Redrawing with the Pen Tool

If you are unfamiliar with the Pen Tool, please read an Intro to the Pen Tool. This tutorial will take what you know from the Intro and apply it to an actual manga page.

We’ll start with this panel:

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First, if you’re doing HQ cleaning that requires redoing the gray areas, you’ll have to create a layer of gray that covers the gray area.

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Next, reduce the opacity of the gray layer so you can see the original line art.

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We’re going to start with the jaw line. Just like in the Intro to the Pen Tool, click the pen on one side of the line you want to trace. Then click on the other side, and a path will appear connecting the two anchors.

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Click on the path in between the two anchor points to create a new point. Now hold down CTRL (CMD for Macs) and drag the new anchor point. Place the new anchor point so that the path overlays the line you want to trace.

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Now right click and stroke the path (don’t forget to set the Brush Tool to whichever width you want to make the line).

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And now we have a smoothly curving line! While the Pen Tool is great for curves, sometimes you’ll want to use the Line Tool (shadow lines on the neck) or Brush Tool (eyes).

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But what if the line first curves up and then down? You’ll need more than one anchor point, and you may need to tweak the handles. Here is a series of screenshots of where I placed my anchors for this curve. I circled the anchors added in each step. (Sorry for the big pic, but I wanted to zoom in enough that you could see the path).

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Alternately, instead of starting with anchors at the beginning and the end of the line you’re redrawing, you can place anchors as you go along.

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Remember, the Pen Tool isn’t just for redrawing line art in gray panels. It can also be used to trace over broken lines or to create an artificially clean image to be colored.

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Once you feel comfortable making paths and using the Pen Tool, check out the next section!

19 Responses to “Redrawing with the Pen Tool”

  1. cocona Says:

    awww thank you so much for explaining how to use the pen tool! this tutorial is amazing, seriously you know how to explain to newbie ! I have always hated the pen tool and was reluctant to learn how to use it, but as soon as I tried your tutorial, everything went so clear ! thankssssss for this tutorial !! *bows*

  2. ak47player Says:

    is there any other way to make the line art on the gray areas without redrawing?maybe some sort of tracing?

  3. chiresakura Says:

    There are many speed groups out there that try to find way to do a quick redraw, and in many cases, they wind up looking better than the raw. But I have yet to see anything look half as good as a complete redraw. The best I can say is that some filters mangle line art less than others. Some people try to select the black line art on the grays, however this depends largely on the style of tone. If you have a plain gray, you can grab the black lines somewhat easily. But if you have gray tones that are made of black dots, trying to select black lines means you select black dots as well. If you can’t do a full redraw, you’ll probably have to decide on the best gray panel method for yourself depending on your series and your manga-ka. Good luck!

  4. rosemaiden Says:

    I’m new in Photoshop so I’d like to ask how to create the layer of gray? Thank you.

  5. ak47player Says:

    rosemaiden:

    Press the f7 button to bring up the layers pallete & click on the “create new layer”. Tt is located besides the trash icon.

    Or the quick way is using the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+N. :)

  6. Derek Says:

    Just wondering, when redrawing the lines using the pentool. For brush stroke, what size do you use? For the brush, like 3 or 4?

  7. chiresakura Says:

    It all depends on which line I’m redrawing. For a 3000 px high Bleach raw, I’ll stroke a normal line twice with a 2px brush. If it’s a thicker line, I’ll stroke with 3 px. Some of the finer lines and hatching will be 1.7 px with the line tool. I try to keep varying my lines with the raw, though, so the redraw doesn’t wind up looking all the same ;)

  8. Zartog Says:

    Hey, great guides that you have here, only one thing tho i’m new to photoshop as well and i want to know how to create a layer of gray, i tried pressing f7 but nothing happened and i tried shift+crtl+N but that only opened a new layer.
    If you’d explained how to make a layer of gray that would have been excellent :) Thanks in advance.

  9. Zartog Says:

    or wait is it just make a new layer then like mark up the part you’re gonna gray and like right click fill and 50 % gray ? if it is so i feel a bit stupid :D

  10. chiresakura Says:

    You got it ;)

    The “gray layer” is the new layer where you’ll cover the gray area of the raw. You can use a polygonal lasso and fill, the pen tool and fill, or any other method you want to make the gray areas. I recommend making a new gray layer for each section that you’re redrawing ;)

  11. Zartog Says:

    ah okey, haha now i feel like a total newbie (Although i am one :D), thanks for answering my question and clearing that up.

  12. Deslynn Says:

    Hi! Adore your guides to an extent I can’t where I can’t even begin to describe. I’ve gotten the pen tool mostly down, so far, and I understand the concepts behind redrawing on gray for gray film. But each time I “stroke” with the pen tool, the line doubles (sometimes triples) in width size. I’m not sure how to fix it since the beginning line is only 1 pixel in width (and my brush is set at 1 pixel width).

    Another thing is that because the raw I’ve been fiddling with isn’t exactly the highest quality out there (though not the worst either), the lines they have are more faded than the ones that are redrawn. Do we redraw the lines on a separate layer and then dodge them? (But for the most part, the thickness problem I mentioned above is the thing that makes the whole redraw look unnatural in the manga.)

    Sorry for long comment, thanks in advance and love your guides (just wanted to repeat ;P)

  13. chiresakura Says:

    I’m glad you’re finding the tutorials helpful! Hmm… I’m not sure why a stroked pen line would double in width unless it was somehow stroking the inside and outside of the path (I’m not sure this is even possible…). Could you post a screenshot of what your PS window looks like plus one of the wide strokes?

    Sometimes what you can do if your lines look really artificial is set the opacity down to 85% or so. Your dodging method pretty much does that. Try the tapered lines with simulate pressure, too. That makes the edges look more natural. In the same menu where you choose settings for simulate pressure, you might be able to change things like jitter that can make the strokes less perfect.

  14. Deslynn Says:

    I think I got it. =D I had to readjust for the fact that it strokes slightly to the right of the actual path, and the new mark over the old lines looked like it was thicker… I think. =/ But yeah, I’ve taken to dodging the lines now (took me a while to figure out that I needed to change the setting to “shadows” and adjust the hardness levels for it to have a discernable effect).

    Thank you! I’ll definitely try the simulate pressure some time soon. =D

  15. Shino Says:

    um..can someone explain why the jaw line need to be redrawn? just to make it a perfect curve,is that it?

  16. chiresakura Says:

    If you look at the second picture, you can see that we completely covered the face with a solid layer of gray. Now we need to redraw all of the line art in black on top of the gray, and to do that, we use the pen tool for the long, curving lines (especially if you don’t have a tablet).

  17. Marida Says:

    WHERE ARE YOU PEN TOOL??????

  18. Caro Says:

    XD hey coloca el link de google para traducirlo en cualquier idioma

  19. kawaiixlena Says:

    Hello, I’m a beginner as well XD
    Thank you so much for this tutorial! It’s so very detailed!

    I just have 2 questions, how can you tell whether or not the image is supposed to be black or gray? Also, how do you know what shade of gray to use?

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