Breaking out with a broken glass brush
One of the great things about working digitally is that you can save time by utilizing the features of the software you use and making them work for you. In this case, we're going to add some broken glass around the falling figure in this drawing:
How to do it…
This recipe will walk us through creating a custom material and then using it to make our brush:
- Open a blank canvas, preferably of 300 to 600 dpi resolution.
- Using your preferred drawing tools on an empty layer, draw the outlines of several jagged shapes. These will be our shards of broken glass.
- Create a new layer beneath the outline layer. Select the glass shapes and fill them with solid white.
- Lower the opacity of the white layer to 50 percent.
- Merge the outline layer with the 50 percent transparent white layer.
- Make sure that the background of your image is transparent. Your image should look something like this:
- Go to Edit | Register Image as Material.
- In the Material property window, name your new material. Select the Brush folder (which is under Image material) to store it in.
- Check the box under the Material image preview that says Use for brush tip shape.
- Add tags by clicking on the tag and the + sign icon in the bottom-right corner of the Search tag box. Check out the following screenshot to understand what your Material property screen should look like:
- Click on OK.
- Select G-pen from the Pen subtool. In the bottom-right corner of the Sub Tool palette, click on the icon to create a copy of the selected subtool.
- In the Duplicate sub tool screen, enter the name
Broken Glass. Click on OK. - In the Tool property palette, click on the wrench icon in the bottom-right corner to open the Sub Tool Detail palette.
- Click on Brush Size on the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette. Then, click on the icon next to the slider on the Brush Size screen to choose Set to change parameter by pen pressure or velocity of tablet. Make sure that the Pen pressure box is checked, and set the value to
15. Change the curve on the graph so that it is concave. - In the Anti-aliasing options, set the anti-aliasing to Middle.
- Click on Brush tip on the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette.
- Click on the Material button next to Tip shape. Then click on the Add brush tip shape icon below the Material button.
- Select the glass shard shapes that you created in steps 1 to 11, and highlight them in the Select brush tip shape window. Refer to the following screenshot to understand this:
- Click on OK to select the glass shards as the material to use.
- In the Brush tip settings—back in the Sub Tool Detail palette—click on the box to the right of the slider for the Thickness settings to open Set to change parameter by pen pressure or velocity of tablet. Check the box next to the Random option and set the minimum value to
65. - Click on the box to the right of the Direction slider. Check the box next to the Random option and set Degree of effect to
100. - On the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette, click on the Stroke option.
- Set the Gap option to Fixed by clicking on the button with one full circle in the center.
- Use the slider under the Gap option to set the value to
150. - Set Repeat method to Random.
- Test your new brush.
How it works…
In order to get the look that we want, we need to first create a material to use for the brush tip. Filling the glass shards with a 50 percent opaque white color will give a translucent look to the finished product.
Tip
If we want our glass shards to be completely transparent (crystal-clear glass), then we have two options. The first is not to fill the glass shard material with 50 percent opaque white. The second is to use the completely broken glass brush on a new layer and set that layer to Multiply. For more information on layer modes, refer to Chapter 4, Using Layer Modes.
Once we've made the shapes we like, we have to set them as a new material, and tell Manga Studio that we want to use this material as a brush tip in the future. This, as well as saving it in the Brush folder under Image material, will make it show up when we load the brush tip shape in step 19.
We want our glass shards to look random. This is what we set when we change the Thickness, Direction, and Gap options to Random. As we use the brush, the shapes will rotate randomly and their distance from one another change.
Here is the sketch from the beginning of the recipe, now with the broken glass added:
There's more…
By making each of our glass shards a different material, we can increase the amount and randomness in the brush and make the glass effect look even better:
- Open a new file of at least 300 dpi.
- Draw the outline of a glass shard shape on an empty layer using your preferred drawing tool.
- Create a new layer below the glass shard's outline and fill the inside of the glass shard shape with white.
- Set the opacity of the white fill layer to 50 percent.
- Select the outline layer and go to Layer | Merge with layer below to merge the outline and the fill into one layer.
- Repeat steps 2 to 5 until you have as many glass shards as you want to include in your brush. Each shard shape should be on its own layer! Check out the following screenshot, and note that each glass shard has a layer of its own in the Layer palette on the left-hand side of the screen:
- Turn off all but one layer. You should now have only one glass shard shape visible in the file.
- Go to Edit | Register Image as Material.
- In the Material property window, name your new material. Select the Brush folder under Image material to store it in.
- Check the box under the Material image preview that says Use for brush tip shape.
- Add tags by clicking on the tag and the + sign icon in the bottom-right corner of the Search tag box. Check out this screenshot to understand what your Material property screen should look like:
- Complete steps 7 to 11 for the rest of the layers.
- Select G-pen from the Pen subtool. In the bottom-right corner of the Sub Tool palette, click on the icon to create a copy of the selected subtool.
- In the Duplicate sub tool screen, enter the name
Broken Glass. Click on OK. - In the Tool property palette, click on the wrench icon in the bottom-right corner to open the Sub Tool Detail palette.
- Click on Brush size on the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette. Then click on the icon next to the slider on the brush size screen to use Set to change parameter by pen pressure or velocity of tablet. Make sure that the Pen pressure box is checked and set the value to
15. Change the curve on the graph so that it is concave. - In the Anti-aliasing options, set the anti-aliasing to Middle.
- Click on Brush tip on the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette.
- Click on the Material button next to Tip shape. Then click on the Add brush tip shape icon below the Material button.
- Select each of the individual glass shard shapes that you made in steps 2-12. This can be done by holding down Shift or Ctrl on the keyboard and clicking on each shape individually.
- Click on OK to load the brush tip materials.
- In the Brush tip settings, back in the Sub Tool Detail palette, click on the box to the right of the slider for the Thickness settings to open Set to change parameter by pen pressure or velocity of tablet. Check the box next to the Random option and set the minimum value to
65. - Click on the box to the right of the Direction slider. Check the box next to the Random option and set Degree of effect to
100. - On the left-hand side of the Sub Tool Detail palette, click on the Stroke option.
- Set the Gap option to Fixed by clicking on the button with one full circle in the center.
- Use the slider under the Gap option to set the value to
150. - Set Repeat method to Random.
- Test out your new brush.
The following is what this glass brush looks like when used on an image:
