How do I animate manga from my computer?

How do you draw manga on the computer?

• Answer:

  This is not going to be a simple or quick answer, but I will try to condense it. I'm also assuming basic understanding of Adobe Photoshop, resolution/DPI and wacoms. There are two main ways of starting off. By hand first, or by PC purely. By hand first: Draft the page on paper, making sure to follow bleeding requirements (or buy deleter paper and pay attention to the print size label to see if it's suitable). It is best to ink by hand as well if you're intending to print, this solves some grayscale issues on the PC later, and gives better line weights (thicker for closer objects, thinner for smaller things and hair). If it is meant to be digital only, you might ink on the PC (or skip this stage altogether and read the PC only portion, but manga produced exclusively for web-viewing is generally not compatible for printing and must be redrawn, where as printable resolution can be reduced. So bear that in mind. Scan the image at 600-1200 DPI B/W (the lines look jagged at 100%, they won't at print size or reduced web resolution). Make sure to make the image Grayscale instead of bitmap, then change the layer properties of the Lineart you just scanned to Multiply. Now make new layers and tone underneath it. ---- PC only: You can skip the drafting process, but you must now measure out your own bleeds for your page. Make sure you draw to the very edge of each page regardless of the bleed. The bleed is there to make it safe in case of bad cropping, but it will show a white edge unless you cover it. Nothing important should be in the bleed area (speechbubbles, eyes). These notes are important for hand drafting, but the Deleter paper comes with these instructions so they are less easy to overlook. Start with two layers over your background, one with your margins, the other your drafting layer. This can be very rough. Once done, I usually turn the opacity down then make a new layer and trace over it with final lines. I like black 3px brush set at 92% opacity and 100% flow. The entire process is done with a tablet. You could do it with a mouse, but it is much more difficult and not many people still give kudos for mouse-drawn lineart for it to be worth it. Wacom Intuos 4 does the job well, but I also had enough luck with an older Sapphire. Once you have your lineart, again turn the Layer Properties to Multiply, make the draft layer invisible, then make new layers under the Lineart layer in which to insert tones. There are a few ways to tone your art. The fastest way (not really suitable for print), is using grayscale tones on Adobe, then converting them to dots by making the tone layer a bitmap in another file, or by using the Pixelate > Gradient halftone option (Your image needs to be grayscale, or it will come out multicolored). Manga studio is a professional manga creating software that cuts a lot of the work in tones, it also has a large database of ready to use digital tones suitable for print. If you have Adobe or Paintshop already and only want to create web-manga, then you probably won't need the Studio software. There are many more aspects to making a good manga, and these are some basics. A search for specific tutorials on Paneling, Storyboarding and Action Line use will help with the aesthetic and storytelling side.