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Artistic commentary: screentones
Toning my original pages of manga is very difficult. Not in application, but in deciding what to do! I have an infinite range of options, and it's rather difficult to chose what tones go where to accomplish which effect. But more than that, it's about deciding HOW to tone. Like painting, or sculpting, or sketching, every artist has their own way of toning. When in doubt, I look to the masters.
I know only the fellow artists who read my blog will find this interesting--and most of them have vanished since the new year started *looks around forlornly* but I'm really writing this for me. Laying it out really helps me understand what the greats have done. So!
Here are my observations of my mangaka:
Yazawa Ai-sensei, of Nana. She tones in what is best described as flat color. Her characters' tones are applied like the way a kid colors in a coloring book--flat fills that show color but never contour or shading. Her backgrounds tones tend to be gradients, patterns that fade to white, or flat tone cut to make a circular frame (or a combination of these traits), all of which focus the eye on the characters in the panel. She is especially fond of linear gradients in two ways: the background fill and the character overlay. What I mean by that 2nd one is she'll draw a character, usually in profile or 3-quarter view, and cover them with a linear gradient that is darkest away from the face and fades to white half-way across them. That forces the reader to concentrate on the character's expression. Simple and effective. Yazawa-sensei's greatest artistic strength is in her economy of line, and her toning emphasizes this. By far the most important thing about her style is the lack of showing a light source and any shading. Almost always, the only shading she uses are tiny pure black fills in deep areas on her characters, like under the chin or between the fingers. This means that when she DOES shade or show a light source, the effect has a lot of impact. As shoujo manga goes, she tones less than normal. White space tends to dominate her pages whenever they involve characters. To conclude: Yazawa-sensi's style is using flat tones that emphasize her characters. It's all about the pen work here, tones are an afterthought.
Nakamura Yoshiki-sensei, of Skip. She always tones with an eye to lighting, the opposite of Yazawa-sensei. Any character not drawn tiny on the page will have gray-scale tone shading. Clothes are meticulously shaded too, right down to the wrinkles and frills. She makes great use of texture on clothing, using patterns, strategically applied gradients to keep all those dark suits interesting, and balancing it all with whitespace for dress shirts, buttons, jewelry, or even the shine of leather. Her romantic or softer moments are toned gently, with light gray over the lines and blended to soften them. Yoshiki-sensei is very detail-oriented in her meticulous pen work, and that detail is reflected in her use of tones. She uses tones in the background with a more varied style than Yazawa-sensei, drawing by hand and thus toning by hand where Yazawa uses photographs or stark lines with the occasional gradient. To sum up, Nakamura-sensei combines the tones with her pen work, merging the two to create a finished and vibrant work that showcases and makes excellent use of both.
Hino Matsuri-sensei, of Captive and Wanted. She is a member of the uber-toning school, though not as bad as some. ^^; Tones are everywhere, all over the place, layered on top of one another, filling the panels, making the characters dance. The uber-toning school also LOVES additions of tone patterns, lace, or sparklies. And not just when it comes to clothing or wallpaper--but thrown in on top of the scene and characters to add effect. Romance scene? Slap a rose bouquet over it! Dramatic moment at night?? How about a glowy sparkly tone over all?! Comedy? Give it some radial lines! It's as if white space is the enemy. No panel or character is left untoned, to stand there naked, consisting only of line art. Oh no--you can't do that. It's indecent! To be fair, if this uber-toning method were applied to Yazawa-sensei's stark pen style, it would be completely overwhelming. The pen work must hold its own to not drown under the massive toning, and Hino-sensei manages this quite well. Realism takes a back step in this method, thus Hino-sensei shades and uses a light source maybe a third of the time. Most of her characters are shading-free. To sum up, Hino-sensei focuses on making a visual feast for the eyes, as pretty as possible. (Tanemura Arina is also an uber-toner. Hino-sensei's pages are positively Yazawa in comparison! O.o The letterer in me is very afraid of Tanemura-sensei.*hides*)
Now let's see what the boys are doing! In general, shounen mangaka use less tones than their shoujo sisters.
Kishimoto Masashi-sensei of Naruto. He very rarely uses tone, and when he does, it's flat applications similar to Yazawa-sensei's style. When he does use them, they tend to be on characters in the extreme foreground, to make them stand out from the important middle and background. Sometimes he uses them--again as flat fills--in the background. (Particularly over flashback scenes.) He'll also apply gradients in dark settings, such as inside caves and buildings. Except for the extreme foreground moments, Kishimoto-sensei NEVER shades with tone. His shading, a rare trait in his work anyway, is done with hatching, which are short parallel lines. He does use tones for flat colors on occasion, such as when Sasuke goes all gray when he invokes the curse seal's third level, but for the most part, tones are not the norm. And again aside from the occasional bit of clothing, Kishimoto-sensei never uses patterns. No sparklies or glowies here! Definitely no lace or flowers! To sum up, Kishimoto-sensei chooses not to screw with tone unless absolutely necessary. Not surprising, since he has to crank out 20 pages a week. I wouldn't want to screw with tone on that kind of schedule, either...and boys aren't that interested in sparklies, lace, or flowers anyway. :P
Yagi Norihiro-sensei of Clay. Yagi-sensei uses tone like Nakamura-sensei uses tone. It works with the pen lines to create a pleasing whole. The man loves his gradients, and tends to apply them in backgrounds. He does shade his characters, often combining the shounen-standard hatches with tone. But his shading is not as frequent as Nakamura's. He is very economical with its usage on humans, only shading the bare minimum to get his point across. His youma tend to be more heavily shaded, no doubt since they are meant to be darker in coloring--and often rather shiny. He makes great use of the scraping-tone shading method. (Scraping away bits of tone with a razor blade to soften the edges, rather than just cutting the extra tone out and leaving a sharp line.) Yagi-sensei also knows the value of white space, which is something I wish the shoujo uber-toners would stop to consider. It's nice to let our eyes have a break! Also, he does sometimes use the "sand" tone pattern in his backgrounds, during quiet moments. Just something I noticed, as it's rare in shounen books. ^^ To sum up, Yagi-sensei uses tone to compliment his artwork. He isn't too concerned with realistic lighting, but he does tone with an eye to the Universal Light. Tones for design isn't that important to him, I say he's more interested in tones for texture.
To be fair, male uber-toners do exist. Takeshi Obata-sensei of Death Note and HikaGo comes to mind. That man is obsessed with realism in his artwork, I must say! But I've never lettered a shounen uber-toner and this is long enough, so I'll give them a waver. :B
So where do I want to fall in all this?? I'm trying to land in between Yazawai-sensei and Nakamura-sensei. Yazawa's stark style lends itself very well to graphic design. To have each page be an efficient piece of artwork that tells its story and manages to look sleek as well. I really admire that. But at the same time, I love how Nakamura-sensei makes tones work for her. Her tones add so much to the already beautiful pen work...when I slow down and study what she's doing and how she's doing it, I'm left in awe. Which brings me to the shoujo mangaka of mine that I left out from above: Umino Chica-sensei of Honey. Her style is what I'm aiming to be. Flat color where it's needed. shading where that's needed, and just enough background toning to get the point across--be it mood or scenery. The only stylistic change I would make would be a stronger sense of design in my pages. And I must admit. I never thought Umino-sensei would come out on top. Heh. ^^V
I know only the fellow artists who read my blog will find this interesting--and most of them have vanished since the new year started *looks around forlornly* but I'm really writing this for me. Laying it out really helps me understand what the greats have done. So!
Here are my observations of my mangaka:
Yazawa Ai-sensei, of Nana. She tones in what is best described as flat color. Her characters' tones are applied like the way a kid colors in a coloring book--flat fills that show color but never contour or shading. Her backgrounds tones tend to be gradients, patterns that fade to white, or flat tone cut to make a circular frame (or a combination of these traits), all of which focus the eye on the characters in the panel. She is especially fond of linear gradients in two ways: the background fill and the character overlay. What I mean by that 2nd one is she'll draw a character, usually in profile or 3-quarter view, and cover them with a linear gradient that is darkest away from the face and fades to white half-way across them. That forces the reader to concentrate on the character's expression. Simple and effective. Yazawa-sensei's greatest artistic strength is in her economy of line, and her toning emphasizes this. By far the most important thing about her style is the lack of showing a light source and any shading. Almost always, the only shading she uses are tiny pure black fills in deep areas on her characters, like under the chin or between the fingers. This means that when she DOES shade or show a light source, the effect has a lot of impact. As shoujo manga goes, she tones less than normal. White space tends to dominate her pages whenever they involve characters. To conclude: Yazawa-sensi's style is using flat tones that emphasize her characters. It's all about the pen work here, tones are an afterthought.
Nakamura Yoshiki-sensei, of Skip. She always tones with an eye to lighting, the opposite of Yazawa-sensei. Any character not drawn tiny on the page will have gray-scale tone shading. Clothes are meticulously shaded too, right down to the wrinkles and frills. She makes great use of texture on clothing, using patterns, strategically applied gradients to keep all those dark suits interesting, and balancing it all with whitespace for dress shirts, buttons, jewelry, or even the shine of leather. Her romantic or softer moments are toned gently, with light gray over the lines and blended to soften them. Yoshiki-sensei is very detail-oriented in her meticulous pen work, and that detail is reflected in her use of tones. She uses tones in the background with a more varied style than Yazawa-sensei, drawing by hand and thus toning by hand where Yazawa uses photographs or stark lines with the occasional gradient. To sum up, Nakamura-sensei combines the tones with her pen work, merging the two to create a finished and vibrant work that showcases and makes excellent use of both.
Hino Matsuri-sensei, of Captive and Wanted. She is a member of the uber-toning school, though not as bad as some. ^^; Tones are everywhere, all over the place, layered on top of one another, filling the panels, making the characters dance. The uber-toning school also LOVES additions of tone patterns, lace, or sparklies. And not just when it comes to clothing or wallpaper--but thrown in on top of the scene and characters to add effect. Romance scene? Slap a rose bouquet over it! Dramatic moment at night?? How about a glowy sparkly tone over all?! Comedy? Give it some radial lines! It's as if white space is the enemy. No panel or character is left untoned, to stand there naked, consisting only of line art. Oh no--you can't do that. It's indecent! To be fair, if this uber-toning method were applied to Yazawa-sensei's stark pen style, it would be completely overwhelming. The pen work must hold its own to not drown under the massive toning, and Hino-sensei manages this quite well. Realism takes a back step in this method, thus Hino-sensei shades and uses a light source maybe a third of the time. Most of her characters are shading-free. To sum up, Hino-sensei focuses on making a visual feast for the eyes, as pretty as possible. (Tanemura Arina is also an uber-toner. Hino-sensei's pages are positively Yazawa in comparison! O.o The letterer in me is very afraid of Tanemura-sensei.*hides*)
Now let's see what the boys are doing! In general, shounen mangaka use less tones than their shoujo sisters.
Kishimoto Masashi-sensei of Naruto. He very rarely uses tone, and when he does, it's flat applications similar to Yazawa-sensei's style. When he does use them, they tend to be on characters in the extreme foreground, to make them stand out from the important middle and background. Sometimes he uses them--again as flat fills--in the background. (Particularly over flashback scenes.) He'll also apply gradients in dark settings, such as inside caves and buildings. Except for the extreme foreground moments, Kishimoto-sensei NEVER shades with tone. His shading, a rare trait in his work anyway, is done with hatching, which are short parallel lines. He does use tones for flat colors on occasion, such as when Sasuke goes all gray when he invokes the curse seal's third level, but for the most part, tones are not the norm. And again aside from the occasional bit of clothing, Kishimoto-sensei never uses patterns. No sparklies or glowies here! Definitely no lace or flowers! To sum up, Kishimoto-sensei chooses not to screw with tone unless absolutely necessary. Not surprising, since he has to crank out 20 pages a week. I wouldn't want to screw with tone on that kind of schedule, either...and boys aren't that interested in sparklies, lace, or flowers anyway. :P
Yagi Norihiro-sensei of Clay. Yagi-sensei uses tone like Nakamura-sensei uses tone. It works with the pen lines to create a pleasing whole. The man loves his gradients, and tends to apply them in backgrounds. He does shade his characters, often combining the shounen-standard hatches with tone. But his shading is not as frequent as Nakamura's. He is very economical with its usage on humans, only shading the bare minimum to get his point across. His youma tend to be more heavily shaded, no doubt since they are meant to be darker in coloring--and often rather shiny. He makes great use of the scraping-tone shading method. (Scraping away bits of tone with a razor blade to soften the edges, rather than just cutting the extra tone out and leaving a sharp line.) Yagi-sensei also knows the value of white space, which is something I wish the shoujo uber-toners would stop to consider. It's nice to let our eyes have a break! Also, he does sometimes use the "sand" tone pattern in his backgrounds, during quiet moments. Just something I noticed, as it's rare in shounen books. ^^ To sum up, Yagi-sensei uses tone to compliment his artwork. He isn't too concerned with realistic lighting, but he does tone with an eye to the Universal Light. Tones for design isn't that important to him, I say he's more interested in tones for texture.
To be fair, male uber-toners do exist. Takeshi Obata-sensei of Death Note and HikaGo comes to mind. That man is obsessed with realism in his artwork, I must say! But I've never lettered a shounen uber-toner and this is long enough, so I'll give them a waver. :B
So where do I want to fall in all this?? I'm trying to land in between Yazawai-sensei and Nakamura-sensei. Yazawa's stark style lends itself very well to graphic design. To have each page be an efficient piece of artwork that tells its story and manages to look sleek as well. I really admire that. But at the same time, I love how Nakamura-sensei makes tones work for her. Her tones add so much to the already beautiful pen work...when I slow down and study what she's doing and how she's doing it, I'm left in awe. Which brings me to the shoujo mangaka of mine that I left out from above: Umino Chica-sensei of Honey. Her style is what I'm aiming to be. Flat color where it's needed. shading where that's needed, and just enough background toning to get the point across--be it mood or scenery. The only stylistic change I would make would be a stronger sense of design in my pages. And I must admit. I never thought Umino-sensei would come out on top. Heh. ^^V