B&W Guard Test 2

Here's another sample of the black & white line technique I showed last week. In this case, I rendered only the figure and props (hat, clothes & flashlight) in Poser 11 using the Comic Book Preview Mode.

Michael 3 base model
Poser 11 & Manga Studio 5 work

I added the beam and doorway in Manga Studio 5, along with the inking in the background and the "dust" (or fog, or whatever it is) in the light beam. By the way, Smith Micro renamed this product as "Clip Studio Pro," for some weird reason. I have the less-expensive version, which I got on sale for about $20 - $25, if I recall correctly. I may upgrade to the full version at some point... but perhaps not. I still have the old version of Manga Studio 4EX, and I kind of like the interface a little better than I do the new version. The old version had a "Beginner" panel, which made it very easy to find all of the pen settings at once, particularly the starting and ending fade settings (the setting that tells the pen to shrink the start or finish of the ink stroke).

By the way, I could have done the edits for these black & white images in Photoshop, but I chose Manga Studio for two reasons:

1. Manga Studio has very good pen-simulation tools. As I said above, it easily tapers the pen off at the end (yes, you can do this in Photoshop, even without a pressure-sensitive stylus, but this is a little easier to use). Also, the Manga Studio pen tool will correct your strokes, giving them a cleaner, smoother arc. This might sound like something you don't want ("I want it to show EXACTLY what I drew without fiddling with it!"), but there is an inherent lag in all computer-based drawing. Manga Studio corrects it and helps smooth out curves, which actually gives your work a more natural and organic look, as opposed to the jaggy steps you might see if you drew the strokes solely by hand without any sort of interpolation from the computer.
2. It has more built-in effects for comics, such as the dust and the etched lines and tones. I could create these by hand myself, but it's faster to just pull up the tools that are already there, waiting for me to use.

Hopefully, next time I'll have a more interesting figure to show you (hint: it's a sexy female supervillain!).