#Clip studio separate colors into layers how to#

They are one of my favorite features of working on art digitally and have often saved me from having to completely redo parts of a drawing or comic. One of the best things that ever happened to digital art, in my honest opinion, is the invention of Layers. Now that we know the definition of flatting that we’re going to be using for this article, let’s talk about setting up the layers of our document so we can be successful in our flat coloring. With the method of setting down base colors that I’m going to show you, it is easy to change those colors later on in the process if you decide that one color just isn’t working - without having to do your shading over again! This method is also easy, fairly fast, and provides a clean transition between the line art and the coloring. This step in the process allows me to see what areas are which and to get a feel for how the pure colors look with each other before I go further in the coloring process. I like to think of the flat colors as the road map to the shading. There is no shading or highlighting on a flat color image. To illustrate this, I have attached an illustration below that I’ve only put the flat, or “base” colors on. When I talk about flat colors, I’m referring to the simple process of selecting base colors for areas that will then be shaded and highlighted later on. In comic books that are being created by a team, flatting refers to the process of putting down distinct flat colors for each area (i.e.- character A’s skin, character A’s eyes, character A’s hair, character B’s skin, etc) that then allows the colorist to easily select, fill, and shade those areas. “Flatting” has a very specific role in the current comic production workflow, especially when multiple artists are working on the same project.

#Clip studio separate colors into layers how to#

You will need to be at least somewhat familiar with how to create and work with Layers to follow along with this tutorial. In this article, we will cover the following topics: Whether you’re doing “flatting” as part of a larger comic creation team or just putting down flat colors on your own drawings, the base set of colors influences the rest of the coloring process, and the choices made in this step of creating an illustration can make your coloring easier or it can slow you down and gum up your workflow! Many of you probably know my name from those books, in fact!įlat colors are an important part of the comic creating process. I was a beta-tester on the Manga Studio 5 program and for Clip Studio Paint, and I have written three books and several video courses about the program. Hello! My name is Liz Staley and I’m a long-time user of Clip Studio Paint (I started using the program back when it was known as Manga Studio 4!).