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Retool 4K Test Lynn — Description

This is a test of Clip Studio and a 4K full-screen release. No borders, no panel subdivisions, no 2K vert Amazon format, more of what we are used to. At most, the fonts and balloons look slightly different, but those are pro-level fonts made by a well-known comics letterer. The color exports look better in this app, which manga publishers use to send books to the printers. The colors need to be spot-on, or that is a lot of money blown on print runs.

These fonts work in Comic Life 3, too, so you may see them over there since I paid enough money to get some professional ones. I have been using the included fonts, which are nice, but these are actual comic fonts used in mainstream books and manga. The default Clip Studio fonts (Retool 1-3) felt a bit cold to me, boxy, and did not "read" as well as the pro ones.

Looking deeper, the pro-level fonts have slight imperfections in the lining, like the words were hand-lettered, versus the cleaner, almost too-straight Clip Studio defaults. Check the capital D between panels 3 and 4; the small dent in the bottom of the curved part gives the letter some character and personality. The human eye prefers the imperfections in the lettering to a too-clean, almost computer-generated, perfect font.

I don't expect to lose Comic Life from my pipeline, but we have lost one app, which I had to replace with Blender (Blacksmith 3D for texture painting was lost in September). Blender is a much better tool, but I was trained in BS3D and could work fast. This is where I am with Comic Life 3: I can burn through 20 panels quickly, get them spell and grammar checked, and out the door. But losing an app in my pipeline made me realize this could happen, so I started looking for other bottlenecks, and we found one in panel layouts.

If Windows did an update that broke the app, as happened with BS3D, and we needed to look for another app, Clip Studio is the industry standard in manga. People can do this in Photoshop, and I have written tutorials for Inkscape and Affinity Designer that show how you can make these comic balloons.

I don't anticipate changing any series to the 2K Amazon Vert formats. Those will likely be targeted for Kindle and Amazon releases, or for posting limited-run promo series on other sites like Discord. But full-screen 4K is here to stay, and will keep being used for all the series.

Comic Life 3 will remain in the workflow as the workhorse app until the company decides to move version 4 to Windows (CL4 is currently Mac-only), or Windows Update kills it for us (which could happen). But, taking Xmas out to train on this app gives me a backup option, fully usable for the releases we are used to.

-Ren