I like to try out other graphics packages even if they're not my absolute favorite programs -- just because sometimes it gives me ideas for program requests or tools to make, and sometimes because ya never know... it could be really useful in one way or another.
So anyways, being a big aficionado of sequential art (comics, silly!) I'd heard a lot of good things about Manga Studio and no bad things so I figured I'd download the demo and give it a whirl.
So after giving them all my personal information and pledging my first-born-son to them (those idiots don't know that I'm a hermit and as a virgin, still eligible for the clergy) to get to the download link, I tried installing it on my tabletPC.
No go. No dice. Na-da. hmm.... For some odd reason, the setup program just kept hanging like Judas Iscariot. Okay, so I tried it out on my desktop workstation... Well, annoyingly enough, it required a reboot after installing it (who knows) but anyways it worked and I got to try it out.
Well, it seems my problems weren't over. My Cintiq's input was all messed up. The X-axis of input was halved -- so in english, it means that if I moved my stylus to the right edge of the screen, the brush would wind up in the centre of the screen. If I moved my stylus to the centre of the screen, the brush would wind up about 1/4 of the way across. Gargh, no help in the troubleshooter would fix this.
Anyways, I didn't want to give up, especially since I'd gotten this far and resolved myself to working in this cockamamie way. Okay, so it seems that it handles very high-resolution images rather nicely. Of course, they're black-and-white without antialiasing, but that's par for the course for the style and I must say that it sure has nice smooth input. It also has some nifty things in there to put in effect-streaking and whatnot, and a few tools dedicated to smushing your lines around and also for pulling in stock 3D furniture and backgrounds, which is also pretty neat.
Too bad I'm a purist idiot who insists on drawing everything manually.
It's too bad I didn't have a bit more time to work with the software (deadlines baby -- really, I was testing the software to get away from what I was supposed to be doing for a while) because it seems to have some pretty cool workflows for dealing with stories -- that is -- arranging pages together and doing up a whole book. It's got stuff to draw panels and word-balloons and add text and other such conveniences, but man, I'm such a crotchety-old-fool that I insist on doing these things myself. Maybe it's because drawing these things manually gives me a bit of a break from the tougher tasks of draughtsmanship, and if I were to use those shortcuts, my break would be cut short.
Manga Studio has the ability to handle a few gazillion layers and sports a very complex interface. As a computer user and programmer since childhood, I actually felt a little daunted, but maybe it's just because everything looks so unfamiliar. Funny thing is, when I first jumped into TVPaint(then Mirage) in September 2005, I don't really remember ever being confused. It's easy to take for granted just how transparent the TVPaint interface is.
Of course, all through this, I'm trying to see where TVP compares to it. Well, as for smooth-black-and-white brushes, that's nothing that you can't achieve with the brush settings, and well, the animation interface is surprisingly adaptable for keeping a whole pile of pages together (you just add new frames!) and sure, it can handle a very high-resolution image -- although I imagine that the Undo system would probably prove to be very slow at print-res.
For word-balloons and cutout effects, the Shape Tool would probably be just fine, and I don't see any problems using the text tool to accomplish things, either, although I would probably hand-draw all my text. I dunno why, maybe it's because all the old guys used to do it that way too. It also gives me a reason to improve my handwriting.
Well Manga Studio seems to be quite affordable (hell, it's like, under $50 for the low-end version) so I can't really complain all that much. It certainly seems to be geared towards makin' manga, and it'll probably do a much better job than say, Photoshop. Nevertheless, I don't think I'll be switching over any time soon. It just felt so darn nice turning on TVP again, and I feel just a little better using it for just about everything.
Manga Studio
Manga Studio
(Win7x64, TVP Pro 11 32-bit)
