What to draw with?

[haleymewsome]

I'm all digital! Sometimes I do tiny thumbnails on paper first but otherwise I sketch, ink, and color all in Photoshop with my trusty Intuos 4.

[Zanreo]

I draw all digital and use Manga Studio 5/Clip studio paint for everything As for tablets I have a 13HD cintiq

[eslameldeeb]

i went from drawing all manually in B&W
Then manual pencil and inking, but digital coloring
Now i do everything digitally, i use software: Manga Studio 5 and tablet: Wacom Intuos 4 on my laptop, digital art saves sooo much time and effort that can be invested in other important stuff

[Shanny8]

@eslameldeeb I wouldnt exactly say it "saves time & effort" for me, but aesthetically, the digital ink finish wows my eye, and i feel it meshes with the coloring & lettering better.

[nessiefynn]

Pros:
Reasonable price, costs only $50 dollars
Very easy on your computer, Sai has never crashed on my computers even with a ton of other applications running in the background
Great for lineart. The Pencil and maker tools can be easily modified to make super-clean lineart brushes, and the lineart layer tools can be used to make easy vector lineart.
Very simple to learn, it took me just a few days to get a good handle on the program

Cons:
Limited in function. Sai lacks text, word bubble, and paneling tools. Can't do fancy brushes like Photoshop, and doesn't have many layer modes.
Can only work in RGB, which basically means your colors will look different if you try to print them.

Hope this helps!

[AndrewSutton]

I prefer digital, it's better all round tbh

[novasky]

thanks. I 100% agree that the blood of your enemies is the most effective tool to use.

[cy_o3o]

Ironically, I went from digital back to traditional for the current comic I'm working on X'D
The aesthetic worked far better than any other attempt I tried otherwise digitally, and I can actually motivate myself to complete a page in one sitting. Plus, my partner was colouring it to look like watercolour, so it matched our styles better for the sake of the look we wanted the story to have. Also ironically, I only started using my traditional inking style one week ago so I'm gonna just hope it all doesn't go wrong XD
There's some sense of finality compared to digital inking because there's no going back once you put the mark to paper. Least, that's how it feels to me. My inking speed improved too, using far less time traditionally than digitally where I'd spam Ctrl Z like a neat freak. The only thing I miss is the ability to select, move, and resize my art ;w;
But yeah, just work with what feels comfortable for you~

[novasky]

i hope your inking goes well! what is your comic? i would quite like to check it out!

[cy_o3o]

@novasky it's The Masked Guardian ^^ the current look right now was my digital inking attempt lol
If you wanna have a look at what our combined traditional and digital work looks like, @TMGcomic on Twitter is the place to go~ ^^

[novasky]

holy crap your work is amazing.

[cy_o3o]

thankyou :o I tried OTL

[popsiclestick]

i sketch out the page on A4 paper and paint it in on photoshop. i don't really have a lineart stage as i'm lineless :'''')

[lunaartemisasama]

I prefer to draw traditional but that's because for me is easier, but I am just a hobbyist that draws to relax and works in the computer all day lol.

I tried drawing digital, and the results are really good but it takes me too much time ...and also I don't have a tablet nowadays.

[Zanreo]

To add to this, pros and cons for MS5/Clip Studio:

Pros:
- Can be gotten for cheap, about 50$ is the regular price (which is cheap as far as paid art programs go) but it also goes on sale for around 15$ every now and then (got mine during a sale!)
- Lots of different tools and brushes
- Good for lineart
- A bunch of comic tools including speech bubbles, panels and screen tones/background fills
- Lots of brush editing possibilities
- Vector layer can be really useful for lineart, and unlike SAI's this is basically a regular layer where you can use all the brushes except all the lines get drawn in vector. Vector lines have a lot of edit possibilities like changing line thickness, slightly moving/tweaking lines and erasing lines up to the point it meets another line).
- Posable 3D models to use for reference
- Easy and quick to learn (at least it was for me)

Cons:
- Limited text tool functionality (can't rotate text ect. you have to rasterize the text layer to edit it further than font, size and color)
- Somewhat limited in filters, changing color levels ect.
- Changing a layer from raster to vector will pixellate the edges
- Basically limited in certain effects and "final touchup edits" type stuff

[Vanzish]

I sketch traditionally, then lineart and color digitally with a mouse, which means i have to manually modify the width of each line on the lineart layer. I use paint tool Sai and to make sure panels are straight, i use the select tool and then trace lines over the rectangle ^^

To add the text, i make a transparent file in gimp 2 and then open it in Sai to paste the text over my comic.

[carloswebcomic]

I sketch on whatever scrap paper I can get my hands on, then scan, clean up and ink on Clip Studio Paint.

[LoboSong_Hitaka5Ever]

I have to draw on paper first bc I can't draw digitally from scratch. I prefer drawing with pen rather than pencil bc its smoother for me. I used to take photos and then go over them digitally, but we have a scanner now. But since I mainly deal in collaborations with friend(s) I do my parts digitally with paint tool sai using an old Bamboo Fun tablet (one of the originals lol)

[twostriptechnicolor]

I draw thumbnail sketches on paper, but I do the pages themselves digitally. I arrange blank panels and dialogue in Photoshop (I made a special template for that), then draw everything in SAI with a tablet. I sometimes make backgrounds in both SAI and PS whenever I need filters and brush effects. The line work is done with SAI's vector tool, mostly with a mouse.
When I first started, I drew backgrounds in pencil and then colored them, but after 4 pages or so I switched to all-digital to speed things up.

[cosmicfunnies]

I sketch out thumbnails on my sketch book before working on the art digitally. I use adobe illustrator cc mainly using a wacom tablet. All of the art including backgrounds are done in illustrator. After the art is done, I resize the hi res files in photoshop and save them as jpegs.