How to Make a Comic! (with Clip Studio Paint!)

Tutorial time! Let's talk about how to make comics, step-by-step!

Music: "Sparkling" by Yuhei Komatsu

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:30 Script
3:02 Thumbnails
4:17 Formatting
6:37 Lettering
8:14 3D Models
10:02 Sketching
10:40 Inking + Panels
12:23 Flats + Fill Bucket
17:34 Rendering
18:22 The Final Render
20:14 Exporting
21:04 Closing

[Mothsaam]

I love how rough your thumbnails are! I've seen some thumbnails that are way too polished. You're right that if you get too precious with them you won't wanna change them.

[manuelfriend]

You are one of the most useful "comic basics" sources on YouTube. A lot of channels just cover story, convengions, etc, without ever going into the actual technical details.

[lauraoliveira]

Just a note as a designer, if you ever plan to have your comic printed as a book, make sure that when you color your flats you don’t leave any white space under the lineart. In comic book printing, the flats are laid out first before the black ink of the lineart, and when pages shift during printing the white blanks under the line art can show up. It’s better to take care while you’re drawing than have to go back to every page and fix the issue, just thought I’d let everybody here know!

[nomoretwitterhandles]

Remember, if someone tries to tell you "tracing is cheating", gently remind them that the most famous cartoon Disney movies were rotoscoped, which quite literally means they traced human movements (via actors) frame-by-frame in order to get the animation so smooth and realistic. This was BEFORE modern animation software, btw.

The only time tracing is actually bad is if you are stealing another artist's work and claiming it as your own (especially bad if you try to sell it). Using free assets to trace over is like using royalty-free music for a video; you're not stealing because this was made for you to use. It's not cheating either, because you're not trying to get ahead--comics are made to tell a visual story, not to show off how good you are at drawing a background. In fact, my favorite manga of all time used presets as far back as the late 90s, and other times there were no backgrounds at all (other than a sparkle or gradient sheet). You do not need perfect, handmade backgrounds to tell a good story. That's why novels exist in the first place lol.

Thank you so much for strongly urging this point. The (general) art community has been in shambles for several years now, and it's sad to see people clowning on assets because it's "lazy", though many great artists I follow use assets. Tools aren't made for us to be lazier; they're just something that help us get the job done faster. If you're building an actual house, the last thing you wanna do is build the entire thing without tools.

[alistairmooncrest]

(Wanted to say, thank you to whoever gifted me a channel membership! You are very generous, and it was a lovely surprise. Take care!) Congratulations on the sponsorship!! I appreciate this video a lot, as I have only ever hand-drawn my comic ideas. Getting into animation, but didn't know where I would start making a digital comic, or what was a route for it. I write scenes and have a lot of notes, but it's very helpful to have an engaging step-by-step guide.

[calomel]

I clicked this video because your avatar looked kinda like the style of this one Webtoon I follow religiously called Castoff and I was intrigued. The intro process panel off to the right was looking suspiciously familiar... and my brain screeched to a halt and imploded at :45. Well gosh darn it, what a small Internet! Love your video, thank you so much for this! ♥

[sierabryant]

i get excited every time i see an artist shut down the tracing myth

[Jackhoo]

Every time I watch one of your videos, I end up telling to myself "Why am I learning this NOW?!! You know how much time I've wasted before I knew I could do this??"

Thanks a lot! its very informative

[georgiecastilla]

Star, doing the lettering before sketching has ben a GAME CHANGER for me, honestly! Thank you for the tip.

[ShelbyLikesStuff]

Honestly this is off topic but I wanna say this.
I have shit mental health and a shit focusing thing (AKA I’m unable to just focus on one thing, I can always feel my skin the sound everything) but when I watch certain things it’s like my issues almost fully disappear. I’ve only done this a few times but most times when it happens I’m watching Star.

SO FUCKING THANK YOU STAR!!!!

[malubarroso]

Congrats on the sponsorship and thank you so much for the paint bucket tip! It's going to be a lifesaver to my future digital art!

[ShelbyLikesStuff]

Do I use Clip Studio? Haha! No. Do I have a drawing tablet? If an iPad counts as one. Am I going to watch this video the whole way through? Heck yeah I am! Am I going to listen to everything and try to remember it? First part yes, second part no..! Is seeing Star’s process gonna be fun? YESSSS!!!
(Also the tips will be kinda useful for some things that aren’t Clip Studio only [AKA you can do them not on Clip Studio] so I’ll try and remember those)

[StellaDaBest]

Omg im literally planning a comic rn and was watching your videos on 10 things not/do in your webcomic!!
This is so useful!!!

[abbigailllanas]

Some thing thing I have discovered is customizing color sets - I have a color set for each of my characters so I don’t need to use the eye dropper tool or a reference. All you do is in clip studio, click window, color set, then click the little wrench 🔧 on the side and it will take you to a screen that says edit color sets you can click create new set and name it what ever you want !! I hope this helps!😊

[VILovestein]

Thank you again Star for another great video. Also Star is right, tracing is not cheating. It helps as an aid to get the feel for drawing and planning a scene or pose. Even famous artist used visual aid devices to help them draw such as the camera lucida.

[SymonKeener]

For the 3D models, get creative! I used to build my landscapes in Minecraft and smooth them out as I drew over them. Now I usually use the sims 4 since it's has more details and mods to choose from. You don't need much more than an idea and a sandbox game.

[silly_littlguy]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!! IVE REWATCHED ALL YOUR COMIC VIDEOS LIKE A BAJILLION TIMES AND THIS IS SO HELPFUL 😭😭

[nomoretwitterhandles]

Separate comment so this information sticks out:

Here's how I do flats to save me a bunch of time!!
1) Use the wand tool to select the area OUTSIDE of your drawing
2) Inverse selection (now the selected area is your entire drawing)
3) Fill in the selection with one color*
4) Clip a new layer to the base color and add flats as necessary
(*If you'd rather go right in with the flats, that's fine! I prefer using a base color to be an underpainting OR to make sure there are no gaps.)

Personally I do still prefer coloring without the fill tool as my style is very intricate, but the inverse-selection method has saved me SO much time. If anyone else prefers not to use the fill tool, please try this out!!!

[mia_seym]

This was so helpful as like a crash course of digital painting. Thank you so much!!!

And thank you Clip Studio for being Star's first sponsor!

[glasperle]

a tip for 14:30, if you use vector layer you can use the inks normally as normal brushes but you can click fill to vector line. that way you can even fill clean super super thin lines, and even lines witih different brushes with rough or semi transparency like pencil