How To Make Your Panel Lines Look Hand-Drawn

I’ve been working almost exclusively digitally for the last ten or so years and it’s been helpful in many ways, but it takes some effort to approximate a more natural, traditional ‘hand-drawn’ style, which is what most of us are going for (you may not be, which is fine!). The best overall way to do this is to get yourself some good brush packs. I use Ray Frenden’s brushes for ClipStudio and Kyle Webster’s brushes for Photoshop work, but there are also lots of alternatives. In this post, though, I want to point out something that a lot of people overlook, and that’s the quality of your panel lines.

ClipStudio Paint (CSP) has some amazing features for comic/manga creation, one of which is the panel tool. You can create grids of your choosing and edit them to your heart’s content, but the calculated panel lines are mathematically produced and look like boring, straight lines created by a computer. When I’m drawing my panel lines on paper I usually use a micron pen on Strathmore Bristol board, which is a bit bumpy and uneven. Here’s how you can make your digital lines look like they were drawn by a pen on textured paper, ruled in by your own imperfect hand:

I’ll assume you know how to make a panel grid already (there’s a handy toolbar icon just for that). It’s best to set this up before you make your panels, but you can modify them at any time by using the Object tool.

First, select the Object Tool and then click on the panel you want to edit so that it’s highlighted.

Then, in the Tool Properties below, click the little square button beside Brush Size (if it looks like a squiggly line then you already have randomness enabled). This will take you to the randomness settings.

Make sure Random is checked. That’s all it takes to give a bit of life to your line. If you want to really jag it up and maybe make it look like it’s wet ink bleeding into the paper you can play with the values to your heart’s content.

The difference between the computer line and the ‘hand-drawn’ lines is pretty drastic.

And if you want to fool around with other types of panel lines, like dashed lines, broken lines, more wobble, whatever, you can click on the Brush Shape options and select from some presets (or make your own!) I don’t mess with this too much but it’s there if you want it!

That’s it! I’ll get into more ways to battle the ‘digital look’ in future posts but I think this is a good place to start because it’s so often overlooked. If you have other methods or ideas, let us all know in the comments!