Tag: clip studio

Clip Studio Quick Access

Posted on 4th September 2023 by pj

I’ve refined my use of Clip Studio so much over the years (starting with Manga Studio 3(!) from 2006 – so coming up on twenty years) that sometimes when a new feature hits I don’t even bother with it, as I’m already optimised up the wazoo.

Anyway, a couple of versions ago, Clip Studio introduced a “Quick Access” panel – basically a pop up window that can have your most commonly used tools in one location (rather than scattered around all over the place).

I’ve been studying a bit on colouring in clip studio, and discovered that this quick access panel might answer a few distinct problems I have with workflow, and I’ve played with it and sort of love it. It’s especially useful if you have limited screen real estate. The quick access panel can use tools, menu items, actions or pretty much anything you want. I’ve set mine up for four distinct modes :

Pencilling, Inking, Flatting, Colouring and Lettering.

If you combine that with the ability to duplicate tools and add your own icons, you can have a powerful set of tools for specific modes. Here’s my pencilling set up (I won’t go in to too much detail, though I will answer comments if you have any!)

I’ve also mapped the quick access pop up to a key (Numeric zero on my keyboard or one of the quick buttons on the huion) which makes it really useful when you’ve a small screen with a small set of commonly used tools you want to pop up and down on the screen.

The Pencilling Quick Access

This has tools for Managing a new project, including an action to create page of thumbnails (custom icon on an action)

Tools for pencilling and tools for editing the panel layouts (all things I do at the pencilling stage)

Inking Quick Access

This is probably the simplest and action could be even simplified more. The numbers beside the tools here are part of the names – I coded the number keys along the keyboard with the various common tools I use and then renamed the tools to include the keyboard number so I wouldn’t forget. (Which a handy thing I nearly wish it was a built in feature)

Flatting Tools

Actually, I suspect they’re all simpler than the pencil quick access simply because it’s got most of the starting utilities I use for beginning a new project. One note on colour, I used to use the colour wheel for colour picking, but these days I’ve taken to using the colour slider, which gives you a Hue Saturation and Value sliders for changing the selected colour and takes the guess work out of which colour should I pick next.

Colouring Quick Access

No wait, this is complex! I have thousands of brushes, but lately, I’ve been focused on Kyle’s Builder Brush (Kyle of Photoshop brush fame, released this for free ages ago) and Daub Pigmentio Dual 02 – both add texture/noise to the colours as I paint them. Lots of great texture in the art.

Also a selection of actions to create different kinds of layers, saves me having to tap a new layer and adjust it afterwards.

And finally…

Lettering Quick Access

Text Edit is basically the object edit tool set up to only allow it to edit text. I’ve duplicated and created a bunch of text tools with the fonts I like, if I had time I’d make icons for all of them with the font in it (but I’m lazy)

And that’s it.

Comments are open, so if you wanna ask me about any of this, please do. (If you ask here rather than on the socials, I can answer where which means everyone gets the answer)

3d For Comic Artists – Sketchfab to Blender

Posted on 31st March 2021 by pj

So if you’ve followed along with the Blender basics, I’m now going to start to get into doing USEFUL stuff with Blender.

When I first started using Blender it was as a bridge to go from sketchup to clipstudio – I know a lot of artists take sketchup screengrabs and push them into clip studio, but I found having the 3d model in clip studio was a whole lot more useful.

Now, I find myself mostly grabbing 3d models from Sketchfab and then bringing those into Blender to ensure they’re the right scale and then going from there to sketchfab.

Continue reading “3d For Comic Artists – Sketchfab to Blender”

Five things I wish Clip Studio Would Add…

Posted on 21st April 2020 by pj

I love Clip Studio and have been using it for years, it IS full featured – to a remarkable degree, but there’s things it doesn’t have (and, unbelievably things it used to have too) and here’s my person wishlist:

  1. Auto Actions expanded to include settings for export / print options. I export for two reasons: one is to send preview png files to editors/writers and the other is to send tiff files. I do both from the export menu, but I need to remember the settings between the two – please let me save those settings so I don’t forget and have to redo exports. It’s driving me mad!
  2. Give me a toggle to automatically hide/show draft layers. Clip Studio is smart enough to allow you to ignore draft layers when you use the fill tool (so if you have four layers and a draft and fill on layer three, it will look at the four layers as a complete unit and ignore the draft, super handy for digital inking) – but sometimes i want to see the lineart with the clutter of the pencils, and I have to go to the layers option and turn off draft layers individually (though, if you’re smart you keep all your draft layers in a single folder)
  3. Smarter perspective rulers – let’s see the perspective line you’re about to draw before you draw it – there’s precedent here both Paint Tool Sai and Lazy nezumi Pro (both windows only) allow you to see the perspective line you’re about draw before you draw it (great for ensuring you’re following the same perspective of a building when you’ve drawn it with gaps)
  4. PDF Export on desktop. Come on! I can do PDF export on the ipad but not the desktop. That’s just bonkers.
  5. AI Flatting. Let me select a layer, ask for flats, and get a new layer with flatted fills in one smart go. Come on. Clip Studio in Japanese apparently has a plug in feature and this (or something like it) exists as a plug in. But I’d love it as a standard feature in clip studio. I realise there are people out there earning money as professional flatters, and I suspect they still will – because any automated flatting will never be as smart as a human flatting (esp if you’re working with a colourist for a long time) but for me who does the odd colour job, what I wouldn’t give for an AI flatter.

OKAY ONE MORE BONUS – please for the love of god, give this to me – feature request:

Let me save and share document presets. I use two document presets, 2000AD and US Comics, and every install of clip studio I have to recreate them (and it’s not easy since the numbers try and automatically correct themselves which means you key it in right, but then find the numbers have changed themselves and now you’ve to fix those) every time I recreate presets it’s a 20 minute job laden with mistakes. JUST GIVE ME SAVED/SHARED PRESETS – I can save and share brushes, why not this one thing?

Look there are probably loads of other features missing, and many people will probably think these features hardly matter – but honestly, I think these are things that could really improve workflow.

Now, someone at clip studio, go ahead and do these, thanks!