Manga Studio® for Dummies®

Chapter 7. Panel Layers and Rulers

In This Chapter

• Explaining panel layers

• Creating a panel layer

• Opening, editing, and closing a panel layer

• Adding masks to a panel layer

• Using the panel ruler layer to create panels

• Cutting up, adjusting, and manipulating the panel ruler layer

• Rasterizing the panel ruler layer

I've never owned a very large scanner. So trying to scan an 11-x-17-inch comic page was problematic at best. Usually what I ended up doing (before eventually giving it up and going all digital) was to draw each panel on a separate sheet of paper, scan those in, and then piece all the panels together in Photoshop. (Other webcomic artists employ this same technique — or at least something very similar.)

What I liked about this technique was that I could go crazy on a page, rendering the scene out as much as I wanted, and then just crop out the area I thought would work for the page. It was probably a bit of a waste of ink and paper, but it helped me to make sure that everything looked as it should. The drawback? I used lots and lots of paper.

Interestingly enough, Manga Studio incorporates the same kind of idea. Imagine the ability to work from several sheets of paper containing a single panel each, so you can fully work out a complex scene without fear that you may run into and ruin another panel. Then, you can crop out all but the part you want for the panel. Now imagine keeping all those sheets of paper in one convenient place.

That's how panel layers work.

The Idea Behind Panel Layers ...