Earlier this year I picked up a copy of Manga Studio to mess around with. The Debut version of the program was only $25 on Amazon and I figured, well if it doesn’t work out it won’t have cost me too much. I had also seen Doug TenNapel use it in a video he posted on Youtube. After buying it I immediately fell in love with it. It is super intuitive, and powerful. It is the most powerful piece of comics software on the market. Period.
When I started production on The Unknowns bk 1 I orginally wanted to do this entire book digitally, but I was really struggling finding the look I wanted. I also struggled mightily with it and using a tablet only to make the comic. It was hurting my wrist something fierce. Which I think a Cintiq will help with down the line. Recently I decided to try it out again after a great tutorial session with Stephen McCranie one evening. I finally feel like I’ve gotten the hang of it and have been doing all my inks digitally since (wrist feels fine now too). The nice thing is I dont think you see much of a difference between the two other than the Manga Studio version of pages look much cleaner and precise (which I like). Here’s an example and little hint of where the book is going:
It just makes so many things very easy for the comics artist and is made with us in mind. I recommend you picking up a copy of the software, either the debut (which TenNapel made all of Ghostopolis with) or the awesome EX version. The EX version is well worth the money if you can afford it for things like perspective rulers and 3d model importing that you can use for modeling. Give this software a run guys!
Here’s some videos of Doug TenNapel being awesome with it:
I’ve been hit and miss with Manga Studio. I used it when I worked on a book last year, and it was pretty nice for a little while. But something wasn’t clicking, and I switched back to Photoshop to meet my deadlines. I recently got the full version though and really think I need to start using that for some projects. Especially building some 3D set pieces for certain scenes. It would save so much time in the long run. Just a lot of learning curves.
Well let me know if you need any help with it Will! I’m still learning but I’m starting to get the hang of it. 🙂
Have you tried using 3d models yet in manga studio? I’m really curious about that. A friend of mine creates weapons and some backgrounds in a free 3d program, and ports them into Manga Studio to rotate/draw from. For some of my business clients, it would be nice to design some backgrounds for their books so i dont have to keep redrawing them.
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I have not messed with it a ton yet, but it is the feature I am most excited about for some of my more ambitious ideas I have for books in the future. There’s a scene coming up in Adamsville I want to use it for when modeling some police cars. So I’ll let you know what I think when I give that a shot.
This is awesome, thanks for finding and sharing it! Love the blog btw, keeps me inspired
You’re welcome dude! 🙂 I love watching Doug work!
I love his humble kinda, “I don’t need to know it all I just go with what works for me!”