Cover art for LORE Nos. 9 & 10 (Manga Studio, LightWave, Photoshop)

[Celshader]

Cover art for an upcoming "Ka-Blam" reprint of LORE issues #9 and #10. Drawn in Manga Studio EX 4.0 and colored/composited in Photoshop. The pipes were modeled in LightWave and rendered in Manga Studio.

http://celshader.com/images/bboards/comics/Lore_9and10_FrontCover.jpg

For those interested, I'll be posting a page from this comic book each Monday on this site:
http://lore.greeblegraphics.com

87317

[Digital Hermit]

Really great comp and syle on all levels.

Question.

Is Manga Studio better than Illustrator when doing this style of work?

From what I have seen Manga Studio has more resources built in. Whereas in Illustrator, it seems , you would have to build (or find) those resources yourself.

I guess what I am saying is, if I have Illustrator already would that do the trick or do you find the workflow easier in Manga Studio?

I am interested in doing some comic style compositions down the road.

Thanks!

[Celshader]

Really great comp and syle on all levels.

Question.

Is Manga Studio better than Illustrator when doing this style of work?

From what I have seen Manga Studio has more resources built in. Whereas in Illustrator, it seems , you would have to build (or find) those resources yourself.

I guess what I am saying is, if I have Illustrator already would that do the trick or do you find the workflow easier in Manga Studio?

I am interested in doing some comic style compositions down the road.

Thanks!

That's a good question. I do not know how to use a vector program like Illustrator just yet, so I cannot make a true comparison of Illustrator vs. Manga Studio.

That said, I know comics artists use vector graphics programs like Illustrator and Inkscape to draw/ink their comics. If you are already comfortable using Illustrator, you should have no trouble using it to create comics artwork. A Google search turned up these examples of Illustrator comics art:
http://www.briandenham.com/enter-the-zombie-lineart/
http://comicbookgraphicdesign.com/comic-book-digital-inking-with-adobe-illustrator/
http://www.maxriffner.com/parlor/how-i-create-comics-in-illustrator

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Manga Studio might have a slight edge in comics production because of the comic-specific tools that you mentioned.

For example, Manga Studio presents thumbnails of all the Pages in a Story project. If I want to reorder the pages in a story, I can drag-and-drop or insert/delete pages. With Illustrator, I would have to rename individual page files manually in order to reorder them, or use a separate program like Scribus or InDesign to order my pages for the final output.

The "EX" version of Manga Studio also lets me load LightWave LWO and LWS files into a project and render them for reference or final artwork. The Manga Studio render engine cannot cast shadows, but it can generate ink lines and shading. For the artwork shown on this thread, I threw together a quick-and-dirty LWO object in Modeler to create the pipes in the background. I imported this LWO into Manga Studio, cloned it a few times, and rendered within Manga Studio. I did not have to render the 3D object separately in LightWave 3D and composite it in Photoshop, which I did for Lore #9 and #10. The "EX" package also ships with hundreds of LWO and LWS files to drop into one's comics project.