Manga Studio Ex 4.0

I work as a graphic designer for a living, and my typical tools of the trade are illustrator and flash. I've also used photoshop and opencanvas, opencanvas being my usual tool for digital painting. Being that I'm always drawing for others, I never have the time to do any drawing for myself, which includes figure drawing. If I happened to have the extra time to spend on drawing for myself, that time was spent sketching the figure and inking it, which took many hours and usually resulted in me never getting around to getting past the sketch phase.

BUT this program, I've discovered, is a MASSIVE time saver. If I don't want to sketch out a figure (laziness)or am struggling with a perspective, all I have to do is use the 3d model option in this program, tweak it as I please, and then trace over it (for people who aren't used to working in 3d, it may be somewhat frustrating at first to pose a figure yourself. For beginners, the program comes with many preset poses). Of course you won't find any sort of muscle tone on the 3d models (aside from a few arms and legs that cannot be posed), and the anatomy is pretty much anime, so if you want a realistic figure you need to know a thing or two about anatomy. Draw just anime? I's already poifect!

Using a 3d model as an aid, I was able to sketch out an accurate figure in under a half hour. It ordinarily might have taken me two or three hours with constant erasing, considering the difficult perspective I was using. You can also tweak your light source, which aids in shading while using weird perspectives.

And then of course the inking tools are AMAZING! The strokes produced are absolutely beautiful, look real, and it auto corrects, too, which is great if you don't have a very steady hand. This results in very little erasing. Another excellent feature is a tool that allows you to draw a straight line and then bend it to exactly where you want it over your sketch lines. This tool is perfect for drawing long flowing hair or folds in fabric It literally saves HOURS. Do some tweaks with that tool's settings and you can make it look like real ink strokes. Also, don't like a line width and want to tweak it? So long as you inked using vectors, you can use a tool to adjust the line's position or width. It's awesome! And if you don't like hard lines and prefer a pencil-like feel but still want to have the control? You can simply reduce the opacity and apply a blur to the outlines, making them look like gorgeous pencil strokes.

The only major downside with this program is that digital painting can be somewhat difficult, since it really seems to lend itself to cel shading. You have to be extremely careful and liberal with layers (which is okay because they are unlimited) to get the painted effect you like, in addition to turning the opacity of the brush tool way down. Patience is an extreme virtue, especially if you use the blend tool on your colors, which will muck your work up fast if you don't pay very close attention. It's the one thing that annoys me, since in other programs I've used, painting is easier. And I've seen many people export their line art into other programs just to paint them. However, once you get the hang of the tools, you can do some gorgeous shading. Also, you can do selective gradients with COMPLETE EASE, a feature that I've never really gotten the grasp of in other programs; it adds richness to all of your shading and highlights, lemme tell you.

I have yet to use any screen tones or a lot of the tools for the use of making comics or manga, but I suspect they are very good.

Oh, and this program comes with a perspective ruler that'll give you your horizon line and all of that other good stuff, so if you are doing backgrounds containing stairs or whatever you please, you don't need to go through the trouble of measuring things out. It does it for you. SAVES HOURS.

All of those features and more allowed me to complete a very intricate digital painting in 8 hours as opposed to 20+. If you want to be efficient, I suggest you buy this program, because it'll pay for itself in the long run.

This is really terrific stuff. I was impressed by EX3 but this new release blows that out of the water. EX4 is exceptionally feature-rish and powerful.

My only one complaint - that cost it from getting 5-stars (for me anyway) - was the situation with the Manual. Using this software is bordering on taking a University course and to expect us to traverse the package via a PDF manual is ludicrous.

I shot off the PDF Manual to Kinkos and had a double-sided, laser color copy made made within a few hours. And yes, of course that then cost me MORE than I paid for the software itself (the manual is hundreds of pages long) but I have no regrets whatsoever. No books on Manga Studio that I could see - unlike Smith Micro's other packages such as POSER and Anime Studio, which I also own.

Classy, solid software that performs.

This is "better" version from Manga Studio Debut 4. It has more features and is much more professional. Although the price is quite steep if you're serious about art and creating authentic looking manga this is the best tool. Even if its not for a manga, the built in patterns and different pens and brushes is worth the price. It's better than Photoshop because its not at all complicated to understand, but more complicated than Open Canvas, Corel Painter and SAI.
However if you can speak Japanese or is willing to wait for the English version - I recommend IllustStudio. From the same creators but with more tools and 3D imaging added. It's like SAI mixed with Photoshop and Poser. It's a lot less expensive BUT it is geared more towards regular artists rather than mangakas.

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