What software is needed for making graphic novels
Sfariah D
Posts: 26,519
in The Commons
What software is needed for graphic novels? I do have photoshop cs6 so don't want to do photoshop cc right now. Budget is unknown as I just moved into hopefully a cheaper and better housing. I will know my budget soon!
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There are various tools that claim to make life easier, but Photoshop should be adequate - the important things are the story and the art, software can't help with those.
Clip Studio Paint Ex is full of comics-specific tools (as well as drawing and Photoshop-like abilities), and it's on sale right now. You might find it useful. I do.
you don't need any besides DAZ studio to render (as is or with filters/scipts) and Microsoft Paint to add text and create panels if desired for that matter.
you could plausibly just do renders with a page of text opposite too like a picture book
Like Xyer said, Clip Studio paint is hands-down the best program for making comics with panels or for drawing by hand in general. I personally find Photoshop's text tools to be superior, but it's easier to make word balloons in Clip Studio Paint, so each has its strengths and weaknesses.
if you mean a software that orginze a brunch renders together like in PDF and add dialog & effects, I'd recommand comic life & picmonkey(could based) comic life is cheap & easy you only pay a flat fee of $30 and can use it forever, easy to learn and adapt, pic monkey is very compentent tool as well, you pay $75 a year, but I find the dialog bubble option ugly.
I own both Clip Studio Paint EX and Comic Life 3, both have good and bad points about them.. For CSP EX I would say is the learning curve, while CL3 is much easier to get into.. CSP EX is way more comprehensive, as it is has drawing capabilities and more, it also includes a 3D section as well.. Comic Life 3 is just about putting comics together with pre rendered / drawn images, and comes with quite a few pre done comic style catagories, text and so on..
The last thing is price, Clip Studio Paint will cost about $49 USD for the Pro version, and $219 USD for the EX version, they do have a sub option as well.. With Comic Life 3 it is a straight $30 USD..
If you want to do more print work like stuff, you could also consider Affinity Publisher. It's a DTP program, but it has some tools for comics and there is also Designer & Photo which integrates with it.
More of a general option beyond just comics. One time pirchase (around 50, on sale sometimes for 50%)
Apart from making the actual renders, you should consider learning how to use one of the visual novel engines. Ren'Py seems to be the golden standard nowadays, and it is free:
https://www.renpy.org/
The Ren'Py community is very helpful and can be reached via dedicated forums:
https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/index.php
I would also advice to use some flowchart application tpo help you plot your story. My preference is Diagrams.net (formerly Draw.io), which is free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagrams.net
If you have money to spend, I would furthermore advise to consider using an application that helps writers organize their work, such as Scrivener. It is awesome, and it offers a perpetual licence, not subscription:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
You may find these Youtube channels useful:
https://www.youtube.com/c/GameDeveloperTraining/featured
https://www.youtube.com/c/ITRoy/featured
And especially this playlist, specifically about creating your visual novel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5o9lv-O1BdK41Cvtn4s0G5OUBdUhYGjx
There is another program that is out there called Sway by Microsoft and it is free.
They also have an app for making ideas/ connections, interesting software Watchdog.
Yes, Scapple. I am considering buying it too.
One (1) Image Editor
One (1) Text Editor
One (1) File Manager
The end.
There are a few existing thread that can provide information that will be helpful to your decision. Lots of recommendations for software.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/228061/3d-comic-book-tips-and-pictures/p1
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/516106/more-non-photorealisitic-renders-npr-iii/p1
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/36615/comics/p1
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/154591/visual-novel-support-group
If you like programming you could also look into interactive visual novels with programs like RenPy.
It's a lot harder than just making the images but could be another thing to look at.
So I bought both @watchdog79 , it's nice to have a good local program, and scrivener is great for notebooking as well, managing projects, together with brainstorming in scapple.
Awesome.
I hope they serve you well. I love Scrivener.
IMO PS is really all you need for making comics using DAZ renders. If you're good with using filtes and actions, you can get a wide range of styles if you don't want a photorealistic look. The dialog balloons take a bit more effort than if you used Clip Art Studio or Comic Life, but it's not that difficult. Still, I'd recommend getting Comic Life 3 for the comic panel layouts. For only $30 you get a ton of layouts for all different sorts of comics (superhero, manga, etc.). It'll really help you make your pages more dynamic.
If you want to do partially or fully hand-drawn art (just using DS as a drawing reference) then Clip Art Studio is a great choice. If you want to transform your renders so they look more hand drawn/painted, then I'd suggest Dynamic Auto Painter, FilterForge, Fotosketcher (free) and/or Akvis Sketch. (Akvis has a ton nice transformation effects but Sketch is my favorite. It's not cheap but it's the best I've seen for simulating pencil/pen drawings. Akvis has a very inexpensive upgrade plan which helps balance out the initial cost.)
If all you want is to use renders, then Photoshop is better. That's because editing renders is more similar to editing photos than it's to drawing. Especially raytraced renders.
If you want to draw over renders or use 3d renders as reference for drawn panels, then Clip Studio is better because it handles tablet&pen in a smoother way. It's a painter/drawing app after all.
Page layouts is something you'll be doing from the scratch anyway because a page flow must be matching the script so no premade layout is going to help you much. Forget about premade page templates because nine times out of ten they won't fit your needs.
Get some Text Bubble brushes; there are brushes for just about everything.
are you're talking about graphic novel in the sense of comics or visual novel in the sense of a game on the mobile?
I make a comic and I use Gimp beside DS and sometimes clip studio paint
it also depends on how far you want to alter the renderd look into something looking more drawn
"Get some Text Bubble brushes; there are brushes for just about everything."
It's always better to make word balloons yourself to fit the particular text you're using. Using presets will often cramp your text or leave uneven spaces around it. I was only saying that CLP's balloons are easier for some because you don't have to mess with Photoshop's shape tools or booleans to add the balloon tail. I made style presets to make them for my own use.
Crescent: I'd never heard of Akvis before, thanks for linking to it. Interesting looking software.
Speech bubbles are better to do as vectors with anchor points. This way you don't lose quality rescaling pages and you can adjust their size/shape to text. Both PS and CLP can do this, in PS it's far more fiddly using shape tools. PS does not come with preset vector speech balloons, CLP does.
Either way, vector speech bubbles always beat raster speech bubbles. Anything that needs to be manipulated and scaled up/down is always better as vectors.
Just got back on my computer. For vectors, will InDesign work for that?
edit: I just realized I have a domain name, but where did I get it from?
Vectors are vectors. As long as it can build speech balloons using anchors and curves it will work.
That edit was for a different topic on a different site. Ooops my bad!
Before you go much further, you really need to look at the production chain that Brian Habberlin (Spawn, Witchblade, Aria, Anomoly) has been using for his recent graphic novels for Anomaly Productions in conjunction with Pixar/Dreamworks/Illumination writer Skip Brittenheim. Habberlin's approach is to use whatever works the best the quickest, BECAUSE THERE IS NO ONE PERFECT TOOL FOR EVERY NEED, and generally uses very basic Poser renders in B&W, often grabbing straight off the desktop rather than rendering them, which allows for a very fast production flow, puts them together in Photoshop and Clip Studio, and then colors them in Painter for the unified look that people expect from conventional comics. For those not aware, Habberlin was an industry pro long before he became one of the first comic artists to begin using digital assets starting with the early runs of SPAWN, was a major contributer to the development of Poser's Comic rendering mode, and his yearly panels on integrating digital into comics production at San Diego Comic Con are always standing room only. For those who can't get to SDCC, he fortunately also maintains a very generous site filled with free assets and tutorials at http://digitalarttutorials.com/
Very interesting inputs everyone! This is the kind of discussion I've been hoping to see in the (now gone quiet) 3D Comic Book Tips and Picture thread and others that FirstBastion cited. It would be more enlightening if folks provided samples. The tools Crescent mentioned below, particularly those from Akvis, look very interesting. I'd be curious to see how the software has been used to create comic images.
I personally use Clip Studio Paint. Because I'm partial to B&W manga aesthetic, I find that CSP comes with lots of tools and online tutorials that are very useful. I'm still learning and I find CSP helps me push the envelope further. Before CSP I used Comic Life. What I took away from that experience was its vector tools for morphing text. Pefect for onomatopea and emotes.
Cheers!
I vote for Comiclife ( cheap$$)
and perhaps Krita ( Free)
https://issuu.com/anabran/docs/rdl7