Screentones Tutorial

Screentone is very useful in manga because it can save manga-ka time and it also improve the quality of manga. Doujinshi-ka can also use screentones to make an interesting artwork. Screentones can be divided into line action, special effect, shading, and background. Line action is the screentone that can be use to make effect and impact from the movement of character or object in manga. While special effect is use for effect like cloth’s texture, emotion effect, exploding effect and many more. Shading is use to make a shadow effect or to make a dark surrounding like at sunset or night. While background is use to make a complex background and repeating background. Screentone can be bought from bookstore but its price is expensive. If doujinshi-ka know how to use graphic software, it can be made using Adobe Photoshop.

Steps to make simple screentones using Adobe Photoshop

1. Open a new file in Adobe Photoshop with size of 8x8 pixel in JPEG/JPG format and white background. Don’t use bitmap/bmp format because we will use the Layer function in the next step.

2. Zoom in to the maximum available.

3. Then go to the Tool Bar and choose Pencil Tool. Next, right click on Paintbrush Tool, Pencil Tool is below the category.

4. After that, open a new Layer. Use Pencil Tool to draw 2 point on your file. Both point must be aligned at 45 degree. To ease your work, think like this:

Your file size is 8x8 pixel. If your first point coordinate is (3,3) then your second coordinate should be located at (7,7).

5. Next, open a new Layer and repeat step 4. But this time redraw both points on the same position, and make them bigger and reshape it according to yourself. Repeat this step until you get a variety of shape in different sizes.

6. Now go to Select > Select All, then choose the first layer that has points on them (not the empty layer). Go to Edit > Define Pattern and name your screentone.

Repeat this step for every Layer. All Layer that have been saved will exist in Pattern category for your use.

Congratulations! Now your screentones have being made successfully.