How are manga artist able to get such clean line art?

 Are they inking their drawing before scan or re-drawing the lines after scanning? I'm using Photoshop and would like to duplicate the kind of line art I see in manga art. 

 

Thanks,

 

Traditional manga artist usually ink right on top of their pencil originals; once the pencil sketching is complete, they sweep the dust and eraser bits away with a feather brush, then use a variety of inking nibs and brushes (mainly nibs) and apply ink lines right on the sketch. After the ink is dry, they erase the pencil lines. Then, they apply the screen tones if they see fit.

More recently, many artist prefer to print out their pencil sketches as blue art then ink on top of that. This way, they preserve their original pencil sketch.

I have not met many people inking digitally, but it is possible. The best tool is the scratch pen tool in Painter. In Photoshop, pick a brush that does not give you a grey trail; something crisp and clean.

Thanks Yian. Another question, in the recent workshop file ' character with energy' by Warren Louw. Looking at his character & line art, would you say he digitally ink that work. 

I don't have the magazine, so you will have to show it to me.

I don't have that magazine either but the files are in the download section, and very good they are too! But all those clean edges are a mystery to me too.

I just looked at the image. The lines were definitely digital.

daft thing, line art was never really my skill, i always relay on the shadeing and colour to give my work the punch needed.

But hears the question, how do you know were to put the heavy and thin lines to give depth.. i love the work of frank cho (liberty meadows) and his line work for the covers is always amazing with or without the colour and i'd love to know how he does it.

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Jaded_arts@yahoo.co.uk

I was thinking about this overnight (the original question rather the bit about line weight, which is also a mystery to me ) and I remember reading a tutorial on technical drawing (not sure if this would translate to manga) where the linework was produced by marking out the sketch with paths and then stroking the paths with a brush. The result is crisp clean and sharp but it's a dreadful chore getting the paths and all their handles to curve the right way so I quickly forgot about it.

On the odd occasion that I do want a sharp solid line I find that duplicating the line layer and then merging the two layers together helps, and if you repeat the process then you end up with lines of equal and consistent 100% opacity with none of that greying along the stroke.

You migh want to check out a new book DC comics put out. DC comics guide to drawing digitally it talks about all this stuff and walks you through it using Photoshop, illustrator, and even using google sketchup I even emailed the author of the book with a question and he got right back to me very helpful.

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I smell dead people.

line art rocks. i made a whole tutorial on how i do it in photoshop.  but i changed in my technique and now use illustrator. 

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jonnymarvel:

daft thing, line art was never really my skill, i always relay on the shadeing and colour to give my work the punch needed.

But hears the question, how do you know were to put the heavy and thin lines to give depth.. i love the work of frank cho (liberty meadows) and his line work for the covers is always amazing with or without the colour and i'd love to know how he does it.

As I am but a amature at best I don't know if this will help, but since my line work is the best part of my drawings I tell you how I know when to vary line width. The theory is basicly the same as for shading, the thing is to give the illusion of shadow and therefore depth with line work alone. When you think of it this way the lines will be darker where you would normaly darken the area to create a shadow. And the opposite when in the path of direct light where the line will be thinner. To this end I descovered a great exercise on the internet a few years ago that is simple and only takes a few minutes each time. All you have to do is take a small piece of wire, bend it any way you want (I suggest creating some random angles in diffrent directions so that it projects in all directions) put it down on a flat surface and choose a perspective to draw it from. Now here is the challenge, you need to draw the wire showing depth, so you create the illusion of 3d but, you are only allowed to draw the outlines of the wire varying the width of it. So no shading of any sort, just the outlines (no crosshatching or something similar).

cool, i'll have to try it... it makes it sound so easy lol

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For commission work contact me at

Jaded_arts@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks Evil Robot for the book.

Looking through Imagine and other websites, manga artist are finishing the line art in digital. I was under the impression it was done in ink then scan. And I suck at digital line art, my lines are never straight & clean. 

I know deleter comicworks isn't the greatest piece of illustration software ever concievedof and the fact that deleter no longer makes a enlish version or even updates for the one there is, is hart breaking. But since it is a program made for the creation for manga it is ideal for line work. Besides it has this great feature called auto correction, helping an artist create a steady straight line were there isn,t a steady hand.

Manga Studio is the grandaddy of comic art creation. It's a phenomenal program, if a bit ugly. But there's also PaintTool SAI which has a pseudo vector facility that creates very clean lineart. Both of these programs draw curves without having to use bezier handles (although they're there too) and you have the ability to go over the line art with a brush to thicken or thin any part of the line. Both have auto correction too.