the end is the words being said and if the readers can understand who said what. Speaking of words, lets move on to just that…

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-making-word-balloons

Manga Studio: Adding Speed and Focus Lines

Nothing shows action like speed and focus lines. Speed lines are multiple lines that denotes movement while focus lines are like bursts of light that focus on an aspect on the page.




To create focus or speed lines, all you have to do is go to Filter and then choose Focus Lines… or Speed Lines…. This will bring up a new window with multiple options you can select to create your speed or focus lines.

The options mostly remain the same as seen in the image below. One main difference is the shape that appears depending one what type of line effects you are creating. For focus lines, a circle will appear whereas parallel lines are present for speed lines. Drag and drop the red X to where you want to create your line effect. Let’s take a look at some of the common settings between the two:

Length — determines the length of the lines
Width — determines the thickness of the lines
Angle — changes what angle one line will be to it’s neighbor. The higher the degree, the further one line will be from it’s neighbors
Curve — will spiral the lines and create waves
Shift — how far it will be from the center as seen above for focus lines and for speed lines, it will stagger the lines so it doesn’t resemble a lined paper.

Random — will randomly place the lines depending on which setting you will place so it looks less uniform and more hand-made.
In/Out — this will set the ending and beginning lines to sharpen to a point
Drawing/Background Color — this setting will turn the lines black, white, transparent or inverted with black or white lines
Distance — how far from the x mark the lines will start.






Aside from these, there are icons on the top of the Layer Properties window. Here, you will find a hand which can move the page around, an arrow you can use to move the red X and the focus of the speed lines, and a pencil that gives you more control in setting the effect lines.

Focus Lines also have an extra icon called Draw Position Transform that lets you draw a box-like shape that you can expand or contract. The red line is the border that the lines will automatically set themselves to start.

Speed lines has another option you can use and it deals with alignment. Near the bottom, you will see three radio buttons with Start Point, Center and End Point which are the equivalent of left, center and right alignment. Clicking one of these will move the red X and realign all the speed lines.

Remember: Make a new layer for each new effect lines you make! If you do not, it will be put in with the same layer that was selected (i.e. a tone, your etching or line art).

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-adding-speed-and-focus-lines

Manga Studio: Setting Tones

To bring life and dimension to your comic, you have to use tones. Tones vary from gradations, emotional effects and even backgrounds. To see the collection of tones available, hit Window > Tones or F6. Manga Studio Debut has over 1800 tones to use while EX, the professional (and more expensive version) has over 3000. An easy way to see all the tones is to click on Help > Materials Catalog which will open up a 92-page PDF file listing all the tones and then some in both Debut and EX.

When the Tones Palette opens, you will see a window like above with three columns. The left column is a very useful explorer which you can use to quickly move from one folder to another. The middle column previews all the tones within the selected folder in the first column and the right-most column shows a preview. Here, I have it set up to show a large preview. Hit the down-arrow to choose between a Small or Large preview and change the percentage to it’s right for further zoom ins or outs.

Before we begin placing tones, I highly suggest you make a copy of your originals line art. Making a duplicate will come in handy just in case you make a mistake setting down the tones.







To make a copy of a layer, just click on the layer, then drag and drop it on the page icon with the star at the corner next to the folder up above. This will create an exact replica of your original work automatically named after the original layer with “Copy” attached afterwards.

The fastest way to set a tone is to paste them. First, you will need to select the Magic Wand tool from the Tools Palette as seen on the right. Once you have selected that, choose the section of your drawing that you would like to fill with tone.

Flashing dashed lines or marching ants as they are called will appear marking the area that was selected. As you can see below, the selected area is rather large encompassing the brim of the hat plus a section to the right which shouldn’t have been selected.

To set tones properly, the lines within a selected area must be closed. Any gaps will cause problems like below which means you have to go back and close those gaps! Make the corrections in the original line art and make a copy of it once more. You can delete the old layer by dragging and dropping it on top of the trash icon.

Tip: To quickly deselect a selection, hit CTRL + D

 

Open the Tones Palette if you haven’t already. When you’ve found the perfect tone to use, drag and drop it’s thumbnail into the page. Even if you drop it outside of the selected area, the tone will automatically be pasted into the selected area only.








Tip: If you have more than one area that will have the same tone, hold down “Shift” while clicking on the areas you want selected.

A new layer will pop up indicating the tone that’s used complete with a thumbnail. Make sure you remember to reselect your line art layer before you start on placing new tones!

For more options on how you place the tone, you can double click on the tone which will bring up a Tone Properties window like the one above. Check off the box at the bottom titled Show Image on the Page to see a preview of the tone on your page.

To move the whole page, select the hand icon up top and move the page around. Select the cross-arrow to move the tone in the selected area around. To rotate it, click on the circular icon. Click on Paste on Page if you like it or hit Close if you don’t.

If you later decide to have another area with the same tone or forgot to select an area that’s part of a whole, reselect the area again and paste the tone. This produces a new layer with the same name as seen to the right. You can keep them apart or you can merge them together to make things easier for you to keep track of things. Merge by right clicking on the upper layer, hit Merge Down and hit okay at the new window.


You can also paste multiple tones on top of each other for more effects. Just select the same areas and paste on the tone as usual.

Also, you can change the transparency of a tone by changing the percentage above in the layers palette. Just make sure to select the proper layer before you start changing the transparency setting.

<< Transparency percentage, new layer, folder and trash can icons in the Layers Palette makes things easier. Use them well!

Take toning a step further by digitally etching it. Etching is the term used when bits of tone are scratched off creating a highlighted effect. You can do this by using one of the drawing tools like the pen, make the color white by clicking on the white box at the tools palette and draw on top of the tones. Remember to create a new layer just for your etches!

Drawing white on top of tone is the digital version of etching.>>

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-setting-tones

Manga Studio: Drawing and Importing Images Part II

B. Drawing with Pencil , Pen & Brush















You have the option of drawing directly into Manga Studio. To do so, just hit one of the drawing tools in the Tools Palette and start drawing into the page. Here’s a list of the drawing tools you can use:

1. Line (Curve, and Polyline)
2. Rectangle (Oval, and Polygon)
3. Pen
4. Pencil
5. Marker
6. Eraser
7. Fill (aka Bucket)
8. Airbrush
9. Pattern Brush

Hit the arrow to quickly change the line size of the tool or in the case of number 1 and 2, choose another shape.

Before you start drawing, make a new layer, rename it and then choose your drawing tool and begin drawing. This way, you keep your pieces separate and if you make a mistake, one part of the drawing will not affect the other. Refer to page 5 to refresh yourself about layers.

Note: A new layer will be created automatically when you choose the Line or Rectangle tool so just watch out when you use the other seven drawing tools.

Most of the drawing tools have the same tool options being the ability to change the line width of the “ink” that’ll come out onto the page. Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll find in tools number 3 to 9 as marked in the previous page:

Size – the size of resulting “ink” mark made on the page, sized in millimeters. The higher the size, the bigger the line width.







Correction – this feature automatically smoothes out wobbly drawing lines. The higher the number, the greater it will smooth out shaky lines.

Opacity – use this to make the output as transparent or solid as you like. Drawing at 50% opacity, the resulting line will appear half-solid.

Pen Tool
G, Maru, Kabura, School, Brush, Gray Use – most of these specify a certain pen nib popularly used by mangaka or professional comic creators with preset sizes.






Pen & Pencil Tool
In & Out – this will create sharp points at the beginning and end of your lines.

Pencil Tool
Thin, Medium, Thick, Mechanical Pencil, Hard, Soft – these represent different pencil types you come across in real-life with differences in output and thickness.


Airbrush
Density & Dot Size – this will determine how thickly the “spray” will fall onto the page plus how big the individual “sprays” are.
Random Dots – always keep this checked to create as natural a spray output as possible.

Fill Tool
Allowable Error in Color – this tells the program at what point to let the fill override “colors” that aren’t solidly of a certain color.











Pattern Brush
The pattern brush has numerous patterns that you can “draw” onto the page from typical brush strokes to patterns such as stars, hatches, and hearts.

Interval – specifies the length where another pattern will start from the last pattern. The smaller the number, the closer the pattern will be to one another.

Click on Size, Opacity and Interval for more options.

The Line and Rectangle Tools have the option of becoming other shapes. Click on the tool to bring up their specific tool option as shown on the right.

As specified earlier, the Line tool can also bring up Curves and Polyline shapes whereas the Rectangle tool has Ellipses and Polygons. To toggle between them, click on the appropriate thumbnail image beneath the palette title. Doing so will bring up their specific options. Most of these have been explained in the previous page. The single difference is under the Polygon Tool which has a “Sides” box which you can use to control how many sides the resulting shape will have.

When creating a shape, just click where you want to create it. Then drag till you see the desired shape you want then click again. Now, you have the option of rotating the new shape. Hit the mouse again to set it permanently. If you messed up, hit the Undo button.

To use the Line Tool, click once to set the starting point of the line then keeping your finger down on the left mouse button, move your mouse to the point you want and click again to set the line.

Working the Curve tool is similar to the Line Tool except that after setting the end point of the line, you then have to move your mouse to the direction you want the curve to be. Click for a third time to set it.

Using the Polyline Tool is different from the other two. For one thing, you don’t have to keep your finger down on the left mouse button after setting up the starting point of the line. Just keep clicking at the points you want the Polyline to turn. When you’re done making the Polyline, double click and this will set it. If you made a mistake setting one of the points, press the Esc key and it’ll undo the last point.

As was suggested earlier, use layers to keep the lines separate. This way, should you make a mistake, the others will not be disturbed when you erase or delete the unwanted result.

When you’re done setting up all the lines to your satisfaction, you can merge all the drawing layers together to create one uniform set of lines which will be needed when toning (i.e. setting patterns).

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-drawing-and-importing-images-part-ii

Manga Studio: Drawing and Importing Images Part I

From here onwards, there are two ways to proceed:














A. Importing your work into Manga Studio (i.e. a scanned page, artwork drawn in another program, etc.), or
B. Drawing straight into Manga Studio using the built-in Pencil, Pen, and Brush tools

If you’d like to go straight to drawing, head to Part II, otherwise read on:

A. Importing Images
The first thing you will need is your already-drawn artwork. It could be pencil sketches or an inked piece. If it’s just pencil sketches, you will have to take an extra step to produce a finished inked work using Manga Studio. With those in hand, let’s start importing…

With your page(s) open, click on File, Import and then select one of the following:

Image File…
TWAIN…
Select TWAIN device…

TWAIN refers to your scanner. Select TWAIN if you want to scan your image or choose Select TWAIN device if you have more than one scanner connected to your computer (i.e. flatbed scanner, 4-in-1 printer, etc.)

When you select your scanner, it will bring up a new window as seen above. Choose the appropriate settings under the Main tab and hit Preview. This will bring up a preview of the scan on the right.

Drag and drop your mouse or move your mouse over the boxes surrounding the image in the preview area to select what part of the page you want scanned. After you’ve done that, hit OK at the bottom and it will now scan your selection into Manga Studio and onto your page.

If your scan becomes washed out as seen above, go to Bitmap Technique in the Import Images window and change the setting from Threshold to Dither. If the result doesn’t clearly show the image as seen below, play around with the settings in the Import Images window until your scan turns out well.

Also, don’t forget to name the layer under Layer Name.

Now, we’re going to adjust the size of the image. Since our example is a full-page spread; meaning the whole page is the panel; it will be adjusted to fill most of the page. If your scan will fit a smaller panel, adjust yours accordingly.

To adjust the imported image, you can use the Scale setting seen in the Import Images window below. Move the slider up or down or type in a number into the field. You can also use your mouse by clicking on one of the boxes surrounding the drawing and dragging and dropping it to a size you like.

NOTE: Try to keep the main points of your image and text within the boundaries of the central box.






















Traditionally, anything beyond may be cut off when it goes to the printing presses. Computers printers too have a boundary they may not print beyond so keep the focus centralized.

Click the down arrow under “Layer Type” to switch between Raster Layer and Sketch Layer. Sketch Layer will keep the original look of the imported file. For example, this background will remain in color if left under Sketch Layer. To turn it to black and white, choose Raster Layer.

Fiddle with the remaining options to get different results. Under Subtractive Method, choose Threshold for a stark black and white contrast (shown below) or choose Dither or Diffusion for a more subtle and smooth effect. Click on the Move and Transform tab for scaling options. Adjust the numbers in the text boxes or click the image and drag and drop to resize the imported file. Hit Auto Adjust… for more pre-made size options.

Hit the down arrow next to Position and choose one of the four options. These will automatically resize your imported image. Make further adjustments by choosing the alignment by clicking on Up, Down, Left or Right under Direction. When you’re satisfied with the results, hit the OK button to get back to the page or hit Cancel to get back to the page without adding the imported image.

Note: At the top of Move and Transform tab are some arrows. The right-most arrow flips the image horizontally while the arrow to the left flips it vertically. The other two arrows undo and redo your actions.

That’s all there is to importing images. Let’s move on to drawing!

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2008/manga-studio-drawing-and-importing-images-part-i