12 Along for the Ride In the physical copy of Manga Studio 5 for Beginners, there were numerous references to Manga Studio being a deep app. In fact, there's so much to Manga Studio that a lot of information had to be cut and placed into this chapter. For example, carrying on from Chapter 2, Messing Around with Manga Studio 5, there's additional information on specific brush tool options and settings, more about the New Document dialog box, and assorted tidbits that are for when we get comfortable with Manga Studio. Not all chapters have bonus sections. The following chapters contain bonus sections: Chapter 2: This chapter provides more information about the New Page dialog box. Chapter 5: This chapter provides additional information about brushes and a breakdown of all the Tool Setting categories. Chapter 6: This chapter provides exercises for creating custom selection tools and shortcuts. The use of rulers and curves will also be covered here. We wrap things up with a discussion about perspective rulers. Chapter 8: This chapter is where we cover the two color palettes, Intermediate Color and Approximate Color. Along for the Ride Chapter 2, Messing Around with Manga Studio 5 Selecting a properly-sized page for our comic is where it all begins. Nothing is more frustrating than to work for hours on something and then realize that it all has to be resized, cropped, and so on. By really going into how we can customize Page Setting for Manga Studio 5, we can avoid losing hours of time and our blood pressure rising. Take some time, play around with different page settings, and get used to how we can create page presets in Manga Studio. It'll be time well spent. Creating the dreaded blank page Let's fire up Manga Studio 5 and take a moment to just have a look at our creative working environment. [ 2 ] Chapter 12 The previous screenshot is what you should have on your screen. It's cut off on the right, so the Sub view and Material sections aren't in the screenshot. Also, the Tool palette (the vertical row of tools to the very left) may be different from yours as I've added tools to it, which is very easy and something we'll cover later. The toolbar (the horizontal line of icons at the top) is what we want to focus on. What we'll be doing first is creating a page template for our sketching and idea roughing. Making our page preset In the print book's Chapter 1, Installing and Setting Up Manga Studio 5, we created a new page template and named it web comic w/bleed. Now, we're going to repeat the same thing and call this template "Character Sketching". Although Manga Studio 5 comes with many templates already installed, we can create many of our own templates to reflect the specific needs and type of work that we do using this program. There's a number of comic template files we can download or purchase, so it's a fair question to ask, "Why spend all this time learning how to create custom templates when we can just use premade ones?" It's all about knowing how the program works and how to make it work for us. Like painters during the Renaissance, we have to know how to make a canvas frame and stretch our canvases on it. Only instead of wood, nails, and cloth, we're dealing with information, dialog boxes, and files. While most ready- made templates can serve most needs 99 percent of the time, it's that darn 1 percent that will nip our behinds when we least expect it. In my experience, the time spent learning about the "guts" of any program will be well worth it in the long run. The program will be less of a mystery, we will feel like we have a mastery over it, and we will be more confident when using it. This confidence will spill over to the art we create within the program. So, we want to create a page template that will be our character sheet. Some questions we should ask ourselves about what we want from this template are as follows: Will we want to print this sheet out or will we be sharing it with others online? Do we want room for just a full body shot or for a few head drawings as well as a single body shot or a turnaround (a front, side, back, and three-fourth view)? Do we want to have room for some callouts, like anything special about this character's costume, props, and so on? Will a penciled drawing be fine, or should we ink and/or color it? [ 3 ] Along for the Ride If we have a clear idea of what we want from this template, we'll spend less time adjusting and fussing around with it after we've already created it. So, the following are my answers to the previous questions: The character sheet will be printed out on a regular letter paper; we will also have the option to go crazy and print it out on a tabloid paper (11 x 17 inches in size). We want a front, back, and three-fourth view (we will forgo the side view) with a few head shots (one in an emotionless state and one or more in various emotional states). It's good to have a character sheet with neutral emotions so we can get a good idea of how the person looks without the distortion that smiling or grimacing can give. I always like to have room for callouts; you never know when you doodle a neat-looking gizmo or costume accessory and come up with ideas for it. This is where you put all that info down so it won't be forgotten. I love inking and coloring, so yes, it will have to be colored. How a character is rendered gives it (and our story) texture, and don't forget that color is an important part of a character. Now, based on these answers, the page template we'll be creating will be letter sized (8.5 x 11 inches) and in landscape mode (wider than taller). This will give us horizontal room for the turnarounds, the head shots, and any callouts or other drawings that we may need to include. Now, let's pick the resolution of the template. The subject of resolution is a tricky one. Most printers and print-on-demand (POD) places only need 300 dots per inch (DPI). That's all good, but what happens when we print our letter-sized drawings on a tabloid-sized sheet? Tabloid paper is twice the size of a letter sheet, so the drawing will print at 150 DPI on tabloid paper. If this is for your own use, the lower resolution may work out just fine. However, what if you're showing this to a publisher or collaborator? You'll want it to look as good as possible. Then, the template should be at 600 DPI. Now 600 DPI will create files that are twice the size of 300 DPI, so the file size will be larger. Don't worry; Manga Studio 5 can handle it just fine. We need to keep in mind that downsampling (reducing the image's size) will always look better than upsampling (enlarging the image's size). You can tell if something's been upsampled a lot by the amount of pixelation in the image (like in 8-bit video games). Oh, and images always look better when downsampled. Most comic art is created much bigger than the printed size. This is because when things are reduced, there's some smoothing that occurs that just makes things look more slick. [ 4 ] Chapter 12 How about creating that page preset? With Manga Studio 5 open, click on the New Document button on the toolbar or go to File | New. The New Document dialog box will open up and show us the last template that was used. That's great for when we're working on a comic story and need the new page to be just like the previous one. We won't do this now though, because we want to create a new page template that's customized for creating character sheets. Before we start, just keep in mind that if things get messed up beyond understanding, click on the Cancel button; you'll be back in Manga Studio 5 where you can just click on the New Document button and start again. If you mess up and click on the OK button, you have the ability to delete bad templates. So, just start again and watch out for any mistakes. Although this may seem like a repetition of what we did in Chapter 1, Installing and Setting Up Manga Studio 5, we're going a bit deeper into the workings of the New dialog box. This is so that we can more quickly internalize what we can do in Manga Studio without having to constantly refer to instructions. [ 5 ] Along for the Ride Some callouts were added to the previous screenshot to emphasize some important bits. Here's a breakdown of the settings in this dialog box. Whatever is in square brackets is based on the template that was last used. Refer to the following table: Name of area Kind of setting Setting value What it does General area File name Textbox New canvas This allows us to give a name to our new document.