First Comic Page From Manga Studio!

[NeilUnreal]

Hi-

I finally got a fairly coherent comic page finished in Manga Studio Debut 3.0, a new comic creation software package I bought!

I have no idea where this story is going, all I know is that it involves an explorer, an inventor, and the search for a long-missing aviatrix.

I scaled it down bigtime in order to get it uploaded here. The full 600dpi print-ready version is 99MB when rendered uncompressed in RGB (but much less in editing mode). It uses black ink layers, a black halftone layer, a blue halftone layer, and the rest of the color is flat spot color.

-Neil

[Kelp]

Looks like it'll be a good one :thumb:

[Tickle Me Mercury]

That's really cool looking.

[Leroy]

Wow,

That's pretty incredible!

I clicked on the image and made it bigger, but that distorts the picture a little.

[Thinking Madly]

Wow. I love your jaunty use of perspective. It sets the mood for a strange, surreal story.
I look forward to reading your comic.

[luv1another]

nice neil :thumb:

[NeilUnreal]

Thanks all! Although I admit I'm kind of stuck at this point. I guess I just need to keep drawing the next page. When I paint or draw, I can never seem to think up a even an entire picture, much less a whole story. I just start drawing something, anything, even if it’s just random lines, and then I pull out the rest of the image Rorschach-style. So it’s easier for me to draw a bunch of random lines, then disconnected objects, then disconnected images, and at each stage try to figure out what story they are trying to tell me, lol.

It sets the mood for a strange, surreal story

I grew up reading the simple, cleanly inked, flat-color comics like Superman, the Fantastic Four, etc. It was an eye-opening experience when I happened on the gritty, complex (visually and morally), film-noir surrealist worlds of comic artists like Wallace Wood, Will Eisner, and Harvey Kurtzman. (Mostly through back issues and anthologies of Mad, etc. -- the originals being a bit before my time.) It was a little frightening, perhaps my first realization that art could be serious, and since serious, sometimes unsafe and uncomfortable. The experience still haunts me a bit, and I can still find that seriousness while drawing or painting by following my discomfort. (Though being sunny NeilUnreal, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, lol.)

-Neil

[flipper]

I like it - very gritty. If I had one criticism (and it's based entirely on the understanding that I would do exactly the same thing myself), it's that you went a bit tone-crazy when provide with a wealth of libraries. Still, it gives me a good idea of some of what is offered with the package.

This is the Letraset application, yeah? How does it compare to Illustrator/Pshop or Painter for your illustration?

[NeilUnreal]

…it's that you went a bit tone-crazy when provide with a wealth of libraries.

The odd thing is, I actually went in the opposite direction: I started mostly by just spamming in random tones and pattern brushes on top of sketched perspective lines, just to try them out, and the street scene emerged from all that randomness. It was the garbage can that really bootstrapped the setting; after I drew the muck leaking from it, I knew I had to finish with a gritty street scene, and that suggested the characters. The tones were already in place, so I just left them. It would have seemed like abandoning the source to delete them from the final version, lol.

This is the Letraset application, yeah? How does it compare to Illustrator/Pshop or Painter for your illustration?

This is the product from CelSys in Japan, marketed in the U.S. through e-frontier (http://www.e-frontier.com/go/products/mangastudio).

I haven’t done a lot of work in Illustrator (at least for a while) or Photoshop, but I’ve been a Painter user since version 1.5. The best way I can put it is:

Of equal quality in every respect to those packages, and even above average in ease-of-use, but aimed at a different purpose.

Illustrator is, of course, aimed a general purpose commercial illustration; Photoshop is aimed at creation and manipulation of continuous tone images; and Painter at the creation and manipulation of continuous tone images using simulated natural media.

Manga Studio combines aspects of Illustrator and Painter, but with important differences:

It’s like Illustrator in that it is aimed at commercial illustration, but unlike Illustrator in that the focus is on drawing. Perhaps the best analogy I can think of is to say that when I've used other illustration software, it's like working with the digital equivalent of printed mylar screens, frisket, and a technical pen. When using Magna Studio it's more like just picking up a freehand airbrush or a set of Pigma pens and going wild!

It’s like Painter in that it is aimed a simulating what artists do off the computer, but unlike Painter, Manga Studio is designed to work with half-toned spot color images as opposed to either process color or continuous tone.

Manga Studio never lets you forget you are working in layers of ink on a discrete page. I mean that in a good way, in that it gives you the tools and support to work comfortably in a halftone and spot-color environment, yet in a way that is also more artistically natural than most general commercial illustration packages like Illustrator. And unlike Painter, you are drawing to the end medium itself, without the potential expense or conversion vagaries of process color. So for people doing art, as opposed to pure illustration, that will be printed in halftone with or without spot color, Manga Studio is ideal (e.g. it’s perfect for comics).

However, this is not to say it is not also a great tool for comics and art that will remain digital. By incorporating the philosophy of the print medium, Manga Studio makes it easy to create digital images that capture the look and feel of traditional comics and related print illustration.

It accomplishes this largely by respecting the traditional four phases of the comic-creation process: penciling, inking, captioning, and coloring. However, the fact that all layers can be kept available at any stage of the process means that there are no hard boundaries, for example where inking must be finalized before moving on to the coloring. You can add sketches, ink, etc. right up to the end, or you can start right in drawing in to flat or halftone color layers without even making a sketch.

In summary, kudos to the designers and programmers of this product. It’s rare to find something that is both so ideal for a complex process and yet so easy to use.

-Neil

[flipper]

I am so sorry for not replying to this sooner (actually, i just wrote a reply moments ago and sent it, but it seems to have vanished into the aether).

Anyway, I really appreciated your thorough contrasting of the different applications. I have seen and been curious about Manga Studio, but had no direct experience with it. So it is interesting to hear from someone who actually uses it.

I would really like to see some of your work sometime. Let me know if you ever post more or you have a web site, won't you?

[NeilUnreal]

I have seen and been curious about Manga Studio, but had no direct experience with it. So it is interesting to hear from someone who actually uses it.

As an update, my experience is still positive, so much so that I decided to upgrade to the "Ex" version. (Technically, I got the upgrade as a late Christmas gift because I couldn't decide what I wanted at Christmastime :lol: )

I'm still having a lot of fun using the software, and I learn new things about it all the time. I've been splitting my "comics" time between playing with Manga Studio and learning more about traditional pencilling (i.e. with real paper :lol: ). So, rather the enumerate all the things I like (which is very nearly everything about the entire package), here are a few things I don't like as much:

1) The panel layout tools could be a bit easier to use and more flexible. Maybe I just haven't figured out the methodology the authors of Manga Studio are trying to get me to use, but I still find it easier to create the initial panel layout using other graphics packages. Once that is done, however, it is a breeze to import the layout into Manga Studio (as a monochrome bitmap) and use it to create panel layers. It may be that I tend to think of the panels constructively (i.e. adding panels to a blank page) while Manga Studio seems to be geared towards reductive panels (i.e. dividing a page into panels). I don't know enough about comic-ing to say; perhaps the latter is how comic artists traditionally think of panels; the problem may be with me and my approach. I want to work through some of the tutorials before I give up trying to figure out what Manga Studio is trying to tell me about this.

2) The font handling capabilities do not extend much beyond the built-in Windows font support, and let's face it: Windows has lousy font handling when it comes to emulating hand-lettering. Solving it well would probably add too much to the expense and complexity of both basic Windows and Manga Studio. Perhaps some sort of add-on would better solve this problem.

3) I have a few minor quibbles about the depth of some menu items in terms of required clicks, etc. However, the Ex version has pretty decent shortcut customization features which I have barely explored.

I would really like to see some of your work sometime. Let me know if you ever post more or you have a web site, won't you?

Thanks. I have a domain name and tons of unused space on a server somewhere; I would like to get something going as time permits.

-Neil