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Retool 0004 — Description

One thing Clip Studio makes you keenly aware of is how bad your comic fonts suck. Well, I went out and purchased the best lettering fonts out there, and this tightens up my balloon text. The default ones that come with Clip Studio are a bit large and blocky, and they are good, but not great, like a real comics letterer actually created them. I own and license these for print work now, so we are 100% legit with zero stolen resources or AI-produced junk.

Pay the artists who do all this hard work and play by the rules! Even my AI retouch program is 100% paid-sourced images all for commercial use, with no stolen assets in the ownership chain. So there is such a thing as "ethical AI," but it is tough to tell, and you will pay a lot of money for AI models with paper trails of ownership. To me, this is the most crucial consideration of whether a model is considered "ethical" or not. Still, I rarely use it, but it is a tool in my box.

I am still pasting everything into Word to check the spelling and grammar, and there is no way around that. The fact that this program forces me to do that is a pain, but it is probably better in the long run.

I like the oddly cut panels, and I find myself shooting for them. As a result, the comic feels more alive and dynamic. Nothing is done on squares, which Comic Life would force me to do, and Clip Studio does this "slash panel" layout about as well as it gets. The panel on the lower right highlights this: a bisected frame at an angle, creating two sub-panels.

Hunter gets the lower-left, and her body gets a fantastic chance to shine. Her saying, "I am hot" while we get a full body view like that makes the panel and the statement hit much harder.

The panel cuts and shot choices highlight the story and how it is told. I can do none, one, two, or as many as I want. I can still do full-page shots. All of this is in Amazon-friendly 2560x1600 high resolution that will snap right into Kindle Comic Creator if I choose to go that route.

And thank you to everyone complimenting this new style. This is a massive change for me, justifying the money I spent (or may still spend) on Clip Studio and new fonts for the comic side of my hobby. There is a whole lot more to this than the 3D side, and the comic side can be just as technical and exacting, with detailed practical application of skills and tooling.

-Ren