EDIT: A couple of typos have been edited ^^u Sorry.

Many of you have asked us what kind of program we use to create our manga, especially for inking.

Well, Meru feels really flattered for that! But she uses no programs for inking, at least for now. She sketches and inkes all by hand :)

Only recently she´s begun to use IllustStudio and sometimes Mangastudio, but she´s still learning and has a long way ahead!

So today I´m posting our "weapons of choice" to create The Soul Chaser (and all our comics and illustrations, too).

I´m rescueing an old post from the forums and adding some new items :)

A regular mechanical pencil for sketching. Mechanical pencil Pilot 0.5 Super grip, this is exactly the one she uses (well, hers is pink instead of black UXD)
We use three different lead colors: Regular black for first sketches, and then light pink or light blue to trace them on a light box (they look clearer this way) before inking.

Hopefully with practice she´ll be able to ink digitally so that she skips the step of retracing on a light box, but for now this is how she works.

Muji Black eraser. Inexpensive but extremely useful! Much better than white erasers. Less smudge and last way loooooonger!

Cheap DinA4 copy-fax paper, 80 g/m2. Paper weight is not important because all our work will be digitalized, so we use the cheapest ones we can find XD

Copic Multiliners and Neopiko line 2 for inking. The sizes we use the most are: 0.1, 0.2, 0.05 and 0.03 (yes, Meru likes her lines to be very THIN); and sometimes 0.4

 

Our scanner is REAAAAALLY OLD. It´s an Epson Perfection 1200 We´ve been using it for more than 6 years) but works perfectly, and wouldn´t change it for anything else in the world.

 

Yup, we´re MAC users! Ours is an Imac 21,5" *3*  We own a PC too, because sometimes we have so much work we must use two computers at the same time; one for toning or adding dialogues, the other one for coloring, etc... This way we save a lot of time. Advantages of being a team! Besides, some programs are not available for MAC, such as Paintool SAI. We Mac users are discriminated! (lol).

And now, let´s begin with the Wacom tablets...

 

Wacom Intuos 4. In fact we own two, an S- sized and another one M sized, one for each computer.

 

Apart from our PC and Mac, I use an Acer Aspire one netbook to write scripts :) I can take it everywhere so I can take notes when inspiration comes!

 

Aaaand, since only a few weeks, we´re the proud owners of...

A Wacom Cintiq 24HD! :)

For those you don´t know, this baby allows you to draw DIRECTLY on the screen! It´s one of the best tablets currently on the market <3<3 Really expensive, and we´re just getting used to it, but oooh it´s so worth it!!!

Concerning software, as I said, we use Photoshop for scanning and toning, but now I´m trying MangaStudio for that.  In fact, the last two pages of The Soul Chaser we´ve uploaded are toned in MS. I´m quite happy with the results, hopefully we´ll get the hang of that program someday and use it for everything!

For illustrations we use Paintool Sai and IllustStudio.

Aand that´s all for today! Hope I´ve satisfied your curiosity about tools we use :) What other do you use? Do you recommend any in special?

I´ll post a picture of our workspaces (yes, we have more than one!) on a future entry. You´ll see our mess! XP