I've been working on a personal comic project in Clip Studio Paint (which I like very much), but a lot of my client work is made using Blender. I don't get enough opportunities to use Grease Pencil, and I found myself wondering if Grease Pencil could handle manga-style halftones (I love manga and I love halftones). In a timely way, I found that De Wei Shi made a Python script to add halftones to Grease Pencil. You can get the script from Superhive.

Below is a test drawing of an unpleasant goblin character where I combine Blender's new, improved brushes with halftones. The script allows you to change the dot size and frequency (along with other factors). The script works mostly great! The only problems I had with it were occasional glitchy behaviour when I hit multiple Undos, and the halftones layer don't behave well with Grease Pencil masks. Despite a few drawbacks, it feels like a potentially viable workflow.

Why use Blender instead of Clip Studio?

For my main comic project (which will run to approximately 140 pages), I'm not going to swap Clip Studio Paint for Blender. CSP's tools for print media are brilliant and as I have a license there's little point to switching to Blender. But for smaller comic projects, or comic-adjacent work (let's say an animated version of a comic character), then I may switch to Blender. CSP does have some fairly decent 2D animation tools, and it also allows you to import and use 3D reference! But if I have a gripe about Clip Studio Paint, it's the convoluted (and potentially expensive) way it deals with licenses on multiple machines. So if I had a method which I can use across a desktop, laptop and Android tablet without incurring extra expense and can cope with an unreliable internet connection, I'm open to it.

I find that the Grease Pencil's vectors scale very nicely in Object Mode, so it's easy to rescale artwork. I also like the line scaling tools in Grease Pencil's Draw and Edit Modes.

I still love Clip Studio Paint

This really isn't a dig at CSP or it's subscription model. I think software developers, like artists, should get paid for their work. I will continue to use CSP when and were it's the best tool, and it has EXCELLENT vector brushes. I would argue the CSP subscription is very good value when compared with other companies' offerings, but it all depends on you personal circumstances and budget.

Anyway Back to Blender

This is the point of writing a blog post where I wonder if anyone would have read or scrolled this far. But if you have, I just wanted to finish off talking a little more about Grease Pencil.

If you're new to Grease Pencil, it's a 2D animation tool that is an integral part of the Blender application. It started out as a simple markup tool that 3D artists to could use to, well mark things up and make notes. Thereafter it developed into a dedicated 2D animation tool. 2D artists can use it for purely 2D animation, illustration and comic / manga work. Or they can combine it with Blender's mature and sophisticated (a bit like myself) 3D modelling, animation and rendering capabilities. I only scratch the surface of most things in Blender. I'm primarily an animation generalist who can draw, but there is some amazing work being made with these tools. Just google it.

Recently, The Blender Foundation has been putting resources into Blende on tablets. I think the original announcement was about Blender on iPads, but that since then I think they are concentrating on an Android release (which makes sense to Apple's App Store commercial policies). That suits me as I use a Samsung Tab s9+, which I hope will be able to run it. So all in all, it's  a good time to be keeping an eye on Blender and Grease Pencil development, especially if you're a practitioner of 2D art.

Support Blender

Blender is free right? Yes, it is free to download and use on commercial projects. You'll never have to pay to use the software. But please don't forget that software developers need to eat too, so it's a good thing to support the making of these amazing and useful tools by signing up to the Blender Developer Fund. You don't have to pay a fortune, but a small and regular donation would help to keep the lights on.

OK that's it. Maybe subscribe to this blog,  or sign up to my "almost never" mailing list, or follow me on any of my socials. Cheers!

End Note

I'm not a big fan how I've formatted this blog post. Must do it better next time.