Making Manga

Hello guys, today i thought that it is time to show you how i did the little clouds from my sausage character from “Turtle and Sausage” series.

This little clouds are made in Adobe Illustrator and it requires some basic skills. The level of this tutorial is a beginner one.

Let’s begin!

Open a new document – i usually use Illustrator’s Web preset.

Then select the Ellipse tool (press L on your keyboard), and draw some ellipses as shown in the image below.

Then, to fill the uncovered spots between the ellipses, just take Pen Tool, and draw a form that unites them.

With Selection Tool(V), select all the forms that you have just drawn, and go to Pathfinder and choose the first option – Unite.

Now, let’s make some changes:  go to stroke and choose black (it doesn’t really matter the color,  we will change it anyway later – just don’t choose “none”); for fill color, choose “none”.

With your form still selected, go to Brush Panel (if you can’t find it, go to Window>Brushes, or press F5 on your keyboard) and choose a brush (just by clicking on it, while the object  is still selected).

Now that you know how your cloud’s border looks like, let’s make this a little bit more professional: let’s change the stroke into a nice path. Go to Object>Expand Appearance. Then, you will see that your stroke is now a path. Now go to Pathfinder, and click Unite, so that the overlapping paths to disappear.

Now copy and paste in front (Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+F). This will make an exact copy of our cloud boundary. With this copy selected, go to Object>Compound Path>Release. This will have as a result, a black cloud. Select the the exterior black cloud (if you can’t see it, go to Layer’s panel), and delete it. Then select the interior black cloud and give it a nice gray to white gradient.

After this just select the cloud’s border path and give it a nice blue to white gradient.

Add 3 or 4 little crescent forms with a blue to white gradient, then group this together, and then make 2 or  copies. And voila your little clouds!!

I hope you liked my tutorial as well as my little clouds, and if you have any questions, i wait for your comments.

Thanks,

Hariana

Hello,

Today I am going to show you everything about Adobe Illustrator’s Pen Tool. I hope you will find this tutorial useful, and i hope that it will be easy to understand.

Pen Tool is one of the most difficult tools in Adobe Illustrator - after Mesh Tool probably – and this is why most people avoid it. Actually you can find this tool in other programs too, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks,  Corel Draw, etc. and is based on Bézier curve principle (a parametric curve). It is used to draw smooth , easy to modify, vectorial curves. There are several numbers of tools which help you modify this curves, but we will get to this later on in the tutorial. First, you can see in the image below what is the icon for Pen Tool and where it is placed on tools panel.

Now that we know where to find our tool, we can start discovering what it can do. First, let’s set the fill none and stroke black for our upcoming paths.

With Pen Tool you can make curves or straight lines. To actually do the lines, you just click on the artboard – to make the straight lines, or click and drag – to make the curved ones. Either way, each time you click/click – drag you create a point on your artboard called “anchor point”. The Anchor point looks just like a little square – it is filled with color when it is made last, or when it is selected; otherwise it is like a white square with stroke. Here is a single anchor point:

You can make straight lines, just by clicking around like in the image below:

To make curved lines you click and then drag in the direction that you want your line to curve, like drawing a tangent for the curve you want to draw. If you want to make a hill just drag to the top; to make a valley drag downwards.

The secret of making smooth curves is to put as few anchor points as you can and always place them at the sides of the curves, not at their tops/bottoms. See two examples of correct and incorrect placing of anchor points below:

If you want to know how far to drag you must think at this: the farther you drag, the steeper the curve will be. This is all because the beginning of the curve will always stick to the handle, and the longer the handle is more (on a longer distance) will the curve stick to it:

If you left a path open, just go with the Pen Tool over an anchor point (at one end of the path) and when you see the slash under the cursor icon just click/click-drag an than you can just continue your curve as you wish.

We have seen how to create the paths, but what if you make some mistakes, or you just thik of modifiing the curves you just made? I will tell you how to do this and what are the tools used for this kind of job.

1. To modify the curbing of a line segment, selecting anchor points, moving anchor points, deleting points or paths or repositioning the handles we use Direct Selection Tool (A);

2. To convert a smooth point into a corner point or vice versa we use Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift+C);

3. To add anchor points we use Add Anchor Point Tool (+);

4. To delete anchor points we use Delete Anchor Point Tool (-);

Note: we find tools 2, 3, and 4 in the drop down menu of Pen Tool in Tools’ Panel.

5. To split a path into several paths just use Scissors Tool (C);

Note: tool number 5 is found in Eraser Tool‘s drop down menu.

6. To erase parts  of a line segment we use Path Eraser Tool – placed in Pencil Tool drop down menu.

Select an anchor point by clicking once on it. To select more drag and drop to make a selection rectangle that includes the anchor points you want to select. Or you can just ckick on every anchor point you want to select while holding down Shift Key on your keyboard.

If you want to modify curved lines you just have to use Direct Selection Tool (A) and drag the curve with it. This however will work this way (changing the way a line curves) only for curved lines. For straight lines the same techinique will simply move the line.

With Direct Selection Tool (A) you can move an anchor point or more.  To move the selected anchor point/points, just go to one of the lines between the selected anchor points and just drag and drop them wherever you want.

To delete anchor points or line segments, just select the anchor points you want to delete (or the anchor points at the end of the line segment that you want to delete) and then hit Delete Key on your keyboard.

To convert a smooth point into a corner point just click on the anchor point that you want to modify with Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift+C). To make a smooth point from a corner point click and drag on the anchor point that you want to modify. Then just play with the handles because they can be moved individually with this tool.

To add anchor points just click with Add Anchor Points Tool (+) on your path, where you want to place the new points.

To delete anchor points just click with Delete Anchor Points Tool (-) on the anchor points that you want to delete.

We use the Path Eraser Tool to erase only a part of a segment, by passing the tool several times above the part of the line that we want to erase. It is like using an eraser on a pencil line. This also make from one line two separate segments, and the path also separates.

Scissor Tool (C) splits a path into two paths. Just click on the path where you want to split it and click there. Afterwards you will have two different paths. But, unlike the Path Eraser Tool it will not erase any part of the path.

Tips:

Hold Shift Key while making a new anchor point by clicking, and the new anchor point will be aligned  with the previous one.

Hold Shift Key while making a new anchor point by click-drag and the handling will be oriented at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270,  315 degrees

To make a corner point when making a curve (not waiting until after the curve is done to modify it with Convert Anchor Point Tool), just click on the last point that you have done with Pen Tool once, and then just make another point to see the result.

That’s it folks, thanks for reading and I hope it helped you.

For any questions, just leave a comment!!

Hariana

Hi,

Today i’m going to show you how to ink an artwork with Adobe Illustrator. Here is the drawing i am going to ink:

figure 1

This is already inked with traditional ink, but i want to make from it a vector. You can also use a pencil sketch. There are two methods of inking with Illustrator:  you can use Live Trace (Object>Live Trace>Make) – but, i think is will have a nicer look doing it traditionally —> just use Pen Tool, Pencil or Brush Tool to trace manually the outlines.

Open

Open a new Illustrator file – web preset if you will use the art for web, or print preset for printing. Then place your artwork into the new file by going to File>Place. After placing your file successfully, resize now your artwork to fit into your artboard; to do that, just go to the Tool’s Panel and select the black arrow Selection Tool or just press V on your keyboard. Then click on your artwork to select it – it will appear a rectangle at it’s boundaries and on that rectangle some default anchor points (at the corners and at the middle of the segments): this anchor points will allow you to resize the artwork. Just click and drag on the anchor points and see what happens. To keep it’s proportions just keep Shift key on your keyboard selected while doing the resizing from one of the corners. Now that we made the artwork the size we need, let’s move it: also with the Selection Tool (click-drag-drop the image where you want it to be).

When all resizing and placing is over, go into the Layer’s Panel – if you don’t have it on the bar on the right, then go to Widow>Layers or press F7 – and lock the layer (now you only have one layer created, and contains your artwork) by clicking on the blank square placed between the Visibility Toggle and the icon of the layer (see figure 2 for details). Locking the layer will now make the layer impossible to edit (if you want to edit it, just click again on the Toggle Lock icon), and you won’t move or modify your layer by mistake.

figure 2

We will now create a new layer by clicking on Create New Layer icon placed at the bottom of the Layer’s Panel (again see figure 2 for more details). This new layer will be placed above the layer you just locked, so the elements that will be created inside it will be also placed above the ones existing in Layer 1.

Trace

For tracing i prefer using Pen Tool (P) – you find it on the Tools Panel on the left. Now we will begin to follow the outline of our artwork with paths and anchor points. For a full tutorial about Pen Tool click here. It doesn’t matter if you let the paths open, because later on we will make a little trick to close them . Use the Pen Tool with Stroke only – choose none for Fill color (from Color’s Panel). Note that when making paths a new sublayer is created automatically for every path you make. The sublayer is placed into the currently selected layer.

After tracing all the lines that make the outline of the artwork, select all the lines you’ve made and go to Brush’s Panel (if you can’t find it go to Window>Brushes or press F5 on your keyboard) and – with all the lines selected! – choose a brush there by pressing on it. See what happened? All the lines you have selected have now the stroke changed into the brush you have selected. Now play a little with some brushes and widths to obtain the effect you want.

After having obtained a nice stroke for your lines, now we will change the lines – which are open paths – into closed paths. To do that, go to Object>Expand or Expand Appearance: this will automatically make your strokes into paths – this is why it is very important that you have made your paths only with stroke and without any fill. Now go to Pathfinder and click the “Unite” button – see figure 3 (again, if you can’t find the panel, just go to Window>Pathfinder or press Shift+Ctrl+F9 on your keyboard). This way, you will unite all the paths into one single path.

figure 3

figure 4

Here is my final result:

Tips:

• if you want to move easier on the artboard’s surface when you have zoomed in, just use Hand Tool (H) or just press Space bar on your keyboard and then drag and drop your artboard until you get to see the area that you want;
• when working with Pen Tool (P) you can keep Alt pressed and it will appear Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift+C) and you can work with it as you wish (but just while Alt button is pressed);
• also when working with Pen Tool (P) you can keep Control pressed and it will appear Selection Tool (V) and you can work with it while Control button is pressed.

Now you can color your artwork. Don’t know how to do that? Just wait my next tutorial.

Thanks for reading, and i’ll be waiting for feedback!

Hariana

Motivation

I started earlier to build a manga character out of myself.  You could ask “why?”, so i will try to answer as clearly as i can later on in the post.

Well, if you’ve read some manga, you surely saw that every artist has a character that shows them doing stuff that they do and want us to let us know they do …to be more specific: they describe some actions with the aid of their manga drawing, but in order to do that, first they must come up with a character that represents them. Usually these characters are very simple, with messy hair and drawn in chibi style.

So? “Why do you want to make yourself a manga character again?” Well, because i plan on drawing some more, and especially in manga style – i’ve already started “Turtle and Sausage” series and i have some more projects (more elaborate) in plan; i also want to make myself a more personalized web design portfolio that contains in some images drawn by myself in manga style, but i also want to make the readers feel closer to me; this idea actually came because of my twitter page…i wanted to give my twitter followers a piece of my mind – visually speaking. I don’t know if i convinced you, but i have one final – strong motif: i want to!

How to build the manga image of yourself

Well, this is kind of tricky – this is what made me write a tutorial on this theme. When i thought of “how should i make myself look like” only one answer came to my mind “beautiful”. And i thought that this is not the point of this – to make a beautiful manga character – but to make one with my personality, style and features. I thought for a moment, tried to doodle a little but i realized: this is not me! these doodles were some manga style drawings that had nothing to do with me. So, instead of doodling some more, i actually started a brainstorm with the main subject: ME.

Basically i started to make a list with my characteristics:

1. Looks:

- face: small eyes, small pink lips, big nose – i’m not going to use this feature ), black and very well defined eyebrows –> expressiveness;

- body: small body, big bottom ;

- brown eyes and black hair.

2. Relational: talkative, friendly, a little bit mean sometimes.

3. Emotional: understanding, i can put myself into other persons’ shoes, but i’m also selfish sometimes. A little bit crazy!

This is what you should do too: ask yourself what are your main characteristics and write them down to have a starting point. Also, try to keep them ordered by having them grouped by categories – just like i did – it helps you a lot when you start the actual drawing. If you don’t know what to write, just ask your friends – it will also be a good thing for you to see how other people see you; and may be it will help you even more than your own list, because this way you will see what your most powerful characteristic is.

For example, when i asked a friend of mine what is his opinion of me he said: “you have a strong personality and you have an interesting way of imposing your points of view”. Well…my strong personality is well known Let’s get back to the main topic!

Now that you wrote this down let’s get to the next level: building your actual image. For starters let’s just choose one physic characteristic: in my case small eyes, and think how can we make them look small. I had a little brainstorming , because all i thought was “chibi has big eyes!!” and i didn’t know how to actually make them little. And i started to look at some pictures of myself – especially when i was smiling, or laughing – and i noticed that my small eyes were reduced to two lines. So there was my answer – just draw the eyes like they are closed. this kind of trick – looking at pictures of you works for every other feature of yours..just look at pictures of yourself and find out what is repeating, what is associated with you. It is not difficult, but it takes some time and patience.

Now, at my closed eyes i added a small mouth, some defined eyebrows, and – a little bit bigger bottom :”> As for the clothes, i thought of my most comfortable clothes and shoes and i also did the hair as i always like to keep it See a picture of my manga image below:

Manga Me

The writing are notes for the elements – i really like to add notes to everything.

Next i drew again the same character, only bigger. Then i just took another piece of paper and placed it on top of the bigger drawing (drawing nr 2 in the figure below) and fixed one nto another with some paper clips; on the window i started to trace very slowly and carefully fine lines just above the lines of the drawing on the back (professional mangakas use light-boxes, but for amateurs it is enough to use the window). This way i’m making the base for my inking: a clean paper, without any eraser traces, so that will not absorb the ink – well mine absorbed some ink, because it was paper for pencils not for ink, but you can find paper for ink at your local stationary.

Then, i just took the pen and the black ink and started to trace my drawing really slow and patiently. Lastly i just signed the paper and took the camera so i can show it to you guys! Voila:

Only now begins the true fun: i’m going to adapt “me” for my portfolio, twitter page, blog and whatever will come to my mind. To do that i will make it vectorial in Adobe Illustrator.

Thank you for reading,

See my other posts too!

Hariana

Hello,

I have seen in Romania some artists that want to make manga, and when they have the necessary drawing  skills, instead of making an original themed manga, they actually try to copy from the Japanese manga that already exist and are successful. For example, you don’t have to just think  “i liked “Hana Kimi” by Hisaya Nakajo ” so let’s just make one the same: with cross dressing and boy harem! This is just wrong! You have to realize that the original is always better!

In my opinion, their first mistake is that they want to give their characters Japanese names. The location is often Japan and the story – as i already said – is copied from Japanese manga.

If you read manhwa – Korean manga – you will see that they use their own names, their own culture, traditions and have a slight different subjects and styles (they are more into street violence); they even draw differently. It is the same in manhua (Chinese manga). So, just try to do this yourself: try to understand that even if you like the Japanese style very much, it is no use if you make a manga with Japanese people, about Japanese culture and places – these are already made by the natives…so you will not stand a chance!

So, be original! Try to look around you: beautiful places and restaurants that are worth drawing, high school life – that is a slight different from Japanese  one; there are also your own country’s traditions and culture. For example in my country – Romania – there is a unique holiday called mărţişor which i really love and i already made an illustration about it. And there are more customs, traditions, holidays and i’m anxious to do even more illustrations that relate to my culture.

“Originality exercises”

1. As an exercise for you, i propose you look at your news channel and see what are the everyday happenings: this way you will see what is characteristic for your country and you will become aware of your surroundings.

2. Chit chat with you friends and find out what their problems are, what they do, where they go, how do they have fun, what they suffer for. Try to note down the ideas that you find interesting. In the meanwhile you can write down the same things but from your own perspective. This way you will get a glimpse of one or two social categories and also some interesting places, thoughts and personalities.

3. Another exercise is to note down all the names you can think of and then if you don’t know their etymology you can jus search it on the web – note a small idea for every name. This way you will make yourself a great  material when it comes to your characters names.

4. Make a list of some cool characteristics: intelligence, cool headiness etc. Then make one of the uncool ones: clumsiness, air headiness etc.

These exercises will help you build your story and characters without thinking all the time at the mangas you already read and you liked.

I’m telling you again: BE ORIGINAL!

Hariana

The importance of sketching comes from the need of having a starting point. Basically it is a loose version of your idea, and it can be improved or put away for later use. I, for example, have some sketches that i did and that i like, and keep them close for inspiration. They are also good for my moral, when i think that i’m no good. Even when you have to work with a computer, you should make some rough sketches on paper, because it helps you visualize the idea you want to portrait easier and you can draw everything you have in mind quickly. Practically sketching saves you some time.

Also, when you sketch you are not that stressed up as when trying to do a final product, so your creativity will come naturally. Then scan your sketch and import it in your computer software and use it as you like!

It doesn’t actually matter if you know how to draw or not: the sketch is for personal use only, so nobody will criticize. For instance, when i want to do something in a software i make such a loose sketch that only i understand what it represents. So, it doesn’t matter your sketching skills, but your ideas that are put out to light!

As an advice, you should always have a notebook with you – mine is not even a sketching notebook, but a daily agenda, but it works with me!

Below are some sketches of mine – the ones that are my little help – some of them are characters for my future manga !

I hope i’ve helped you even a little,

Hariana

Opening a new Photoshop file

As I’ve already promised you, I will post some simple tutorials, which will introduce you the program easy – step by step.

First, I’ll assume you know how to open a computer software , so let’s begin…

When I open my program, a gray background appears – the working space – but no file to work with. So, we go to File>New (Ctrl+N); a dialog window appears, where you have some options: you can give your new .psd file a name (the default one is “Untitled-1″); the next field – named “preset:” – has a list with some types of Photoshop files. You can choose U.S.Paper, Photo, Web, etc. I usually choose “Web”, because it is the best if i want to put my work on the web – such as my blog or some other sites – it has the right width, height, resolution for this environment. However, if you have copied something (for example “Print Screen”) Photoshop recognizes that command, and when you make a new file, in the “preset” field appears “Clipboard” – as in the image below. If you modify the values in the following fields, the preset changes to “Custom”.

Figure 1

Next fields:

• width and height: there you can write a numerical – integer value between 1 and 300000. If you are out of the interval, then the closest value will be chosen automatically by the software;
• resolution: there you should have 72 if you’re doing something for the web, or 300 if you want to print it; what is resolution – the number of pixels/dots per inch (ppi/dpi);
• measurement unit: you can have there inches, centimeters, millimeters, pixels, points, picas, columns; for web files, choose pixels; for the ones you want to print you can choose inches, centimeters or millimeters; i haven’t used points, picas or columns and i don’t think you’ll need those either;
• background content: here you can choose from 3 options that colors your background layer in white (if you choose “White”),it lets it transparent (if you choose “Transparent”), or gives it the background color (if you choose “Background color” option); when “Background color” option is selected, the color you will have is the color you have in the “background color box” – see Figure 2;
• image size: the size your file will have with these preliminary settings; it will grow when you will work with the document and insert new elements in it (it may also shrink if you “crop” it or make the image or canvas smaller).

Figure 2

Working with layers in Adobe Photoshop

So, we’ve managed to open a new Photoshop file

Now let’s see what can we do with layers.

The Layer is an image. But it can have an image above and one below it. Let’s take image 3: you have the background layer – the white one – think it as a piece of paper; now imagine that the dark red square, the blue square and the circle are drawn on separate clear cellophane pieces of the same size as the background layer. For a clearer image, see the image below.

Figure 3

How can we create a new layer? Well, we can do that by clicking on Layer menu from Photoshop’s menu bar: Layer>New>Layer (or Shift+Ctrl+N); by clicking on “Create new layer” icon in the “Layer”‘s pallet (see Figure 3 or Figure 4).

Figure 4

How to delete a layer? You have to have the layer selected; then, just as in creating a layer, you can go to Photoshop’s menu bar Layer>Delete>Layer; or you can click “Delete layer” icon in the Layer’s pallet; as well you can just hit “Dell” button on your keyboard.

How to move a layer up or down? When you want to move a layer backward or forward you can just drag your layer (into the Layer’s pallet) on the position you want. Or, with the layer selected press Ctrl+[ to move backward or Ctrl+] to move forward.

Tips:

Another way of deleting a layer/group/effect: drag and drop the layer you want to delete onto the “Delete layer” icon.

A simple way of copying a layer: drag and drop your layer onto the “New layer” icon.

Well, in short, this is how we manage layers…and the most important options of a layer and a Photoshop file.

If you have any questions, or tutorial request, i’m waiting for them!

Thanks,

Hariana

Before starting to fill in the text, you should know that Japanese manga is written from right to left (well…I think you already know that, but just to be sure). So, when filling in the text bubbles with the text from the translation document, you should also fill it in from right to left.

These being said, let’s pick the Type Tool from the tool’s palet, or by hitting “T” on your keyboard. After picking that tool, the tool’s menu will appear bellow Photoshop’s menu (in Photoshop’s “Window” menu you find “Options”; select or deselect that option to make this tool’s menu visible or not). In the Type Tool’s menu we find some usefull options: we can change the font we are using, then its type – regular, bold, italic, bold-italic – and its size. The size has some predefine values (6, 8, 9, 10, 11 etc.), but you can also left click inside the text size box, delete the number written there and write the value you want.

Then you have the anti-alias box, which has the following options: none, sharp, crisp, strong smooth. Anti-alias has the role of smoothing the jagged appearance of diagonal lines in a bitmapped image. The pixels that surround the edges of the line are changed to varying shades of gray or color in order to blend the sharp edge into the background. If “none” is selected, then your text will have a pixeled appearance.

Then we have the alignment buttons, which have the same role as in wort or other text programs: it aligns the text by its left or right side, or by a vertical axis.

Then we have a colored rectangle. If we double click on it, the color pick box will appear and from there we can select another color for our text.

Now we will begin to add text to our manga page: with the Type Tool selected click and drag in the area you want to have your text, until the rectangle resulted has the dimentions you want. These dimentions can be modified, so don’t worry if you made it to small or to big.

After dimentioning the paragraph the way you want, write the text, or paste it in (Ctrl+V or right click into the text’s box and choose Paste option from the floating menu that appears).

If you have finished with the text, just select another tool, to deselect it, or go to layer’s palet and click on the new text layer. You will see that the layer’s name will change from “layer 1” to the text from your text box. However, if you want to rename the layer, it will not change the text in the box.

With the text’s layer and Type Tool selected, you can go and change the color, font size etc. If you want to move the text, just pick Move Tool from the tool’s palet, or by hitting V on the keyboard, and move your text layer. If the Auto-select is checked, your Move Tool will move the object that is below it; if not, the tool will move only the layer selected in the Layer’s Palet.

SFX: when editing sfxs, you will not use the paragrah, but the normal text, obtained by just clicking once on the page. When you will write, or paste, your text will be underlined, to show you that is not a paragraph.

The text will be only on one row (to have more, use the “Enter” key on your keyboard). I usualy make the text orientation verticaly for the sfxs. And then skew it a little, for a noisy appearance.

Then, save it as a .psd, and .jpg, so that you can edit again if needed.

Tips:

1. For easy navigation after zooming in keep spacebar pressed (to have Pan Tool active) while clicking and draging, to move the image around.
2. For thoughts use gray color – code 666666.
3. For noise use handwriting like fonts.

That is about it! I hope I’ve hepled you even a little.

Hariana.

Btw, below are the initial and the final “products”!

If you haven’t seen part one yet, click here.

We all love manga, and in order to be able to read it, some of us try to help the scanlation groups by translating, editing, proofing, etc.

The program I use to edit manga pages: Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Tools I use for cleaning: Rectangle Tool (keyboard shortcut “U”), Brush Tool (keyboard shortcut “B”).

Sometimes the image needs to be repaired after deleting the text, so it might need the use of Healing Brush Tool, or Spot Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, or even others. But for now let’s keep it simple.

I will try to tell you how  to do this step by step, and show you in detail hou t use the Rectangle Tool and The Brush, at the level needed in editing manga pages.

First: you open the page you want to edit in Photoshop. Then you pick the Rectangle Tool, but be sure that your foreground color is white: that color is the color that your rectangle will have. Anyway,even if you have made the rectangle another color that you need, don’t panic! You can also Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Edit> Undo)  or  you can go to the layer’s palet and change the color there by double clicking the colored square, and then, in the color box, you pick your color and your color’s value.

Figure 1

After you make your first rectangular shape, it will become active the option “Add to shape” from the tool’s menu (right below of the PS’s menu). Rectangular Tool makes by default one shape per layer, so every time you draw a rectangle, a new layer will be created, so too many layers will appear if there will be many dialog bubbles. This is the reason why you should select the “Add to shape” option: this option adds the new rectangle on the same layer as the first one. So you will have as many rectangles you want on a single layer.

Figure 2

When you are done with the text bubble’s text, you can erase the sfxs. For that I usualy use the Brush Tool mainly because the sfxs are on the image itself, so you have to delete as little as posible.

So, Step two: create a new layer (Layer>New or Ctrl+Shift+N) and than pick the Brush Tool from the Tool’s Palet. Zoom in as much as you need to have a good control of the “erasing” (Alt+scroll). Than start to brush by “click-drag-drop” action, in order to create strokes. Brush Tool is very flexible: you can change its diameter, its opacity, its hardness. The diameter will be of interest for you in editing, so let’s concentrate on it. You can change it from the tool’s menu (by moving the diameter’s  slider). What I usualy do and find it really handy, is – while havind the brush selected – pressing the square bracket buttons for enlarging the diameter (the right one) or for making it smaller (the left one).

Figure 3

After cleaning all the sfxs we will start editing the text.

See the text editing process in the second part of this tutorial: Editing a manga page (for dummies) – part 2

Real eyes

It is said that the eyes are the soul mirror. That is probably because our eyes expression is the most representative when showing anger, sadness, anguish, disgust etc. This is why in manga the accent is on the eyes and eyebrows.

Let’s begin this tutorial with the analysis of the real eye.

As you see, I have turned this picture black and white, so you can see better the differences between the eye components. When you look carefully at the picture, you can observe the most important parts of the eye that appear in manga drawing: the eyelashes (6), the iris (8), the pupil (9) and the well known highlight (10). Every eye has two corners: the inner (1) and the outer (11) one. The outer corner (11) has the intersection of the eyelashes (6) of the upper and lower eyelid and you can’t clearly see the intersection of the eyelids. On the contrary, the inner corner (1) – which is closer to the nose – has no hair on it and you can see it along with the details (the lacrimal canal). The eye crease (2) is also an important part of drawing a manga eye, because it helps building the whole expression along with the eyebrow.

In the following picture I’m presenting the same eye, drawn realistic in Adobe Photoshop(sorry if it doesn’t look too good, but I need to practice some more :”>):

You can see that when drawn realistic, the colors, the values, everything must stay as close as the original as it can; the eye is almond-shaped, has circular pupils, lashes above and below, the crease is above the eye and has some space below it (in manga it can be right next to the eyelashes). The eyelashes are outwards, away from the eye and eyelids. Also, the distance between the two eyelids is generally 2/3 of the iris.

With a lot of practice you can get better and better and do very realistic drawings. However, drawing manga doesn’t mean drawing realistic. So I will get to the part that interest you the most: drawing eyes in manga style.

First, you must know that manga eyes have a wide range of types, so you don’t have to do them as you see here or in mangas, but try to draw them in your own unique style.

As a feature of the manga eyes, you have the big gap between the two lids and the awfully big iris and pupil, along with the schematic look.

As you can see in the image below, the starting point of drawing the eye is usually at the inner corner(however, you can start from wherever you feel most comfortable). I have drawn the upper eyelashes line first, as the arrows indicate you, and then I have drawn a little part of the lower eyelashes line. The lower line can be of various sizes, or sometimes even not drawn at all.

Figure 1

The iris is drawn here as an oval shape and at the lower part ends as if the lower eyelashes line would be there. The pupil has been drawn also as an oval shape. You can change the size of these two ovals and see what the effect has on the whole image! Also I casted a shadow on the iris and on the pupil, and at the lower part it has the shape of the upper eyelashes line, because that line is the one that blocks the light. So that the eye can be completed you add a little crease right above the eye – as you can see in figure 2 – which can vary with the type of the expression or the character. Than, you draw the eyebrow above the eye crease. The distance and shape can be of different types according your character and it’s emotions. Also I added a highlight on the pupil, that can have a lot of forms and positions – you can try as many as you want, from lines like this one to circles and ovals, so you can see which one is best for you. As a last thing to do when drawing the eye, is to darken a little some other parts that could be shadowed like under the eyebrow and under the eyelashes line on the ocular globe.

Figure 2

Let’s say that the eye we just draw is more like a shounen style eye. But what if you want to make one in shojou style? Well, as you maybe already know, the difference between the two is the “realism” that one has and the other lacks. Shounen has only the most important parts of the eye, like the upper lid, and pupil, and at most the few details you see in figure 2. So it lacks realism, but for the shoujo manga you can add some more details, such as individual eyelash hair threads, a full lower lid, and a more defined iris and pupil. I gave an example in figure 3 and 4.

Figure 3

I made this pair of eyes full of colour, but you can make them black and white, just like I did in figure 4 (the arrow shows you where the eye is looking).

Figure 4

I hope I helped you even if a little, and I hope you will enjoy drawing eyes more now.

The computer programs I used to draw these eyes were Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.