Preferred Resources for Aspiring Comic, Webtoon, and Manga Creators
- MlkyWay YourMap
- Sep 30
- 15 min read
First Steps to Your Creative Journey
Mlky Way Across Your Map / Skull Verse Comics
Learning how to create comics, graphic novels, manga, and above all webtoons can be a fun and exciting journey for any team, let alone artist. The ability to illustrate stories, let alone express yourself in an entirely new light and create characters that live and breathe on the page or screen can feel nourishing to one's heart! Working on a small team, hopefully someday owning my own studio, has taught me to utilize an arsenal of different software to help with the creative journey as a concept artist, illustrator, writer, and all around creator, working hand and hand with my fellow team mates on the Skull Verse Comics team!
In this post, I will share an overview of the tools I use and recommend, so, lets get started!
My Go To Apps and Tools for Creation
Choosing the right software can sometimes be overwhelming with a wide choice of preferences across apps like Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, or even the Adobe Creative Suite. So, here's my take on applications and tools I tend to use personally based on experience, sorry if the list is shorter than what is out there and being utilized by some of your favorite artists and creatives. I'll be doing a more in depth list down the road in a separate post dedicated to some of the top apps out there!
Clip Studio Paint
Clip Studio Paint stands out as an indispensable tool for comic and manga creators alike! It offers features like panel layout designs, speech bubbles, and a vast selection of brushes just to name a few things.
It is a great tool for animators and illustrators alike plus can easily be utilized by authors with its vast selection of tools available! The software even comes with 3D character and architectural models for you to toy around with and manipulate if thats your thing for reference and or creation in your comics. I personally just draw out everything for practice but the 3D models definitely help to make things easier!
Most artists I've spoken to in my community and social media tend to prefer Adobe Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint above all other drawing applications for their finalized work when it comes to comics, easily making this my top pick when it comes to working on comics and manga alike!
Procreate
For any artists that prefer to work on their iPad, Procreate is the go to choice for Illustration purposes hands down. Look, I know you can still get Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Illustrator, and ibisPaint are all accessible on iPad, but with its huge selection of satisfyingly customizable and textured brushes, user interface, and top-notch quality, I can't think of anything else I'd prefer to have with me on the go for personal drawings and observations.
This app is rather easy to get used to on all skill levels and whether it's professional work or simply just personal, it tends to be an all-around fun experience to let yourself get lost in your work here.
Love to track your creative work process? Procreate has one of my favorite time-lapse recording features among all the apps I've used, including Clip Studio Paint. The quality alone and ability to clip it to simply 30 seconds, while also viewing it as I go or even before exporting and posting on social media, can easily make me smile as I reminisce on the work I've created over the past hour, day, or even week depending on how detailed it was!
Corel Painter
If you tend to like more traditional painting methods or are a traditional artist looking to get into the digital field of creativity, Corel Painter is an amazing start to your journey!
It contains a rather extensive library of brushes and textures, making it perfect for artists with a bit more flair to their work, if you get what I mean. While its learning curve is a bit steep, the outcomes you get from being able to create on here makes it all the more worthwhile!
Personally, I tend to utilize this application in the coloring, rendering, and special effects aspects of my more professional work. It can easily raise the quality of virtually any illustration, just by coloring it in as you normally would, easily saving time in the long run for concept artists and illustrators looking to add more depth to their projects.
Sketchbook
Look, I know it's technically not at all digital by any means, I tend to use a traditional sketchbook of varying page thicknesses from Canson and Strathmore for early concepts of my work, or for educational purposes to help with muscle memory and learning.
Whether I'm exploring rough ideas for visual development, developing storyboards, character concepts, thumbnailing compositions, or even just learning, sometimes there's nothing better than some good ol fashioned pencil and paper.
Most of what I do in my sketchbook such as storyboarding, or even fleshing out architectural concepts and environmental layouts, it helps to stay more loose and more easily capture the mood of each piece, adding a deeper depth of personality to your art when you ink it on your tablet or iPad later on.
Finding Inspiration
Inspiration plays a vital role in creativity! Finding that mix of online and physical resources can easily help keep your ideas fresh and exciting where your imaginative process may fall short after a repetitive work flow.
Pinterest is easily my go-to for finding quick visual inspiration, or for creating mood boards with minimal effort when I feel drained and stretched thin.
You can easily create collections of images categorized into different boards and find similar images simply by clicking on one to broaden each board.
Looking for a quick pose or outfit idea but don't know where to start? Try describing it to Pinterest and see what pops out at you!
Some of my all-time favorite artists post here on Instagram, so I love to follow all of their amazing, incredible journeys throughout their artistic careers, inspiring me to chase after one of my own! Sometimes, following like-minded creators, offers a sense of unity and community amongst one another.
Engaging in the comment section can hold all sorts of entertainment, whether its comedy, collaboration, advice, or even just flat out confusion, keeping things interesting while still offering a variety of opinions, takes, and viewpoints on a piece of work you may try to understand yourself.
For me personally, I tend to post here because I started here and I never really found comfort in anywhere else when it comes to finding creatives that I personally feel are either where I realistically wanna be or that are in relatively the same place as me.
ArtStation
Looking for a career opportunity or a professional art portfolio where others can follow your creative journey amongst projects? ArtStation is a premier platform where you can discover some of the tippy top high-quality artwork across architectural concept art, character designs, and illustrations set to a level of detail, you wouldn't have even imagined be possible!
Not only does this platform showcase talent from all across the world, but it showcases talent from different leaders and like-minded creatives within the professional industry, easily motivating you to improve on your artistic skills!
Books from 21 Draw, D&D, and of Mythology
In addition to the different digital platforms available at my leisure, I've built a small library of books over the years, from things like D&D, 21 Draw, or even visual depictions of different mythologies across the world for that one creative spark I need to boost me over whatever artistic block I'm struggling to overcome.
I tend to stick to bestiaries and encyclopedias when it comes to D&D and mythologies to help keep things surface-level and challenge myself to think deeper, forcing my own stylization in whatever I aim to create in the moment, or simply use them as a starter block for ideas on how to approach a new creature or deity design.
21 Draw I tend to use simply for creative inspiration and guidance. The advice tends to be less descriptive than an in-depth course on how to draw in a given category, keeping everything simplistic enough to skim through and reapproach at a later time, jam-packed full of drawing homework and challenges to explore from a diverse cast of artists within the industry.
Learning and Practice
Yes, every artist can easily learn on their own, but sometimes its a little hard on knowing where to start without a little guidance. Me personally, I may have a slight problem...
Where others tend to go stock up on Pokémon cards, Shoes, or even Pop Figures (Which I myself am guilty of the last one), I tend to find myself collecting a large library of online courses. For me it just feels soo addicting to find different viewpoints and approaches to how someone's creative brain thinks and functions in a given field I am working in.
Whether you're a concept artist, Character Designer, Children's Book Illustrator and writer, Cover artist, Illustrator, Manga or Anime Artist, etc, etc, it just feels like a fun approach for me personally, when I have a little bit of free time, to keep and practice overtime!
Domestika
Domestika offers a wide range of affordable courses led by industry professionals. Some of which is in another language, mostly Spanish and Portuguese from my experience, if not English. I tend not to mind because those courses in languages foreign to me, tend to come English dubbed if not including subtitles for the less popular ones.
The shorter and more engaging videos, in my experience, tend to feel more engaging and welcoming, easily making them fun and easy to follow from start to finish. I've tried to follow courses on applications such as Udemy, for example, but when my ADHD kicks in, I find it hard to follow, let alone continue practicing and studying. My experience with Domestika, I tend to not only find it easy to follow, but usually I retake a course just for the heck of it, cause I genuinely enjoyed the process and course itself, if not the instructor (Who tend to be very friendly and inspiring!)
And their community! Oh my glorb! I friggin love their community! Like-minded artists, where you are, before you, and where you're wanna be all inspiring one another to continue on and power through the courses and personal projects, and inspiring one another to chase your dreams! I tend to love the communities I've found within Domestika, so I guess I do have a larger bias when it comes to this. Most of my friends tend to go to me for drawing tips and advice, so I'm more so giving out my personal opinion on this one I'm afraid.
Not so much into drawing, but more so writing, cosplaying, or even knitting? They have a course for just about anything in your creative journey my friend, all you have to do is search!
21 Draw
Some of my favorite artists have created a course on 21 Draw which is really what originally got me invested in the platform to begin with, but they do have tons of amazing courses to follow if I'm telling you the truth!
Just like Domestika, they offer a large library of courses led by industry professionals that only aim to inspire and teach their audience, if not help them get a leg up in where they currently stand.
Although I really only find courses on drawing here, I tend to go here regardless to find courses for honing in on my skills if not looking for another artist's approach on how to illustrate something like a book, comic, or even character design, in a more fun and engaging way than me just staring at a blank canvas or page telling myself to ink it and pray for the best.
Coloso
Starting off, I am one thousand percent going to warn you about the price tag on these courses! But, hear me out...
Although these courses tend to be more expensive, the knowledge and in-depth approaches to different aspects of the artistic industry from concept to illustration, tend to be rather invaluable.
Yes, don't get me wrong, Domestika and 21 Draw offer amazing and intuitive approaches to a more affordable way of learning, Coloso tends to help you get to the next step of professionalism and a foot inside the industry if you really take it seriously and add a collection of courses here (First off, god bless your pockets), and then proceed to utilize what you had learned and proceed to challenge yourself and continue forth with the networking you may have gained in the process.
Is it guaranteed? No. Unfortunately, in today's industry jobs are getting harder and harder to get into, but I will tell you this, you will feel like a professional if you haven't already experienced what it felt like to work as a concept artist within a studio of sorts.
These courses tend to be phenomenal, pivotal starting points on how to perfect your rendering and illustration techniques, as well as ways of strengthening your artistic portfolios to gain a larger quantity of clients for commissions and such.
Class 101
If you'd like a phenomenal alternative to Coloso because you are somehow like me, just with deeper pockets and a stronger thirst for knowledge, I most definitely have to recommend Class 101 if you are more so a subscription-based type of person.
Its main downside that may hit you in the face like a mountain of bricks, is that if you buy a course on here, you have access to it for a set period of time unless you were subscribed when you purchased it. they offer subscriptions granting you access to their courses as long as you have a subscription, but they tend to go away if you let your subscription die out.
I have found a course or two, I may, or may not, have cried when lost, just, don't tell anyone I told you. They have not just personable, but professional takes on approaching improving your drawing skills for a more specialized drawing role within the industry, rather than simply just a general take on how to be that profession.
They especially specialize in strengthening your artistic portfolio, so you gain access to flexing on all the haters, wink, wink. Plus, I've found that their homework assignments, quote on quote, easily help strengthen my personal collection of works of art I keep for myself when it comes to more drastically growing as an artist and getting, that much closer, to where I wanna be.
YouTube
Come on now! You should have seen this one coming, no?
I tend to use YouTube for more surface-level videos on how to improve my foundations in drawing, from anatomical models to architectural sketches for the backdrops of my postcard and illustrative approaches to concept art.
This is a free and user-friendly place to find videos on how to draw in pretty much any and every field. Plus, if you loved the video from the YouTuber that made it, they tend to have created a book or course for you to follow more thoroughly.
Creating custom playlists and collections to follow, really can't get much better than that.
Challenging Myself
I used to pride myself on my ability to draw virtually anything, just off the rim from my imaginative super power to create without references! Unfortunately, after an accident where I lost a large chunk of that creative discipline, I sometimes still find myself struggling to recover a sliver of what I had lost. Challenging myself, if not daily, weekly, can easily help me grow in my process of illustrating and sketching concepts and scenes from pure imagination, giving way to the ability to put more of me in anything and everything I do.
Set a prompt and force yourself to follow it to a T while still adding a creative spin on things to keep things fun, and interesting to help add a layer of trial and error in a more controlled environment so to speak.
If drawing challenges aren't your thing, try to create a one-shot comic or even a comic page from pure imagination to see how far you can get without references, to practice a more natural flow of figure drawing, composition, and a level of critiquing you may not be able to find otherwise, from the forefront of your brain. That way, next time you're creating a comic or animation and are utilizing references, you steadily build a habit of not depending on them as heavily as before, giving a good balance of imagination and structure!
I also sometimes take on commissions regardless of what they are asking, to help broaden my horizons and force myself to draw outside my comfort zone and grow more organically if that makes sense? There's just a certain feeling of the client telling you how amazing your work is when you felt like you created absolute trash comparing it to your other work that just feels amazing. Because next time you look at that piece of work, you get to see it through a new lense, where you can appreciate it more and learn from your mistakes on your next project or commission where you may be working on the same thing you were literally just exposed to!
You don't necessarily need to do any of the above of what I do, you can easily come up with your own way to challenge yourself to accelerate your growth in your creative journey. Just make sure to remember to have fun along the way, else you may find a resonating hatred in drawing that's a little hard to get rid of from my experience.
My Creative Process in Comic Creation and Practice
So, dot, dot, dot...
How do I approach creating my comics and such? I'm so glad you asked!
First! I start off with fleshing out all my concepts in a sketchbook and seeing where my mind takes me. I then finish my drafted script and story overview for whatever project I'm working on since my stories I tend to just let my mind guide me, usually skipping over the brainstorming phase altogether. Then after fleshing out most of my concepts for character and architectural design and finalizing my script, I proceed to illustrate rendered in versions of my concept art on Procreate. If I can't come up with starting points on the spot, I may utilize Pinterest, Instagram, ArtStation, or even stop to read a book to find some inspiration!
After that is done, I work on some exploration sketches and illustrations on my iPad and proceed to finally starting my storyboards! Usually I carry my sketchbook with me to my other job, sigh, but that's ok! I prefer to do my storyboards on paper to keep things loose and more easy to follow and space out organically. I then take pictures of all the pages and flesh out thumbnails and placements of where everything should be on a blank canvas and either illustrate scenes from a more dynamic camera angle or even ink over detailed versions of the rough sketches I quickly shot through on my sketchbook.
The inking process I tend to do in Clip Studio Paint on my Xp Pen Drawing Tablet, before either using Corel Painter 2024 for the coloring and rendering or moving back to my iPad for the coloring and rendering, depending on the style and project I am working on. If I am just speeding through something, I may just color it and render it on Clip Studio Paint if I am telling the truth. I then work on finalized special effects, lighting, shadows, dialogue, really anything and everything that comes with finalizing ones work.
Finally, I keep all the work bundled together in a pretty bow and wrapping paper for future use (metaphorically speaking of course), as I proceed to crash and fall asleep after a day's work! Between projects, I may take a walk and sketch what I see in a spare sketchbook or take some online courses from Domestika for example, if not reading yet another book while deciding if I wanna buy it or not while I'm out in about at a Barnes and Noble or Library. That way I can keep my creative juices flowing when I'm not working on a project or commission.
Usually, I start each day with a quick sketch of something, anything, just to keep my mind in a creative state for the day, and some kind of anatomical or structural and detailed sketch I power/rush through before I go to bed to help rewire my brain to challenge myself to do better than I did the night before. Of course, I do all this while juggling a full-time job and a creative team I am proud to be a part of (and occasional gaming between you and me).
Embrace Your Creative Journey
The act of creating something yet to exist, is far more rewarding in it's many branches of inspiration and creativity! Please never forget to follow your heart and have fun along the way, whether you aim to do this professionally or as a fun little hobby on the side!
Let your creativity flourish and that spark from its expanding branches of narrative to inspire your soon-to-be universe of worlds yet to be created!
Happy storytelling adventurer!
Share Your Journey
Oh! Right!
I totally forgot to add this part above, sorry about that...
This is my, very unprofessional and poorly structured approach to helping creatives find some resources I recommend when it comes to the comic creation journey! But we'd love to here your process and the resources you use in your everyday life when it comes to comic creation, illustrations, storytelling, writing, or even just doodling! You know what, even if you just wanna share your creative journey, we'd be nothing but honored to hear from you! Every person has a story, whether or not we are all stuck on the same chapter. I only hope to help inspire and help nurture the creatives that follow!
So...
What kind of applications and tools do you guys use? Do you have any go tos or just use whatever is in front of you in the moment? What kind of artist or writer do you consider yourself? Do you have any questions or advice you're itching to just get out there after reading this? I have soo many questions I'd love to ask you but I've taken up enough of your time for the time being, so I'll just leave it at that for now :)
Feel free to reach out via email or through the form found at the bottom of our homepage! We may even feature your story or insight on a future post, with your permission of course, alongside your artist or writing name (or whatever name you'd prefer to go by!).
See you guys on our next post!
-Skull Verse Comics
Comments