Before The Presses : Tools of the trade

​Tools don’t make the creator, but they do give the work a feel and a voice. In this time where western manga is still finding it’s place and voice, I find it important to consider the tools of the Japanese creators we read and love.

​I recently watched Manben, a Japanese tv show where Naoki Urasawa visits a variety of manga artists and films them working for several days. Then they sit down together, watch the footage and discuss it. It’s an amazing show but can be very difficult to find subbed as it hasn’t been released (and NHK flags and takes down subs). I cannot express how illuminating it is to hear artists discuss their work, inspiration tools, methods etc. I felt like I learned a lot and was freed from the restrictions of a “Deleter Manga Pack” 
Ball point pens, brush ink, digitally flipped faces, digitally manipulated photos printed out and drawn on. I realized that while there is a baseline of standard tools, there is also an interesting selection of personal choices that may give a manga it’s specific flavor. 

TLDR: The basic set of tools to make traditional/analog manga feel right would be dip pens with a G-pen nib (main), Maru (fine point), Spoon (soft for hair) and school nib (hard, good for detail but not as fine as Maru. Anything else is a bonus.

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Paper: The Name (Japanese for Manga rough draft) and sketches can be on any paper. Once you start inking, you’ll want comic or manga paper. If you plan to tone by hand, you’ll want paper that is thick enough to handle the scraping.
Pencil and eraser: .5/.7 mm mechanical are popular, but plenty use an HB or 2B wood pencil, even a blue pencil if you are delicate. Mono makes a consistent appearance, probably due to location, much like Stadler here. Find an eraser that removes the pencil well, without smudging or making your paper pink. I accidentally bought a box of “soft” erasers once… wouldn’t erase shit and just crumbled. I’m still mad. I’ve never tried mono, but I still have a big box of pentel poly-erasers that worked well. If you find your paper gets badly smudged, consider gloves – oil and sweat can cause that.

Liquid dip ink: The brand should depend on personal preference and availability. Pilot seems to be a commonly used option. I found waterproof ink was too stiff and India ink too much like paint. I appreciate the earthy smell of Sumi ink, but the smudgeness seems to depend on the paper as much as the ink. I’ve used the same ink with brushes but ended up preferring the squeezy brush. 
White ink is fun, thicker is good for corrections, but thinner ink (or gel pens) is fun for details, stars, outlines etc. Regular white out should be used with caution, I found it didn’t work with erasers and was too textured for dip pens.
Pen nibs: see above.
Brush: Squeezy pentel brush pens often appear with hair texture, calligraphy, backgrounds, filling and so on. The cartridge is replaceable making the pen reusable, which is great when you draw a lot. Dip brushes are a different skill than dip pens but can be used to great effect, like Inoue Takehiko in Vagabond or Yamashita-Kazumi does in “land”.

Multi liners: Those are great for detail, line work and outlines. I personally can’t stand the squared nib on multiliners and - until I went digital - I only used them for frames or the tiny 0.1 nib. I found Pilot G2 roller balls work easier for line details and are easier to control. If you use multiliners regularly, copic reusables are a little bit more expensive but worth it as the nib and ink is replaceable. I went through MANY fine nibs, but I’m a brute (I broke my Maru nib).
Rulers: Those are a naturally personal preference, though I recommend getting quilting rulers because they are clear and flat. French curves and circle stencils are worth exploring, too.

Digital: This is a much shorter list: Hands down Clip Studio is the best equipped program for specifically manga. It was purpose built for the Japanese manga and anime industries and used by pros and amateurs alike.  While there are many art programs out there, the EX version of CSP has a story mode function which keeps your pages together, in order and partially open. By far this function made me feel like the program was worth it, especially when having to wrangle nearly 300 pages!! It’s a less demanding program on your equipment than Photoshop and is purpose built for creating and publishing manga. Tones, manga backgrounds, frames, bubbles etc. come with the program and their website is full of assets, tutorials and more.  It exports pdf, kindle etc. which is important for publishing. More recently they have added a webtoon setting with the long canvas used with a phone scroll. 
​Csp is also full of backgrounds ready to use, which are fine and plenty of mangaka use them. But from a reader’s perspective it becomes boring, repetitive, and generic. Find your own references or use these backgrounds as a basis that you redraw on another layer; that way it will at least have your essence and hand in it.
 Ibis X is a cheap drawing app that works with Clip studio, it even allows you to upload to the csp cloud, for drawing on a phone, mobile tablet etc. I have no experience with Ipad but a close friends uses it and really enjoys Procreate.

 Tablets are more personal based on needs and budget.
I use an XP Pen but I know people who use Huion, Wacom and Ipad or Ipad Pro, so it depends. I implore you to do your own research and find something that fits your need and budget. Tablets come in a variety of sizes, some have extra buttons, others are stuck to a PC and some are more mobile. Wacome is generally considered the reigning brand of tablets but their prices tend to be out of reach for most artists. XP pen and Huion are fairly similar in price and use the same software, Xp is Japanese made and Huion Chinese. I went with XP after a side by side video of how the screen holds up over time. ​

Color:  
Copics: By far the reigning king of color in Manga. High quality, reusable but expensive alcohol markers. I love them but find them difficult to use and quite an investment to get enough color to be useful. Deciding to color digitally rather than coloring with copic is recommended if you are like me and have no idea what you’re doing. Color is a very specific skill and there is no undo button on these markers.

Watercolor: Widely popular and with a fun vibe, watercolor is another popular choice for color illustrations. I could never get it to do what I wanted, but have yet to try watercolor brush pens. Gouache: is similar to watercolor, but opaque. It’s commonly used as a “poster paint” and is great for fine detail rather than the washes that watercolor is known for.
Color drawing ink: I’ve never tried this myself,  but have seen that several artists use it with Copics, such as Yoshitaka Amano .
Colored pencils: Another one I’ve seen in combo with copics, but make sure to put pencils over marker so you don’t clog up your nibs with wax.

Digital: I love and hate digital for color. My love for Sui Ishida's abstract digital is undying, and you really can’t go wrong with cell shading. However, when used by many web comics artists they look shiny, boring and gross. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is I hate so much about it, but it almost always ruins the line art… Perhaps it’s the *over rendered* digital look or the uninspired color choices. At least with Copic, the limited pallet forces you to be creative. 
I’m discovering through digital that coloring comics or manga is a specific skill set all in itself. In the hands of some artists it has the fluidity of watercolor with the punch of oil, and a solid power in the colors only acrylic can bring.  ​

If you have favorite artists that inspire your work, check out what they are using and try them out! Bear in mind that many brands are used because they are most available to manga artists locally, some are, of course, specialized. Try what they use to capture some of their vibe, feel free to play and experiment! It’s clear from watching mangaka in action that tools should serve the art, there are common tools but generally use whatever you need to tell your story effectively! Using the same basic tools will keep a certain feel, but it’s not as iron clad as some people would yell. Dip into your authenticity and true voice, find the tools that resonate with you the most to tell the story only you can tell. Try different things as your art grows! Look at fine art, graphic design and other forms of art for tools and techniques that may help your art vocabulary grow.  
I started with traditional tools, trying ones I discovered by snooping at desk photos. I’ve more recently transitioned to digital after fighting it for several years. While there are many things I appreciate about traditional or analogue art, such as the smell of the ink or texture of the paper, I can’t deny the speed and convenience of digital. Truth be told, I always struggled with ink and preferred my pencils. With digital, my inks and pencils are basically the same.
Anyway!
What are your favorite tools? We asked manga artist C. Thomas Anderson about his preferences (here) and have compiled a list and desk snoop of several mangaka (here). We put them on the mayapple website along with links if you want to try them.

Do you use traditional manga tools? Did you switch to digital? Do you use your phone?

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