It’s very easy to rubbish Sumo Paint and discard it as being a cut down and not as mature or fully featured as its offline competition but that would be completely missing the point of this program.  In its current version Sumo Paint is pretty damn good at providing photo editing, digital painting and a myriad of other tools including gradients, layers, text, fills, masking, blending, and filters.  It does all these pretty well while never being outstanding, but one area that Photoshop can take note from is the way that Sumo Paint handles its gradient fills its much easier to use than Photoshop way of doing things.

Moving back to the point of why Sumo Paint is so great, its an online tool you can use from any computer anywhere and quickly edit a photo or draw a quick picture, so you can be at the library, in another country on a PC where they don’t have Photoshop or the GIMP installed and still have a graphical editing tool at your fingertips.

Sumo Paint is powered by the latest version of Flash and as such its pretty nippy and quick to respond, your not going to get the same level of control or finesse you do in fully featured commercial desktop packages but that won’t come as a shock to anyone, you do however get a solid fun package that can do pretty much everything you throw at it from anywhere in the world.  It’s going to be really interesting to see how Sumo Paint and this whole market moves forward.

You can try Sumo Paint here at its official homepage.

Tutorial Step One – The Problem

The first step in this tutorial is to open a new page in Manga Studio, if you now select the pencil tool and start to draw then zoom into your drawing you will notice the image starts to break up into tone.  This is because the standard layer in Manga Studio is set at 2 bits to keep the size of the document low.

Tutorial Step Two – New Layer Setup

The Next step is to create a new layer with more advanced properties, go to Layer > New Layer.  In the New Layer popup window you should see a Color Model drop down box, select the box and choose Gray (8 bits) and now move down to the Color Reduction Method drop down box.  Instead of the currently selected Convert to Tone choose the Do Not Reduce Color option.

Tutorial Step Three – Test the New Layer

If you now start drawing on the new layer you have just created with the pencil tool and then zoom in.  You should see that the tone is now solid and is not converted to a tone pattern when you zoom in.  This will make it much easier to ink over your pencil sketches when zoomed into the document closely.

Manga Studio has many built in functions for the creation of comics and in this tutorial we will take you through the Panel Layout function, which allows you to quickly create comic panels and then finalize and complete the layer to a print ready finish. This tutorial is done with Manga Studio 4 Debut version, but should also work with the Manga Studio 4 Ex version.

Tutorial Step One – Creating the Panel Layer

The first step in this Manga Studio Tutorial is to create a new layer in your current page. So if you do not have a page already open create a new page and then in the top menu go to Layer – New Layer and in the Layer Type drop down box select – Panel Ruler Layer.

This is the main layer to create your panel with and will allow you later to select the relevant panel to mask any sketch or ink work you will do in the layer.

Tutorial Step Two – Dividing the Panel

The next step is to now divide the panel up into the required amount of sections you require. Go to the tool bar on the left and select the Panel Ruler Cutter tool. Now go back to the page which should still be on your new Panel Ruler Layer you just created. Click and drag the Panel Ruler Cutter tool from edge to edge and it should create a new panel. You will see when using the tool that you can create lines at all angles and Manga Studio will automatically create even spaces between all the panels.

You can now either subdivide or continue to add new panels until you are happy with the amount of panels on your page.

Tutorial Step Three – Masking Individual Panels

Your panels are now complete and you can begin to sketch or ink the individual panels on a normal drawing layer. If you try to use any visual tools like the pencil or pen on the Panel Ruler Layer you will find you wont be able to.

So stay on your Panel Ruler layer and go to the toolbox on the left, select the Magic Wand tool and select the panel you wish to work on first. Click inside that panel and you will see it selects the inside of that area, you can now move to your normal layers and begin to work without leaving the edges of the panel.

Tutorial Step Four – Adding Ink Borders to your Panels

Manga Studio has a built in function to add borders to all your panels. To create the panel borders go to your Panel Ruler Layer and right click, from the menu select Rasterize Layer, and in the following pop up menu you can choose to keep or discard your original layer. I normally keep the original layer in case i wish to make further edits and for the purpose of this tutorial you should keep it too.

Now Manga Studio should have converted the blue lines to black. You should notice that the lines will be a predetermined width and you don’t have an option to change that when rasterizing the layer. If you wish to change the thickness of the lines read the next step.

Tutorial Step Five – Editing Border Properties

If you now delete the newly created rasterized Panel Ruler Layer now, we are going to create a new one with different line widths. So delete the layer and go to your original blue Panel Ruler Layer and right click, select Layer Properties and in the pop up box select the Panel Ruler tab. In the Line Width box you can now edit the size of the borders on this layer and then click the Apply Setting to Ruler.

Now if you repeat step 4 to Rasterize the Panel Ruler Layer you will see your new layer has the new border width you just selected.

Tutorial Step Six – Border Properties in Preferences

If you wish to change the standard width for any future Panel Ruler Layers you create from now on you can simply edit your program preferences. Go to File – Preferences, in the pop up box expend the Page section with the + icon. Now move to the Panel section and adjust the Panel Border Width property to your desired width.

In all your future panels you create, this will now be the standard width to save you editing each new Panel Ruler Layer.