– This is the first Modest Medusa strip created with Clip Studio Paint. I’ve been coloring, lettering and finishing MM using Photoshop since the beginning, but this week I finally took the plunge and switched to Clip Studio. I have no idea if you can see any difference at all, but for me its a huge deal. I’ve been super hesitant to switch since I learned to do everything on Photoshop, and picking up a new tool can be hard. The last few days I’ve been struggling a little to relearn everything I knew, but I’ve found that Clip Studio is an immediately and obviously better drawing tool for me (not that that matters with this strip, which was drawn by hand on paper. But i did some other digital drawing this week and I certainly noticed the difference). Probably the most visible difference is the word balloons. I left behind Modest Medusa’s traditional jagged word balloons at the beginning of this season in favor of more traditional balloons. IDK if anyone even noticed. Clip Studio has an word balloon tool built in, and its very easy to use. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with this squarish shape, but these word balloons were a bit faster and easier to generate.
I have a Patreon, and sometimes people ask me what I use that money for. The truth is that it pay about 80% of my bills every month, including rent, groceries, studio rent, art supplies, etc. Sometimes it also me pay for larger work expenses. Earlier this Summer it paid for my new Huion drawing tablet, which is amazing. And now it paid for Clip Studio Pro. So for the 150ish of you that have been sending me support every month (and every one of you who supports my work in other ways) thank you all so much! (You can find my Patreon here).
If you ask “What is it?” when playing with Legos then you are doing it wrong.
And, yes, back in my day the plural of legos had an ‘s’ on it – I make no apologies.
I will continue to call them Legos no matter what thr Lego company’s official stance is.
Technically, the correct plural is “bricks.”
Blasphemy.
Yes! Was that a response to me?
The few times we got actual sets and not loose Lego pieces it was when my older brothers were younger, by the time I was playing with them they’d passed 3 older siblings, if there were instructions they’d long since been lost. And though I didn’t just aimlessly stick them together, I did like the freedom of just building whatever I wanted. I did sometimes try to build stuff the pieces seemed to be from though, like a pirate ship or space platform.
I picked up clip studio paint four years ago when I got a two in one laptop for school, and I remember being shocked at how it seemed to be just as powerful as I remembered Photoshop being, but only cost $25 (I don’t remember how much a new copy of Photoshop cost at the time but I’m pretty sure it was over $100)
yeah! I picked up the full version for $100 after considering the current Adobe subscription ($52/month). I’m very happy with my choice.
Cleaning up legos was really difficult, because we’d always get distracted and start building stuff.
me too.
I can honestly say I didn’t realize the word bubbles were different until I read your post and compared them to the previous page. I do like the thicker border on the previous ones when looking at them like that, but the shape’s fine.
I may thicken the borders too.
I at least did notice the change to the word bubble shapes.
Funny thing about the Clip Studio balloon tools: It is fantastic in its ability to do essentially anything with the balloons themselves. Total control over the shape of the balloon, the shape of the tail, merging balloons, and whatever else you can imagine.
But the *text* tools are absolute garbage for non-Japanese text. It STILL does not support basic font ligatures or precise kerning, which makes me flat-out refuse to use it. Not to mention it won’t auto-wrap text or do anything at all else to make life easier for a letterer, like auto-position tails based on comic conventions or even auto-generate irregular shapes like its predecessor—EVERYTHING is absolutely manual.
I’ve ended up drawing balloons in CSP and then doing the lettring in Comic Life 3. That app is like a dream come true for comic lettering. It also has vastly better auto-balloon generation, but of course you can’t clip to the edge of panels if you don’t use it for the paneling too, otherwise I’d use it for everything.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’m wondering if I’ll end up doing my lettering in another program.
I guess it comes down to how picky you are about ligatures. A lot of people clearly either don’t even notice or don’t care about lettering subtleties.
Personally, I use Piekos fonts that have all sorts of awesome features (I particularly like the ligatures for multiple identical letters in a row so a word like “look” has two different Os and looks more organic/hand-drawn), and using CSP means I get none of those. For that alone it’s worth using something else for the lettering.
One other advantage of using Comic Life for lettering is that it automatically does bubble-shaped line-wrapping, so instead of having to insert line breaks manually you can just size the balloon and it’ll do the correct “round” text shaping for you.
Even if you don’t end up using it, I highly recommend giving Comic Life a spin just to appreciate the care that went into a lot of their tools, and how smooth and fun they are to use. The SFX lettering tools in it are fun, too, since you ccan fully deform text and still have it editable.
based on your recommendation I’ll be checking it out. Thanks!
If you only follow the instructions you’re doing it wrong in my opinion. Sure, first time I got a new Lego thing I would follow the instructions, just to see what you can do. But then I’d change things, include other parts and eventually dismantle it to use parts of it to build something completely different. 🙂
Medusa is playing with Legos the RIGHT way, thank you.
Except for the eating them part. Right?
That made me think of this: https://youtu.be/NwTsZHGQ6FE
Thats pretty good. I like that.
Looks like I posted my comment too late again.
I just hadn’t approved anything yet. Got stuck at home because of local fire storms.
Ohmygod, I’m so sorry to gear that, are you okay?
Totally fine. But there was a lot of smoke in the air and I decided it wasn’t safe to walk to work.
That’s so sweet! I love Modest’s approach to things
I was definitely a “never followed the instructions” kid. I’m gonna build what I want, when I want, even if it’s a nonsensical mess!
What is it? Obviously, it’s a LEGO construct! Duh.
I draw a little bit sometimes but I’m not a comic artist or anything. I did bought Clip Studio Paint a few years back and it is simply amazing. Once you learn how to use it, it’s so much fun! Like, the brushes have stabilizers so the lines look real nice. You can make curved rulers to make tricky lines. It distinguish the ink from the brush and from the pencil. There’s even a tool to add 3D models to use as reference. And the bubble tool! My gosh, that thing is a game changer! I always suggest people who draw comics using Photoshop to give it a try. Much much better. I did import the Photoshop color pallete though and made a few additions. 😛
I wish I was a webcomic artist. I have the know-how and the tools but I’m not smart enough to come up with any interesting story to draw. Maybe someday. 😛
Holy crap, I didn’t know you read this comic. Small world!
Not to get too far off-topic, but I think you have enough interesting characters for a comic. Seriously. Don’t sell yourself short.
I meant to reply to this the other day.
I’m enjoying Clip Studio a lot, and I think I’ll really grow into it.
I feel like if you enjoy drawing and have an interesting comic you might as well just make comics (if you think you’d like to). I also didn’t think I was smart enough or a good enough writer, but as long as you’re having fun who cares? And I bet there are people out there who will like whatever you come up with.
Oh hey man! Good to see you out and about, I’ve been following your stuff for years.
I have a lot of fond memories of my late brother and I playing with Lego as kids. I still have a space-ship I put together the last time we did that…something like 30 years ago! I also recall that our parents didn’t want us to have toy guns, so we built our own out of Lego blocks.
We did that too!
….. Never allow Modest near a Knex set.
(Although I guess they are easier to build stuff with than Legos.)