How to Use Digital Inking for Anime
Anime style artwork is known for its distinctive inked outlines. Japanese anime and manga (comic) artists have traditionally used a wide variety of dip pens and brushes to produce the familiar effects. However, computer programs now offer a cleaner, neater and easier way to produce the same result. It may take some practice, but digitally inked anime style artwork is becoming the preferred option for many artists and manga companies.
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Things You'll Need
- Digital art program (such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Corel Painter or Manga Studio)
- Scanned pencil sketch or digital sketch
- Graphics tablet
Instructions
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Prepare the sketch for inking. Place your sketch on its own layer. You may wish to lighten the sketch by adjusting the layer opacity or tint the sketch using your program's colorize function. These techniques help you tell which areas you've already inked.
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Create a new layer over the sketch. Some programs have special "pen" layers. These use vectors instead of raster pixels to produce the line. This kind of inked image is cleaner-looking and easier to resize. It's not available in all programs, however.
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3
Select a hard-edged pen tool. In Photoshop, use a hard round brush. In Painter, try the "Scratchboard" tool or one of the pen options. Other programs may have different tools available. Experiment with strokes on a separate document until you find one that feels right to you.
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Ink your drawing. Trace the drawing on your new layer, using the hard edged pen tool set to 100% opacity. Use long strokes instead of short ones to avoid a choppy look, and vary line thickness to create the illusion of depth. Clean up stray lines with a flat, hard eraser tool. Pay close attention to the eyes and face, since these are important areas in anime style art.
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Delete the sketch layer. You should now have a clean, inked layer ready to be colored or for printing.
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Tips & Warnings
Some programs, like Manga Studio and Paint Tool Sai, have a special inking tool that makes lines cleaner
Work at a high resolution to produce clean, printable artwork.
Avoid flat, uniform lines.
Save often to prevent lost work.
