How to draw skin tones for your manga characters

“Tones” are your massive ally adding charms to your works.

Using tones helps you make your work look way more like a manga.

There is an array of tone materials available in MediBang Paint.

For those who are thinking “I want to start creating a manga!” and “I’m not sure where to add tones…”, I am here to show you the effective ways of using tones.

This time we will learn tones for [character’s skin].

☆Revisit the basics of tone first☆

When we refer to “Tone”, it stands for “Screentone” which is an art supply mainly for manga creation.

There are several variants, including [Halftone] with a dozen of tiny dots, and tones with patterns of sky, woods, or sparkles.

In the analog manga creation, you need to trim tones with a cutter to paste where you want to. As for the digital creation, you can add them with a modicum effort as if you are coloring.

Tones are called separately In MediBang Paint material folder. Basic tones with simple dots are described as [Tile], and tones with particular patterns are called [Tone].

If you select [Add Material from Cloud], you can browse numerous materials not currently shown!

Choose what you like.

 

・Size of Halftone

Circumstances appropriate for using a halftone and impressions that the tone gives differs depending on the density and the size of dots.

・【〇〇L】…the number of dots placed in the tone

→The larger the number of lines per inch, the denser and finer the dots appear.

・【〇〇%】…depth

→The larger the number, the bigger and darker the dots appear.

Above is the compared image.

Merely adjusting the number of lines and depth make the tone look utterly different.

Try determine your favorite color depth like “〇L〇％ for the hair color, and 〇L〇% for the facial color…”.

 

☆Add tones to the character’s skin!☆

Now let’s use tones for the character’s skin!

There are three main purposes for using tones on the skin.

①Depict skin color

②Depict shades of skin

③Depict movements of character’s inner emotions, etc.

①Depict skin color

Tones can be used simply when you want to change the color of a character’s skin.

If you want to draw a character with tanned or darker skin, you can add the tone to the whole body.

The tone for the character’s skin should be large in the line number which means it has to have finer dots.

It will blend right in with the skin, and also finer dots will not interfere in the details of the line drawing for the larger area to which the tones are pasted.

Adjust the density of the color to your liking.

However, be careful not to use colors that are too dark, as they may make the line drawing less noticeable.

②Depict shades of skin

Add the tones to where shadows are cast, such as to under the chin, below the hair or elbow joint.

You can think of when you are making color illustrations.

Same as before, tones with the larger line numbers (finer dots) is recommended as it won’t interfere with the line drawings.

How much shadow to add is a difficult question.

The more shadows you add, the more realistic the illustration will look.

Decide where to place the shadows while considering the balance between your own drawing style and the amount of shadows.

 

Also, if there are more places for shadows to put, the work becomes more burdensome.

Manga production requires the pasting of tones over many pages, so you would do well to consider your working hours.

③Depict movements of character’s inner emotions

While ① and ② are the use of tones to express physical color or light and dark, this ③ is for expressing emotional effects.

You sometimes use background tones in images, for example, a sparkling tone when a character is feeling joyful, or a cobweb tone when they are feeling sad. Surprisingly, these tones can also be applied to the character’s skin.

 

The [hatching] and [Sand] tones are particularly easy to use, as they look beautiful whether added as a whole or in parts like shadows!

 

Try out various types of patterned tones available in MediBang Paint!

 

☆See other informative articles about tones☆

BasicMethods of Using Tones

Highlighting Hair in MediBang Paint

 

(Text・Illustrations／はらなおこ)

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