WEBTOON Basics Learning about drawing tools (Clip Studio)
GCC Academy
Learning Goals Be able to explain the overall functions of Clip Studio Be able to explain the functions of vector layers Know and use the functions of the cut line, streamline, action line tools, and ruler tools
Learning Contents Clip Studio’s features Functions of vector layers Functions of the cut line, streamline, action line tools, and ruler tool
Professor Yun Kyung Na Career: Chungkang University graduate - Department of Comics Creation Invited Professor, Webtoon Cartoon Contents School, Chungkang University Works: Webtoon Kakao Page Founding Series (2018)
Published Meet the World through Science Comics 2015 Published Lee Eo-ryeong’s journey through textbooks 2011~2013 Published Flash in the East Flash in the West Hong Gil-dong Exhibition 2009
Hello, my name is Yun Kyung Na, a webtoon artist
and an Invited Professor at Chungkang University's Webtoon Cartoon Contents School
I teach students classes related to webtoon drawing
Clip Studio is a professional cartoon authoring tool program produced by a company called Celsys
Previously, it was developed and operated as programs called Comic Studio and Illustration Studio
Since 2012, the two programs have been merged
to be use as a tool that allows you to author cartoon illustrations as a whole
It is divided into Clip Studio PRO, which focuses on illustration writing
and Clip Studio EX, which focuses on cartoon and webtoon production
Along with Adobe's Photoshop
it has now been established as an indispensable tool
for various industries such as comics, illustrations, webtoons, and animations
It has expanded capabilities for writers to work
not only limited in general PC environments such as Windows or Mac OS
but also in tablets such as iPhone, iPads and Androids
and it has made easier for writers to move their work environments
away from fixed desks to a more flexible environment
In this lecture, in addition to Photoshop functions
we will focus on unique Clip Studio functions
that are useful in creating webtoons and comics
Since we have more emphasis on webtoon-making,
I will explain things based on Clip Studio EX version
Clip Studio's Functions
When you open Clip Studio, you will see this main window
If you click the Paint button on the top left corner
The familiar Clip Studio screen will appear
but before that if you look at the bottom
you will find functions named Manage works and Manage materials
this has a cloud function that allows
artists to work from anywhere
In the cloud there are Manage Works that synchronizes the files you have created
and Manage material that is related to various materials you use
If you see here you can see my work files
and files of materials that I use
Other than that at the bottom, there is Essential Tutorials
CLIP STUDIO ASSETS for finding various materials
in CLIP STUDIO TIP you can find tips of other Clip Studio users
and in CLIP STUDIO ASK you can ask questions regarding the program
this 'How can I help you' menu lets you ask questions about
any questions or inconveniences you might have with the program
There are various functions in the Service Tab
Now if you click Clip Studio Paint and run it
you open another window called Clip Studio Paint
The screen you're seeing right now is the screen of
the drawing tool commonly known as Clip Studio
On the left, there are direct drawing tools, which are used for drawing directly
And on the right, there is a window for indirect drawing tools
In the middle, there is a canvas for drawing, and at the top, there is a command bar
The command bar contains frequently used functions of Clip Studio
executed with just one click through a custom options window
On the far left, you'll see a long toolbar divided into sections
From here to here, you have the drawing and editing toolset
Then, from Pen to here, you have the drawing toolset
below that, it's divided into coloring and comic editing toolsets
At the very top left, there's a magnifying glass for zooming in and out
then the hand tool for navigating around the canvas
next there's the operation tool for editing layers or tools
the layer move tool for moving layers within the canvas
The selection range tool for editing specific lines and colors
The automatic selection tool for selecting specific areas within the canvas
eyedropper tool for extracting colors displayed within the canvas
These are the drawing and editing toolset
drawing with a black pen in comics is called inking
This is the tool for inking
This is the pencil used for sketching
This is coloring brush used for general coloring
and the airbrush for creating an airbrush effect
And the decoration brush that provides convenience
by utilizing various patterned material images
the eraser used to erase lines
The color mixing function used when mixing colors together, just like when working manually
These are all part of the drawing toolset
The fill tool used for filling colors
And the gradient tool used for creating a smooth gradient effect
And various freehand drawing tools
expressive representation, such as straight, curve, polyline, and focus line tools
You see it says freehand drawing tools here
panel border and panel editing tool, which is essential to comic making
And the tool assisting in various depictions such as symmetry, curve, radial, and perspective
the text tool for entering dialogue
And the speech bubble tool for depicting dialogue in comics
And the line modification tool for editing lines in the vector layer
These will be the coloring and comic editing toolset
You'll find the auxiliary tool list with various tools inside next to it, this is the auxiliary tool list
the tool property, where you can adjust the various functions of the tools
With the auxiliary tool list and the tool property window arranged like this
artists can determine all the settings for selecting tools and
working with different options on the left side before proceeding with their work
The window arrangement doesn't have to be this way
When you install Clip Studio Paint, the workspace is divided into two sections like this
If you drag this section with the names written on the tabs
it can be separated like this
Because it can be categorized like this
you can change it according to your style or needs
Now, if you look to the right on the program screen, you'll see a color circle where you can select colors
And you can adjust various options of the working layer through the layer properties
Here is the layer properties
Below that, you'll see a layer list where layers stack up
If you try clicking the tab once, you'll see the auto action that appears
Auto actions, which are tools that can be used indirectly rather than directly
can be found on the right side, similar to what you can see in Photoshop
If you've ever used photoshop
you would be able to at least vaguely understand everything
Now, coming back to the center before opening the canvas
I want to talk about the command bar at the top
As explained, the command bar is
Open Clip Studio, for opening the main page of Clip Studio
On the left as you see here
As described earlier, you'll see that it opens the main window of Clip Studio Paint
We have this button and
If you press New Canvas, you'll be able to open a new canvas
I will come back to this later
And there is Open Saved Canvas
you can use this to bring up any saved files
On the right is to save files
We have the Fill Tool function here, which was also here in the tools section
and Delete
You can customize it according to your personal preferences
Now these are all the basic functions available
And as you move to the right, you'll find more functions
This is the Snap function
which allows the ruler to stick closely when using the cutting tool
These are Horizontal Flip, Vertical Flip, Rotation, Flip Reset
Undo, Redo, Previous Page, Next Page
Horizontal Flip and Vertical Flip are functions to, as said, flipping images
There was also another function for horizontal flip, vertical flip on the left side earlier
This is for when you work on something visible. For example
If you have a hard time drawing the left side of the face
You can use the vertical flip on the left and draw it
Now you can customize all these functions from the Command Bar
You can edit those under the top menu labeled as Command Bar Settings
I'm working on a Mac right now
but Windows might not have the Clip Studio Paint menu
Instead of that menu, if you click the File tab
under Print, you should find all these menus there
and you can utilize that
Now we will open a new canvas and start making a webtoon
From the top menu, click the New function in the File tab and a window like this will show up
On this window, you can see the purpose of the artwork
starting from the top left
First, this one with the flower illustration is for illustrations
you would use this for illustrations drawn in a single picture
and this rolled up paper illustration is for webtoons
Webtoons are drawing that are long and scroll from top to bottom
So the icon of webtoon is represented like this
The one that looks like regular page comics is indeed for comics
the icon with multiple pages is for Doujinshi
and to customize and change
all of these functions to your liking
will be the Comic Setting Display feature
And the last one you see is for Animation
People who work on animation also use Clip Studio
You can think of Clip Studio as a tool for creating
all types of comics used in various industries
You can see the options vary depending on the purpose of work
For illustrations you only see these options but for webtoons you see something different
for general comics it becomes wider like this
If you go to Doujinshi settings, there will be another option
but if you click Comic Setting Display
It will show everything
Functions slightly vary like this
Let's try clicking Animation
Here you can set things up like
timelines and frames according to your preferences
We will be making webtoons
So we choose Webtoon and will input the details below
For the details
there are many presets available but file size and format requirements
will vary depending on the publisher
I recommend to start it from Custom
Here you can see a few presets
Let's click them
You can see webtoon1, webtoon2, webtoon3 and so on
And there is Custom
Again, I recommend using the Custom settings
Because the manuscript standards for webtoons on platforms like Naver or KakaoPage differ
also the canvas sizes required by webtoon sites such as Lezhin and Tapas vary
Therefore I recommend customizing your work to
the format required by the platform you are working for
I usually recommend working with a larger scale and reducing it as needed
And the save button on the side
You can see the save button that looks exactly like the other save button
This button
is used to save canvas size and or format
so I can easily retrieve them without
having to input the details every time
On the other hand thee trash bin is for deleting the format
We will go into Canvas setting details
Width is the horizontal, and height refers to the vertical
The Page Settings right below that is a distinctive feature
This setting is exclusively available in Clip Studio Ex version
You can choose how many pages you want to create
I recommend using the option for specifying the page numbers instead of page division
Because Page Division creates one large canvas and
divides that into smaller sections for editing
The other option is selecting a small page format
and progressively creating more pages in that format
as you work
So rather than dividing the overall length into limited sections
expanding multiple smaller pages
suits better for webtoons
which is in a scroll format
With this, let's now create a webtoon template
I set the pages numbers to 10
If you click OK
You will see the webtoon manuscript
Vector Layers
The core features unique to Clip Studio
Let me give you a explanation on Vector Layers
On the bottom right, I've created two types of layers: vector and raster layers
If you look at this section where the layer window tools are
the first is New Raster Layer, the second is New Vector Layer
like this, you can make two types of layers
The difference between the two
First of all, Raster layer is pretty much similar to what you would use in Photoshop
It has those exact characteristics
When you draw a line here, you can consider the line drawn in the exact shape you drew in
Vertor layer seems identical at first
It may seem like it's just a layer that you can draw lines on
But if you zoom in
Let's zoom in to this part
Here
When you zoom into the raster layer
it has grayed-out layers because of anti-aliasing
So when you zoom in or zoom ouot
the layer of drawing appears blurry
In vecto layers
You can see that it maintains smoothly when zoomed in
So when you zoom in our out
vector layers can minimize image distortion
or images becoming unclear
So the big difference of raster and vector layers
will be the general difference in clarity
and also different when you press ctrl and click
select the regular pen tool, holding down ctrl and click
You don't see any changes in raster layers
but when you do the same thing in vector layers
you can see that there is a hidden red vector line inside like this
You can use vector lines like this
click the white circles and drag
and you can curve the lines
you drew a straight line but you can change it like this
So vector layers, you can do a bit of
editing after you've done the drawing
That will be the vector layer's feature
There are many more things you can do
with the vector layers
First I'll talk about the eraser
Let me draw some diagonal lines on the vector layer
If you look at the eraser tool for vectors on these lines
I've created two vector erasers, but originally there was only one
I duplicated the first one to customize for my use
Now if you look at the first vector eraser and the tool properties at the bottom
the Vector Erase function is checked
The first eraser is set to erase
up to the intersections
and the second vector eraser erases the whole line
to explain further
By intersections, I mean the points where lines intersect each other
That will be the intersection
If you drag along and erase up to those intersections using the vector eraser
it will erase everything up to those intersections, leaving other parts untouched
It erases like this
this way you can use neater lines
If we use the second eraser to erase the whole line
you erase over it once, the entire line disappears as you pass through
Like this
So if you want to erase the line more simply
Go to the line editing tool
there is a tool called Line Width Correction
When you set it to 'Expand to Specified Width' and draw a line like this
you can see how it widens to the specified width in the area where the green line is drawn
Alternatively, if you use the 'Narrow to Specified Width' option
you can see how it gradually narrows as you draw like this
Zoom In by Specified Magnification is
not for zooming in and out precisely by points
For example if you want to zoom in by 1.1 or 1.5 times
then drawing once will immediately zoom in by 1.5 times
like this
And when you specify a reduction scale, such as 0.5
then you'll see it shrink by half, to 0.5 times its original size
Like this, vector layers allow you to adjust things like
brush size or the thickness of lines
drawn with the brush
These are all features of vector layers
One other thing besides that
Let me draw a line in a vector layer
It is drawn in a black pen
We will select Object tool and click it
and you can select individual lines on a vector layer like this
with the selected item, you can go into the vector editing tool properties
and change to a different brush
See we started with a G-pen, now I will change it to a pencil
If you click the real pencil brush, it will appear like pencil lines
and its use can be endless depending on what brushes you've saved
For me I have something called Debris
It's not very visible right now but let me enlarge it for you
we can enlarge the brush size and there
this is a just a sample
We started with a regular black line
but we can change the brush particles inside
to materials like this
Cut Lines, Guide Lines, Concentration Lines, and the Ruler tool
Next 3 Clip studio features I will talk about
will be the drawing tools: Cut line, Concentration Line and Guide Line
For a visual example, I've drawn a simple
surprised person and a running person's side profile
First I will talk about drawing tools for Cut lines
On the left side, you'll see a tool that looks like a comic panel
This is the tool for drawing Cut Line frames
Here you can see functions for creating cuts and dividing cut borders
We'll skip Dividing Cut Borders for now, as it's more commonly used in
manga rather than webtoons
I'll first explain the function for creating cuts
A Rectangle frame is exactly as it sounds
where you create a rectangular box
The Polyline frame is not necessarily a square box but
you can use it when you need to draw cuts that are not
symmetrical or aligned vertically or horizontally
Frame border pen allows you to draw in freeform lines
that function as cuts
For example if you draw a rectangular cut
There will be a white
empty space inside
and outside the cut, the area is masked in purple
Here as you can see, a folder is created along with the cut box
I'll place the drawing layer inside the folder
you can see the picture in the white area of the cut box
but the people outside the cut box are not visible
Take it back outside of the folder and
It will look like this
The Rectangle frame works like this
Polyline cuts are created when you need to draw
additional cuts using straight lines like this
Using a Frame border pen means that whatever you draw
will be the cut itself
Now let's create two cuts
using this cut box
I will use a Rectangle frame
on the surprised person
and also one that fits the running person
two cuts like this
and by placing the drawings in the cut boxes
any drawings protruding outside cuts are not visible
allowing for a more clean work
Now I will talk about the two other things
Concentration lines and Guide line tools
We will put in concentration lines in the first cut
Concentration line literally means lines that makes readers concentrate
Which means
you make the lines come together like this
and helps place the focus precisely
on the surprised person
Guidelines indicate a certain level of speed or
direction of movement
A Guide Line is drawn in a way that lines come in from one direction
and go out in another
More about concentration lines
What should we do in this situation?
Concentration Line is listed as is in the drawing tools
If you go here
there are multiple concentration lines
but these are ones that I made
So they might not show on your Clip Studio
So basically you can make your own
and customize them as well
First, I'll select the dense Concentration Line
and work with it
What I'm going to do here is
I will make the brush a bit thicker
and set the line spacing to 30
you can click the person you want the focus on
then drag and
create an adjustable circle like this
If you adjust the circle and release the mouse
It would have created concentration lines like this
It actually went over to the next cut there
Let me try again
If concentration lines invade other cuts
It will interfere with the drawing
Use the selection tool to make a rectangular selection
then use the concentration line tool
and if you use the circle to set
you will have the concentration lines like this
but as you can see, it becomes pixelated when zoomed in
This happens because
anti-aliasing is not applied
To apply anti-aliasing
go to object tools
right now it has no anti aliasing
If you set this at least to very soft
you can see that the lines becomes smoother like this
If you think the lines are too thin
you can go back to concentration line edit and shorten the length inwards
I'll change the 2400 to 1500
It became a bit thicker
The thickness of the lines may change
due to the reduction in length
It can become thinner or thicker
If you would like the lines to be even thicker
you can enlarge the size of the brush
I will change the brush size from 15 to 25
Now you will have thicker concentration lines
Let's turn off the blue markings
Now you have perfect concentration lines
and easily achieve this comic-like expression
Now I will go in to explaining Guide Lines
The guide line is literally a line that flows
from one point to another, guiding the flow
it is also referred to as speed lines or motion lines
Now we will select an area
and start using the guide lines
I've already created various options for this one as well
to make it easier for me to work
You can adjust the settings
to your preference
and add them
I'll use the Speed Line tool to set it up so that the guide line
passes slightly in front of the person like this
If you double click, you will get lines like this
the lines outside the cut are there because the cut lines are outside of the folder
If you put it inside
it could be adjusted like this
If you look at this at a comics perspective
the area behind the character is white
and the lines in front
makes it feel like he is running towards something
it looks like he has not reached
his destination yet
Now you can click Object again
and set the reference point to the center instead
The Guide lines will change to fill the entire cut
and this makes presents the
character as someone continuously running for
a destination somewhere
Now if you set the starting point instead of the center
like this
I'll move it this way a little bit
Now it looks like the destination is somewhere near
and visible to the character
When in scenes like this, think about how to use
the speed lines and where to position the guide lines for the best effect
Depending on where you position the guide lines
left, center, or right
at the top, center, or bottom
you can represent
the form of speed and
how the people or objects
within will arrive at their destinations
Now i will go into the last
core tool, the Ruler tool
Located in the let toolbar, if you click the triangular icon
you will see various rulers
Normally it wouldn't be here but
I've made the parallel ruler, radial, and concentric circle ruler
these 3 are special rulers that differ based on the ruler settings
select Special Ruler on the left
and if you look at its properties
you can see all three rulers
I wanted to save myself the hassle so
I simply duplicated them to use these features
First, let me explain one feature
of the ruler tool, which is the variety
First the symmetry ruler
The Symmetry Ruler creates identical lines
on other points around a central reference point
So artists who struggle drawing faces head-on
often
use this method to draw faces
so that is the symmetry ruler
with the symmetry ruler, the more lines,
the more versatility it offers
Let me try to increase the line to 8
If you do 8 lines then you can just
draw one piece of pizza
like this
and magically it will create the whole pizza
Did you see that?
The circle is a little bit off
but by using the symmetry ruler
you can easily create various arts
some people draw magic circles
So we talked about the symmetry ruler briefly
let's move on to the perspective ruler
the perspective ruler is a vanishing point ruler
it is commonly used to draw backgrounds using vanishing points
For example if you draw guidelines corresponding to one or two vanishing points
ne vanishing point is drawn at the point where they naturally collide
You can draw a one-point perspective centered on this vanishing point
So one-point perspective works like this
There are some special tips for drawing 2 or 3 pointers
We will use the perspective ruler
If you create a vanishing point corresponding to one point
and conversely create another point like this
you get two points
Now this is a 2 point perspective
So it is the perspective ruler's feature
to be able to draw pictures in 2- point perspective like this
3 point perspective works the same way
use the perspective ruler
to make the first, second and third points
and you naturally have shapes in 3 point perspective
All of these are 3 point perspectives
So basically you can use the perspective ruler to make
1, 2 and 3 perspectives
For parallel, radial, and concentric circle ruler I will further demonstrate
using the same tools I used for
drawing the concentric and speed lines
the radial ruler is used when making the concentration lines
you can click the point of focus
and use pen strokes to draw lines lie this
It will automatically line up
because we're using the ruler function
You can see the concentration lines forming
the problem is if the ruler is created
lines will always focus to this point even if drawn randomly
So when you do not want to use this ruler function
Press shift and click the
triangular icon and you will see an X
then you can start drawing lines freely again
When you feel like you want to go back to concentration line mode
Press shift and click again
Now you will have lines that focuses to a point
You can right-click the triangle shaped icon in the layer window
and click delete ruler to delete the ruler
Now we will use parallel ruler to draw lines
If you use the parallel ruler, press shift and draw the lines
It allows you to create shapes that can be cut vertically or horizontally
Additionally, you can create free-form parallel lines with it
we need the lines to be perfectly horizontal, so we held down Shift
and if you draw the lines, you can draw them following the ruler
and when the ruler is created
you won't be able to draw vertical lines
See here the mouse is moving up and down but you only get parallel lines
It works the same way as the radial ruler
and for this also, you can press shift and press the ruler icon on the layer window
with the X there, you can draw lines freely
That will be the difference
The last one is the concentric circle ruler
Let me explain what a concentric circle ruler is
It is basically a tool for making circles
if you click and drag, you can make a circular object
If you don't want it to be an ovel, you can press shift
and make perfect circles
If you don't press shift, you can make ovals
If you make the object and click it
you can draw a picture using trajectories in this way
and also make more circles that has the same shape as the original
Similarly, since this only allows drawing circular shapes centered on this circle
you can press shift to disable the ruler if you wanted to free-draw
after free drawing you can reactivate the ruler by pressing shift draw circles again
This way gives you more freedom in creating shapes
Here we've covered the basics of using Clip Studio for webtoon production
Unfortunately, we couldn't delve into every aspect of the program due to time constraints
but I hope this overview was helpful
But there are always tutorials you can check on the main Clip Studio page
If you invest some time to enhance your understanding of Clip Studio
It will help build a better environment
for webtoon creation filling in any gaps we might have
missed in this lecture
I hope that by introducing some of the unique features of Clip Studio
I've provided you with some helpful tips for actively using Clip Studio to create webtoons
Thank you for sticking with the lecture until the end
CLIP STUDIO FEATURES Basic Command bar: Users can place frequently used functions Snap: Allows lines to be drawn and snapped into place
Workspace tools can be customized according to the user Canvas Page options need to be set differently depending on the purpose of the work
It is recommended to customize presets since file size and formats vary by publishers Webtoon is suitable to work with more page counts
Vector Layer's Function Raster Layer Same as brushes used in Photoshop When lines drawn with brushes are zoomed in, aliasing occurs at the edges
Vector Layer Aliasing does not occur when zoomed in Press ctrl and click to create vector lines, and adjust the curve by dragging white dots
Use vector erasing to delete where the lines meet or the entire selection Line adjustment feature can widen or narrow the selected line
Selected brush can be changed to different design
Cut line, Guideline, Focus line Tools & Ruler Tool Cutline Dividing borders Moving layer into cut layer and only images inside the cut is displayed
Focus Line Lines that gather attention by convergence Guideline Drawn to show speed and direction
Line length can be adjusted, and brush size can be changed to adjust the thickness of the focal line Ruler Tool Symmetry ruler: Lines are drawn symmetrically
Perspective Ruler: Use for drawing backgrounds with vanishing points Radial Ruler: Lines converge at a point Parallel Ruler: Draw lines parallel to the ruler
Concentric ruler: Draws circles according to the set trajectory of the circle