Manga Studio Ex 5

[Cecile Lilien]

MangaStudio is the world's leading comic and manga creation software and delivers powerful art tools for every manga and comic artist.

Manga Studio 5 is designed both for artists wishing to enhance and perfect their pen-and-paper illustrations and Manga Studio EX for artists wishing to complete the entire process of creating manga and comics digitally.

Sketching, inking and coloring your Comics and Manga has never been easier. Manga Studio EX 5 has all of the features of Manga Studio 5, professional story creation tools, as well as other special features, that make it the ultimate illustration tool for serious comic, manga and graphic artists.

A blog for artists using professional 2D and 3D Windows applications on the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet. Learn the ins and outs of using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage and Adobe Photoshop, Pixelogic ZBrush, Luxology Modo, Unity 3D, Corel and other art tools for the digital artist.

One of the happiest developments that have resulted from my starting this blog is that I have discovered or been reintroduced to a lot of fun and useful software. As even the most casual of blog readers can tell, I am an unabashed software collector. If a creative tool exists, I find a way to justify adding it to my arsenal.

I first purchased Manga Studio many years ago for my daughter who is a manga fan and aspiring creator. I liked the specialized panel creation tools, tones and other comic-specific goodies the software included, but I never took the time to learn it or look beneath the surface.

The software seemed to run very well on the tablet, but that would have been the extent of my testing were it not for the endorsement of a couple of digital comics artists who raved about version 5's improved brush engine.

Now, it's important to note that despite running this blog, I am not an artist. I grew up loving comics and drew as a kid, but I quickly realized I wasn't good enough to draw them professionally. From the moment I got my first Amiga, I have satisfied my creative impulses with 3d modeling. As the decades passed, I thought I had lost my drawing ability altogether. The most I can ever manage are the loosest and sloppiest of sketches.

But armed with the Surface Pro, the Wacom Bamboo Feel Stylus - Carbon and Manga Studio 5, I decided it was time to see if I could reawaken the lost muscle memory required to reasonably mimic a professional comic illustration.

It was too much to ask myself to try to create an original drawing while also learning the peculiarities of Manga Studio, so I decided instead to go back to my favorite Silver Age Marvel artists John Buscema and John Romita, Sr.

My first inking attempt was over a Buscema rough layout. I quickly realized that this was a bridge too far for a first project. Next, I found a great full page Conan the Barbarian sketch, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the lines I was getting with Manga Studio's default brush settings.

I almost gave up this experiment at that point, but then I found the Frenden Manga Studio 5 brush presets. This amazing collection is only $5 and made a world of difference. Suddenly, my pen strokes didn't look quite as dubious.

For my third experiment, I decided that I needed to ink over a cleaner, bolder image and the cover of one of my favorite comics of all time leapt to mind: Amazing Spider-Man #121, teasing arguably the most memorable story of all time, "The Night Gwen Stacy Died."

Manga Studio is quite easy to use for anyone familiar with other drawing and painting applications. Not all functionality is immediately available on the toolbar. Many important items like the panel creation and editing functions are contained in so-called sub-tools. This is not ideal for the new user because there doesn't appear to be any way to merely discover them. You need to know what you're looking for and know exactly where to look to find them. In fact, I came across a YouTube review of Manga Studio 5 that erroneously advised users of Version 4 EX to stay away from 5 until the EX version is released later this summer because the panel creation tools had been eliminated!

Another odd design choice is that the software does not appear to have an eye dropper for color sampling. As I was coloring my page, there were various times when I would have liked to bounce between a handful of colors and an improved color picker would have made a huge difference. CORRECTION: Manga Studio does have an eye dropper, but it's not in the color picker section. It's located in the toolbox. A very odd design choice indeed!

Some Surface Pro-specific observations: the software runs well, but saving and loading to the SD card can be very slow. A couple of times, Windows reported that the software had stopped responding when it was actually just waiting for the SD card to respond. A multi-purpose zoom and move tool like Sketchbook Pro's would be a godsend. The left-right scroll bar is small and difficult to hit with the pen or finger. Overall, the interface is pretty crowded on the Surface display, although it is possible to contract and expand toolbars easily. The Wacom stylus' recessed button is hard to avoid and it occasionally caused colors or tools to swap (I couldn't get the behavior to reproduce every time). Also, the pen will infrequently leave stray marks on the drawing that are nowhere near the nib.

One function I liked a lot was the ability to rotate the canvas 90 degrees without changing the artwork size this makes it possible to frame up however much or little of the art as required. Also, physically rotating the Surface to whatever angle I needed really brought me back to the joy of drawing on a sheet of paper.

My final result is by no means perfect: line weights are wrong or inconsistent, my draftsmanship is shaky and my coloring is the pits. I especially rushed the latter because I wanted to get this post published. Despite the crappy work, I think the results are encouraging enough for me to declare that I'm going to keep at it. Manga Studio 5 is the real deal and in the hands of a true artist, it will yield amazing results.

If you're interested in learning more about inking and painting in Manga Studio, Smith Micro offers a series of excellent video tutorials by professional comics artist Doug Hills. The video below demonstrates the inking process.

UPDATE: Further experimentation led me to discover that I was not utilizing one of Manga Studio's most beneficial features: stabilization. The pens I used in the image above only had their stabilization set to about 3, where the range is up to 100. Cranking the value up smooths out wobbly and sketchy lines and results in instantly more confident line art. The higher the setting, the greater the lag so it will be up to you to find a setting that works for you. Quoting Ray Frenden, "(Stabilization in Manga Studio 5) doesn't feel like cheating, it feels like a reasonable step to combat the infidelity of our hardware."

Hi guys, i'm starting to work with manga studio Ex 5 to do my comic, all the panneling is ok but it is EXTREEEEMELY INEEFICENT when it comes to lettering. Having to change the font over and over again when you select the tool delays you sooo much.

i use clip studio paint alot for absolutely everything and i swear by this program, but frankly it's just as shitty as photoshop. But bear in mind i use clip studio paint and i'm assuming it's the same as manga studio Ex 5.

Not sure if this has been discussed, but in case it hasn't: You can import Daz characters into Clip Studio EX by exporting the character as an FBX. Uncheck embed images. Check the option to export the images into a folder. Put the FBX file into the same folder as the textures. Then pack everything you exported into a zip file. Open up Clip Studio (aka Manga Studio) and drag the zip file into an open document.

I have Manga Studios, I may first rendering first as PNG files and then send it to Manga studios. You can benefit from Daz on the posing/positioning first so that you don't have to fiddle around with it in MS.

Does this still work currently in April 2017? I really wanna buy several models to use in Clip Studio Paint, but when I try to test it by exporting a start female model, it crashes my clip studio paint when I try to drag and drop in the zipped file, if it doesn't crash it does nothing. :(

Many people are interested in comics, illustrations and animation, but most people only see the finished product. Do you know what kinds of tools are used to make them? More than a few people probably think that making works like this requires specialist knowledge and software that the average person would not know how to use. I was one of them. I learned differently when I had the opportunity to visit CELSYS, a long-term developer of digital production software for works such as animation and comics. Find out about the history of the products CELSYS has developed and learn about the great features of CLIP STUDIO PAINT, the latest illustration and comic software.

CELSYS was established in 1991. It is named after founder Yosuke Kawakami's aim to take cel animation and systematize it.

1991 was the dawn of digital graphics. What we now know as computer graphics, functions allowing people to draw using their computer, were gradually becoming a standard feature on computers. At that time, the US and Canada were the leaders in computer graphics technology. Mr. Kawakami was interested in computer graphics and wondered whether Japan would have a market for digital graphics tools like computer graphics. He decided to try replacing the analog processes of cel animation with computer-based operations and CELSYS was born.

Creation of digital tools for this process began in 1991. The first to be completed was RETAS(the precursor to the current RETAS STUDIO), a program digitalizing the cel coloring process. Major animation studio Toei Doga(now Toei Animation) began using RETAS in 1993, and it spread to other studios after they noticed that Toei had been the first to digitalize their animation processes. By around the beginning of the 2000s, it was commonplace in animation studios.

RETAS comprised three basic types of software: a program for scanning moving images, a program for coloring them and a program for finishing the colored cels so that they were ready for filming. The explosive rise of RETAS took place because the software followed the same animation production process as before - cel creation, finishing and filming. This meant that animators who had previously used analog processes could apply their skills in much the same way as before, only more efficiently. All they had to do was switch equipment.

Next, CELSYS worked on digitalizing the entire process, so that instead of scanning hand-drawn images, animators could draw directly on a digital device. They developed PencilMan in a collaboration with Toei, but this software was not particularly popular. This was partly because the artists who drew the pictures were resistant to drawing on a tablet at the time, and partly because hardly any animation studios could afford to buy a large number of LCD tablets. Incidentally, PencilMan became Stylos, which is now part of RETAS STUDIO.

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