2000 AD Online Forum

I thought we had one of these, but I'm buggered if I can find it. Since we seem to have a rush of new Manga Studio users in the wake of the sale at the weekend, it seemed like a good idea to start a new thread.

Now, I'm no expert on MS, but I have spent a bit of time figuring things out, and if we can get Holden onboard as well, then I reckon we'll be off to a good start.

So... basically, if you have a question about Manga Studio, can't work out how to make to a specific thing -- anything, don't assume it's a stupid question! -- post it here. If you find something cool while you're playing about with the software, post it here. Find a good tutorial or tip? Post a link here.

Here's a few for a start:

Official YouTube tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBE2E72E4205A4DFB&feature=plcp)

My blog post shamelessly cribbing from PJ's about using the Panel Ruler/Cutter (http://clintflickerlettering.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/sunday-surgery_24.html) (you need to scroll down to the second part of that post...)

All of PJ's blog posts (http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/category/manga-studio/) that he's tagged "Manga Studio".

Also: follow "Manga Studio for Dummies" author Doug Hills on Twitter -- @DNHills

Cheers!

Jim

What size, colour settings and resolution are standard for working with UK (2000ad), US, or webcomic* pages, and what's the best way to set up those documents and if possible save those settings for future use?
With "new story", is there any way to lay out the files/pages so they're arranged in the western style (left to right) instead of manga style (right to left)?

It was only when I was handing in pages for my first professional work that the difference between CMYK and RGB files came to my attention - and yes, every single page was the wrong colour model - so I'm not taking the piss when I ask about the basics of MS.  I have barely used it and it is mostly baffling.





*I know they're all different sizes, but roughly, I mean.

Quote from: Professor Bear on 27 November, 2012, 03:43:16 PM
...mostly baffling...

On a horrible deadline today, so this is a drive-by response. More detailed one to follow.

Resolution: 600dpi for plain B&W line art. 300dpi for colour, but see later comment about colour in MS.

You can find D'israeli's 2000AD page template for Manga Studio here (http://disraeli-demon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/manga-studio-template-for-2000ad-pages.html) along with a description of how to use it.

I'll sort out a US one shortly. If you want to do one yourself, 175mm x 265mm full bleed; 169mm x 259mm trimmed; 155mm x 245mm safe. I use this for Image and they've never complained, so I figure it's OK!

If you change the the "Binding Position" option in the "New Story" dialogue from "Right" to "Left" then you'll get the standard Western page order.

There is no native CMYK support within Manga Studio, which is why I strongly recommend using Photoshop for colouring. You can get a CMYK output by exporting as a TIFF and choosing the CMYK option (you can also specify a colour profile doing this) but you'd need to check the results in something with proper colour management like Photoshop anyway, so you might as well do the colouring there.

D'israeli swears by MS for flatting, however, particularly for having a paint bucket tool which has an option to ignore small gaps in linework. (Also very useful for filling in blacks.)

Cheers!

Jim

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 November, 2012, 03:57:32 PM

D'israeli swears by MS for flatting, however, particularly for having a paint bucket tool which has an option to ignore small gaps in linework. (Also very useful for filling in blacks.)

Uh I did not know you could do that. I must find that option...

Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 27 November, 2012, 04:14:15 PM
Uh I did not know you could do that. I must find that option...

You may need to fiddle with the settings quite frequently, but it's still very useful:



Cheers

Jim

That's fantastic, thank you very much... now to find time to get back at that wonderful bit of software...

I basically bought the programme on the strength of that option! I've got no idea what else it can do as yet.  :lol:

I on the over had have probably spent about 30%* of the oh so limited time I get to use it playing the spot the gap game. It becomes like some kinda child's puzzle book game. Both infuriating and transfixing.





*Yes that is an over-estimation... I hope...

PJ Holden posted some excellent stuff about Manga Studio on his blog.

Here's a link to get you started but if you search the blog you can find much more

http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/2009/12/10/manga-studio-vs-photoshop-part-1/ (http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/2009/12/10/manga-studio-vs-photoshop-part-1/)


-----
EDIT
oops just spotted that Jim has already linked to it

Is anyone planning on upgrading to Manga Studio 5? Excuse my ignorance, but I'm guessing the main difference is regarding the colouring side of things.....?

Quote from: Darren Stephens on 07 December, 2012, 03:43:25 PM
Is anyone planning on upgrading to Manga Studio 5? Excuse my ignorance, but I'm guessing the main difference is regarding the colouring side of things.....?

There's a quick overview of the new features here (http://manga.smithmicro.com/mangastudio5/), while PJ has put together an informative video of the difference v5 will make to flatting here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bpYbSlE9WdA).

PJ seems to think that this will make MS a fully-fledged Photoshop alternative. Some colourists are expressing reservations because MS5 doesn't support channels, but channels are -- as far as I can tell -- a throwback to the pre-Photoshop-3.0 days before layers. I have yet to see a single use case for channels that can't be replicated using layers, so I'm not convinced that this is actually the deal-breaker some think it is.

I'm still suspicious about CMYK colour management, personally, but I'd need to get my hands on it before I could say definitively. Given that I probably won't have time to do anything with it in the immediate future, I'll probably hold off until the EX version is released next summer -- some fairly major features (such as the multi-page 'story' option) aren't included in the current version.

Cheers!

Jim

Again, PJ has posted quite a lot in the last couple of days on his Twitter stream about MS5

Some good stuff there - hopefully he can condense it somewhere useful!

Cheers guys. Yeh having only just got 4EX I need to get to know it a bit better before I make the leap. The summer should give me enough time to gather if I can make good use of Manga Studio or not. I see the new version has a more user friendly interface. 4EXs seems very complicated and I'm not exactly new to digiatl drawing.  ;)

It's been pointed out to me that ver4 can flat in almost identical way, but it's such a pain to actually select colours with its never something I've explored before.

The one shame about MS5 is the lettering. A throwback, I think to its Asian origins -it just doesn't have the fine grained control over text you'd want. (Though creating speech bubbles is actually fun)

I've been playing with MS5 for about a week and I love it. At this point it's got the exact subset of tools I'd use in photoshop, therefor it's a good solid replacement for PS for me. (And a fraction of its price) whether that'll hold true for everyone is probably dependent on which set of the insanely large feature set of photoshop you use (though if argue that if you can do it in photoshop you can probably do it in ms)

The UI is both more and less comple. - coming from ver 4 it was a right pain, but now I'm used to it it makes more sense and has streamlined many many things (colour picking in ms4 for example was a nightmare and is now both very easy and fun with some of the cool colour mixing palettes)

Hope that helps.

(Btw I was sent a freebie review copy, so take the above evangelising with that in mind! )

Mmmm that is a shame about the lettering side of things. I'd hoped to start doing a strip for my own fun soon. Are there any other programs that handle lettering better but don't cost an arm n leg?

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 November, 2012, 03:57:32 PM
You can find D'israeli's 2000AD page template for Manga Studio here (http://disraeli-demon.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/manga-studio-template-for-2000ad-pages.html) along with a description of how to use it.

Anyone close enough to the fellow to prod him about re-uploading the file? I'd love to 'ave that - I'm dying to start on MS.

Quote from: CrazyFoxMachine on 08 December, 2012, 10:11:09 AM
Anyone close enough to the fellow to prod him about re-uploading the file? I'd love to 'ave that - I'm dying to start on MS.

Crap. I hadn't realized that link was broken. Luckily, I have a copy, which I've stuck up on Dropbox so you can download it here (http://db.tt/VaXbSQqO).

Cheers!

Jim

Cheers Jim! I'll start playing with it

POST HASTE

Quick response to Ant O'Donnell's query about brush behaviour over on the "Does My Art" thread.

DISCLAIMER: I have no idea if any of the following has changed in MS5!

One clear winner (for me) for MS over Photoshop is that you can change the way your pens/brushes react to pressure on a tool-by-tool basis (note that you can save new brushes in MS EX4 but only save changes to existing ones in Debut).

The pressure controls live under the tool options, here:



Clicking on the green blob will bring up the fine-tuning options for the settings:



The control is really straightforward -- on a straight line like this, a 1mm brush will be 0mm thick at 0% pressure, 0.5mm thick at 50% pressure and 1.0mm thick at 100% pressure.

Note that by default your curve may not have this many points -- if you move your mouse cursor over the line on the graph, it will change to a little pen icon and you can add points, so you can do things like the following:



This pen starts off fairly unresponsive to pressure, and will feel quite stiff until you get to about 75% pressure, when the line will quickly get much heavier (think of a fairly stiff brushpen, maybe).



This one will quickly get thicker in response to fairly light pressure, but line-weight will become less responsive at higher pressures (more like an actual brush).



If you look closely at this one, you'll see that there is a point at 0,0 but that I've added another zero point right next to it, meaning that (in theory) it won't respond to the very lightest pressure. I find my line has a tendency to drift at very light pressure, so I make the pen unresponsive at the very lightest pressure to require a more definite stroke to make a line.

Hopefully, that makes some kind of sense!

If this has all changed beyond recognition in MS5, you'll have to say PJ's name five times and hope he appears...!

Cheers

Jim

There's a wealth more options, but it largely looks the same. There's also (in MS5) a "Min Value" slider - which presumably stops you setting the pen pressure to draw pen sizes below the size the human eye can see... (the min value is measured from 0-100, I'd be amazed if that's not % or the selected pen size, but it doesn't say so, so who knows...)

(I've also got a tilt setting which has a similar graph and slider, which I've used to set a pencil tool to get larger depending on the angle of the cintiq pen)

-pj

Thanks Jim you are a gentleman. I'll grab MS5 as soon as I feel I'm comfortable in MS4 EX. Does MS5 install on top or alongside MS4 EX ?

Quote from: antodonnell on 19 December, 2012, 10:44:19 PM
Thanks Jim you are a gentleman. I'll grab MS5 as soon as I feel I'm comfortable in MS4 EX. Does MS5 install on top or alongside MS4 EX ?

sits happily alongside it.

Guess I'll be grabbing that upgrade then :) thanks PJ.

PS. Do you use Manga studio for the majority of your inking in your 2000ad work ? I can see a lot of benefits over traditional methods. I've not heard of many pro s openly saying they use it for work.
If its like the games industry it's a case of whatever tool gets the job done efficiently and well is the one used.

I use it for document management, scanning, corrections, fixing stuff occasionally redrawing bits (sometimes pencilling, layouts, etc) but rarely for inking more than a panel or two - That said I've just fully pencilled/inked a couple of pages digitally. I didn't enjoy it (that is: it felt like work, whereas drawing on paper with ink and getting a decent drawing done feels like joy).

(The dredd payback has a couple of panels where the space ship was built in Sketchup and placed using manga studio, printed in blue and then inked by hand - hopefully you can't see the join...)

-pj

I've drawn quit a bit digitally with a wacom and recently an Ipad + stylus. I find a hybrid workflow of penciling on paper and inking digitally with a bit of polish tweaks or proportional adjustments done on the computer works best for me.

I'll see how inking digitally goes over xmas. For me I end up making the rookie mistake of zooming in too far and getting caught up in detail leaving a piece overworked. A thing which is harder to do on paper.

Which prog was payback in?( I'll dig around later if you don't remember )  Coming from a 3d background I've managed to use it as a tool for blocking out scenes for improving consistency and perspective. Too time consuming to produce higher quality art suitable to print, quicker to draw it most of the time. A recurring spaceship over a few pages is defo a good element to blockout.

Quote from: antodonnell on 20 December, 2012, 02:35:20 PM
I'll see how inking digitally goes over xmas. For me I end up making the rookie mistake of zooming in too far and getting caught up in detail leaving a piece overworked. A thing which is harder to do on paper.

If you've got two monitors or (Cintiq + monitor) Dave Gibbons suggests using your Cintiq/main screen for zoomed in work but keeping a 'Print Size' view of the document on your other screen that you can keep glancing at to maintain a sense of proper scale.

Cheers

Jim

Just two monitors here, that's a good idea. Did he not mention that in the Imagine FX tutorial he did ? Vaguely remember it, need to read it again. Just finished up work until the new year so time to practice :) woo hoo

Hi--I've just started playing around with this program. The first thing I notice is that I need to install 'Materials'. I've been on to the support forum but I'm not getting anywhere--mainly due to the mess I made of installing this probably

Is there a quick, easy solution --where are these 'materials' and how do I install them?

https://support.smithmicro.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2148

I'll confess I've never used a 'material' in all the time I've had MS, so I'll have to defer to someone more knowledgeable on this score...

Sorry!

Jim

cheers--maybe I'll just ignore it :)

I figured it out in the end-- the lesson here is 'always read the instructions'

Haven't upgraded to Manga Studio 5EX yet, but have had time for a little play with regular v5 and it's very nice. The EX version pretty much only adds multi-page document support (and some binding options that might be useful if you're outputting final print files) — all the other stuff that you used to have to upgrade to EX for, perspective rulers, the ability to save your own custom brushes, all now comes with the standard version.

A little 'yay' from me was the appearance of a new ruler that has Illustrator-style bezier handles, rather than than the incomprehensible 'Path' option in the v4 rulers.

Text handling is better. Nowhere near what a professional letterer would need, but I think probably good enough for the occasional bit of lettering.

There's an absolute wealth of really useful tutorial videos (http://manga.smithmicro.com/tutorials/manga5/NewFeatures.html) by Doug (Manga Studio for Dummies) Hills on the Smith Micro site. It's worth following Doug on Twitter, too — @DNHills

I've only experimented with the inking tools, and not the painting brushes, but Ray Frenden's Manga Studio 5 brush set (http://frenden.myshopify.com/products/manga-studio-5-pencilling-inking-painting-brushes) looks like $4.99 well-spent. It's also worth following Ray on Twitter — @FRENDEN

More updates as events warrant...

Cheers!

Jim

I've found that any text seems to be fixed inside a bounding box and clipped - so you sometimes lose the tops or sides of letters, especially if those letters are graphic (ie fancy fonts) and maybe a little larger than average (for example, I'm always losing the top of an exclamation point...)

I've an article coming up in an ImagineFX special about using digital greywash in Manga Studio, and I'm writing a six part core-skills article for ImagineFX too (I'm really excited about being in ImagineFX...!)

-pj

Quote from: pauljholden on 23 July, 2013, 10:10:43 AM
I've found that any text seems to be fixed inside a bounding box and clipped - so you sometimes lose the tops or sides of letters, especially if those letters are graphic (ie fancy fonts) and maybe a little larger than average (for example, I'm always losing the top of an exclamation point...)

Yeah. That's top of the list of things I want to talk to them about. I'd also dearly love for you to be able render the text to a vector layer the way you can to a raster layer. And ligature support. And manual kerning. And proper horizontal scale control. And...

QuoteI've an article coming up in an ImagineFX special about using digital greywash in Manga Studio, and I'm writing a six part core-skills article for ImagineFX too (I'm really excited about being in ImagineFX...!)

Fantastic stuff! I'll keep an eye open for those.

Cheers!

Jim

oh, I forgot to mention: I've seen the future - or, at least, the original japanese software that manga studio is the english translation of - and it brings back a couple of things we're missing in MS5, specifically symmetry and dividing a panel into equal amounts and the ability to directly scan from the app.

It also adds a new ruler - a parallel wavy line feature and a bunch of other things.  (Oh, and a convert Raster to Vector)

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clip-studio.com%2Fclip_site%2Fmypage%2Fnewsdetail%3Fpublish%3D201307%26f%3D2013071203&act=url

Manga Studio 5's dialogues for setting up pages with Bleed, Trim and Live guidelines are a little different-looking to v4, so the inimitable Mr Holden has blogged a very handy guide to deciphering the options (http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/2013/07/31/bleed/).

Cheers

Jim

Have JUST discovered that one of my fav manga studio 4 tools - the filter to clean dirt from scans (it's really smart, only removing black grit from scans and leaving white alone) is there in MS5 - it's just not a filter anymore.

Genuinely thought I'd have to scan art in MS4 to clean up and then transfer to MS5.

The tool you use is the "Garbage Cleanup Tool" - it's a sub tool of the 'line correct tool' - which allows you to modify vector lines. I just assumed the garbage cleanup tool had something to do with vectors, which is why I never thought to use it before.

-pj

I got a question about the drawing tools.

Are they anything like Paint Tool Sai that they're really smooth when you do linework? I'm considering getting MS but I wanna know how good it is as far as inking because Sai is really great but lacks the features that MS has as far as making comics and stuff are concerned.

Quote from: Acid for Blood on 04 August, 2013, 05:05:18 AM
I got a question about the drawing tools.

Are they anything like Paint Tool Sai that they're really smooth when you do linework?

I've never used Sai, so I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'smooth'... I assume you either mean that the lines are anti-aliased (slightly blurred at the edges so that they don't appear 'jaggy') or that there is an element of stroke correction to smooth out slight wobbles when drawing. The answer in either case is: "Yes". MS5 has adjustable control over both. You can also draw on a vector layer, which allows you to go back and edit your strokes at any time.

Cheers

Jim

Mr Holden is at it again! Head over to his blog for the lowdown on colour holds in MS5 (http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/2013/08/11/colour-holds-in-manga-studio-5/).

Cheers!

Jim

Does anyone know if there's a way to import layers from one page in a "story" file to another?  I know I can just copy a selected area and paste it, but I mean moving linked layers like lines, colours and dots in one go, or is it possible to move pages around the story, like swap the entirety of page 1 with page 27?

You can select multiple layers and copy and paste those into a new document, easy enough.

No updates to the manga studio thread for 120 days but I ain't starting a new one.

So...

I upgraded to MS5 EX and I've been messing about with it. I was initially quite excited about the new colouring brushes, but the more I play the more realize that they're really laggy compared to PS5. Especially large brushes with texture on a zoomed out canvas. It's painful.

Does anyone else find this to be the case? Any tips for speeding things up? My PC is no slouch and PS5 is blisteringly fast so it's a software not a hardware issue I think....

I downgraded to MS4 after a month of MS5, and funnily enough, that was over concerns about a slowdown in my workflow, too.  Mind you, that wasn't so much about lagging as it was having to google every fucking thing I wanted to do with MS5 that I could do easily enough with MS4 but which was tweaked or changed in some way in the newer software.

Via this parish's very own Dylan Teague on Twitter: the latest version of MS5 — 5.04 — adds a couple of potentially very useful tweaks. Both the line and ellipse tool will now snap to perspective rulers.

You can add jitter to the line drawn by line tool, giving it a more organic quality and potentially speeding up inking of complex perspective drawings.

Cheers

Jim

Quote from: DoomBot on 23 May, 2014, 10:59:53 PM
I upgraded to MS5 EX and I've been messing about with it. I was initially quite excited about the new colouring brushes, but the more I play the more realize that they're really laggy compared to PS5. Especially large brushes with texture on a zoomed out canvas. It's painful.

Does anyone else find this to be the case? Any tips for speeding things up? My PC is no slouch and PS5 is blisteringly fast so it's a software not a hardware issue I think....

Very belatedly: if you go into Preferences and under Cursor change 'Delay for stabilisation' to 'No Delay' everything should speed up noticeably. There's still a lag on long continuous brush strokes, but you should still see a difference.

Cheers

Jim

Anyone know where the "add jitter" button is in Manga Studio 5 ? I've been using Manga Studio along with Ray Frenden's brushes to ink "Man from the Ministry". It's completely replaced Painter in my work flow.

Quote from: kevhopgood on 21 August, 2014, 10:10:24 AM
Anyone know where the "add jitter" button is in Manga Studio 5 ? I've been using Manga Studio along with Ray Frenden's brushes to ink "Man from the Ministry". It's completely replaced Painter in my work flow.

Click on the three little dots next to 'Brush Size' and then turn on the 'Random' option — just fiddle with the slider to adjust the amount.



Cheers

Jim

Thanks for that. Another cool feature!

Not sure if this is of interest to some folks here....? http://lazynezumi.com/ (http://lazynezumi.com/)

"Lazy Nezumi Pro is a Windows app that helps you draw smooth, beautiful lines, with your mouse or pen tablet.

It works with many of your favourite art programs, including Photoshop and Flash."

Been messing around this afternoon and it seems pretty good, though really, I suspect a lot of what it does could be achieved within the settings of MS itself.

Quote from: Darren Stephens on 31 August, 2014, 08:05:25 PM
Been messing around this afternoon and it seems pretty good, though really, I suspect a lot of what it does could be achieved within the settings of MS itself.

Yes — with MangaStudio (not Photoshop, though, unless they've changed in the CC versions) you can adjust both the pressure response curve and the amount of stabilisation (correction) on a tool-by-tool basis. There are also settings to make your stroke taper in and out, both of which are independently adjustable for each tool.

Cheers

Jim