Manga Studio® for Dummies®

Chapter 11. Tone It Up!

In This Chapter

• Discovering what tones are and how they work

• Finding your tones in Manga Studio

• Knowing what types of tones are available to you

• Adding tones to and removing tones from your page

• Changing your tone properties on-the-fly

• Adding dimension to your work by overlapping and removing tones

Artists utilize many ways to add texture, detail, and "color" to a black and white drawing. Some like to use heavier lines in darker areas and thinner lines closer to light. Others may use a more uniform line but then render their texture with extensive and sometimes extremely detailed pen work. Then there are the ones that like to use tones. What are tones, you ask? Dots. Lots and lots of tiny dots. Many artists who work in black and white, especially manga artists, swear by tones.

Until now, the only way to use screentones with your work was to purchase sheets of the stuff, trim to fit, and then adhere them to the page. The process could be slow, messy, and expensive. (Screentone sheets aren't cheap.) Plus, you pretty much had one shot at getting it right; if you made a mistake, you'd have to carefully remove the tone and hope that you didn't ruin your drawing in the process.

The nice thing about Manga Studio is that it takes care of many of these problems at once. The tone sheets that come with the program are digital, which means you now have an infinite supply, saving you a lot of money in the long run. Cutting, pasting, and adding tone effects is easier and a lot ...