Alex Heizer

There are a few necessary tools any artist will have in their studio — pencils, erasers, paper and rulers. One of the more useful but lesser-known tools is the French curve.

Like a ruler, the French curve allows you to create good, solid, consistent lines, but unlike a ruler the French curve allows those lines to be — you guessed it — curved! French curves come in all sizes and curve shapes to allow you to draft any curve or, by combining multiple French curves, compound curves. There’s even a flexible French curve which lets you make your own curves as you need them!

One of the things Manga Studio excels at is lines. Not only can you ink with a simulated brush, pen, marker or pencil, you can easily make straight or curved lines, and even polygons and ellipses. But it also has rulers which not only can be used as guides for making straight lines when using a brush or pen tool just like using a real ruler and pen, but also curved rulers that are awesomely customizable French curves! Here’s how to quickly create and use them. For this example I’ll use the standard Ruler Layer, but this also works for Sub-Rulers. Check the Users Guide for more info on the differences between the Ruler layer types and when to choose between them.

1. Create a Ruler Layer, if you don’t already have one, and select it.

2. Choose the Curved Line tool.

3. Draw a curved line as you normally would. Once you’re done this will automatically become a curved ruler.

4. From the [View] menu, select “Snap”. Then, from the [View][Set Snap Point] menu, select “Ruler”. Now if you select a drawing layer and drawing tool, like a brush, your lines will snap to the ruler and create smooth curves, even with varying line widths.
 

5. Now here’s where the real fun begins! Select the Ruler Selection tool and open the tool’s Options panel. Click the [Add Vertex to Clicked Side] checkbox, then click on your ruler. This adds a new vertex that will allow you to turn your curve into a compound curve.

6. Now you can grab each vertex while you use the Ruler Selection tool and manipulate the curve into any shape you like, rubberband-style.
 

Using Manga Studio’s curved rulers, you can create really intricate, but really solid linework while keeping the expressiveness of a brush or pen!
 

Lately I’ve been trying out Manga Studio Debut 4. I’d seen it when I was looking at other software they had available but I was happy with Photoshop at the time. I do all of my drawing with a pencil, so I didn’t feel that Manga Studio would be worth it. But after trying it (they have a 30-day free trial offer), I switched! Not from pencils but from Photoshop.

Manga Studio’s drawing tools are way more advanced than Photoshop’s, which seems logical given PS’ focus on photo editing (pardon the pun!) The word I would use to describe them is the first word I used when I tried them — “Woah!” But the thing I saw over and over again when Googling MS tutorials was “Done in Manga Studio, colored in Photoshop” (or Pixelmator, on Macs). I thought, “Why not just color it in Manga Studio,too? I mean, it does have coloring capabilities, right?” Well, of course. But sometimes it’s not obvious.

The Pen, Marker and Brush tools all let you color, but there was one big thing which Photoshop has that Manga Studio doesn’t (at least, so I thought!) It’s incredibly simple to drop a brush’s opacity to allow you to layer colors or build up color as you would with a real marker or watercolors.
MS’ standard tools only allow you to paint with solid colors. There’s an opacity setting on both the tool options and the color selector, but all either of these do is lighten the brush’s color, which you still paint with at 100% opacity.
This explains why so many people ink in MS but color in PS.

Not to be daunted, I discovered a way to get the brush behavior I’m used to which isn’t described in any manual or tutorial I’d seen.

Here’s a simple way to replace Photoshop with Manga Studio in your coloring workflow:

1. Instead of Pen, Marker or Brush, choose Pattern Brush.

2. Choose the brush shape “Circle”, which is in the “Definite Shape” dropdown.

3. On the General tab of the main Tool Options,

• set the Opacity value to something less than 100%. To begin with, set it to 50% and find your own favorite value as you play with it.
• set the Hardness value to 1%, which will give you a soft brush.
• set the Interval value to less than 10%. This will cause the brush to place each pattern item close enough to create a solid stroke instead of the regular open (random) pattern. How low you set the Interval depends on your Size and Hardness values. Setting the Interval too low will cause a really bad speed degradation. Setting it too high will cause unevenness in the quality of your strokes.
• For a large Size and low Hardness combination, set Interval around 10-12%.
• For a smaller Size and higher Hardness combination, set Interval to about 5-7%.

4. Choose your color and set the opacity in the color selector to 100%.

Now when you paint you’ll get true transparency, even over existing colors, and you can build up and mix colors gradually as you would with real markers, watercolors or Photoshop.

Tip: By increasing the brush Size and decreasing the Opacity values you can get an even softer blending of colors!

I hope this helps both new and advanced users to explore and utilize Manga Studio’s powerful coloring capabilities!