1
Initial roughs
I still tend to do these by hand but they are very
rough and just a guide for composition, really. I’m also
not too sure about the last two panels, so will leave them
to finish digitally. I tend to do roughs very small, as it’s all
about storytelling at this point and I don’t want to get
bogged down with the drawing. It’s also easier to look
at the whole page at this size so you can make sure
everything flows nicely.
2
Scanning from sketchbook
I scan the image into Comic Studio Paint (CSP), I’ve
already made a story template, so I open the correct page
and import directly into that. I scan the page of roughs in
pretty high resolution so that they’ll be able to take the
scaling-up. Once it’s in I use the marquee tool to select the
relevant rough and copy and paste. I’ll save the other
roughs for later as this will save time scanning in.4
Panel borders
I’ve set up default sizes across all the story pages so that the
outer panel border will snap to the correct size and the gutters will be
the same width. I lower the opacity of the roughs and convert the layer
to blue. There’s a little box in the layer window that displays this blue
colour but you can pick any colour you like – when you hover over the
box, a bucket will appear; click it and the layer changes to that colour.3
Resize to fit
I mess about a bit with the rough so that it fits the template
correctly, using the transform and marquee tools to resize and move
different bits to where I want them to go. When resizing I have the
“Keep original aspect ratio” box ticked. This will avoid any distortion
when altering the rough’s size without you having to remember to
hold down the Shift key.
In depth | Create a comic page
PRO SECRETS
CUSTOM KEYBOARD
SHORTCUTS
A great thing about
Clip Studio Paint is
that it enables you to
customise all of the
tools to really suit
your own workflow.
I have a Magic Wand
setup that will refer
only to my flats layer- I’ve done this by
setting the flats layer
up as a reference
layer. This means that
whatever layer I’m on,
I can use the wand
for a clean selection
without having to first
select the flats layer.
Many tools can be
customised in this
way: I also have an
eyedropper that
will refer only to
the current layer, so
that if, for example,
you’re using overlay
textures, you’ll still
be able to pick the
correct colour from
your rendering layer
without the overlay
colours affecting it.