Comic Mini Tutorial #1 - Creating Comic Panels in Clip Studio Paint

The first part in a set of mini tutorials on how I set up my comic pages for RORY in Clip Studio Paint! 

Creating a Frame

To create a frame around your page sketch, go to the Create Frame subset (the default icon is a comic page with panels). You can create frames in different shapes or draw one freehand using this subset, but the standard type of frame is the Rectangle Frame. If your canvas has bleed guides turned on, the frame tool should automatically "cling" to the guides. If not, I recommend turning on rulers at [View>Ruler] and drawing guides to keep the sizes consistent between pages. 

When the frame is drawn it'll turn purple, which indicates that it turned into a ruler that can be drawn on. It will also create a folder which separates everything inside the rectangle from everything outside. This is really handy for keeping lines and colors from going over the edges of each panel! You can change your settings to separate each panel into its own folder, but I keep mine combined.

Dividing a Frame into Panels

(Once your frame is drawn, you can use the Cut Frame Border subset to split it up into individual panels. The division lines can be drawn as a straight line, drawn by hand, or drawn as a curved line. Using the Divide Frame Border tool, you can drag a line across a panel, and it will split the frame and rulers up accordingly. After doing this, the purple ruler will be changed from one rectangle two multiple smaller shapes. The space between panels can be changed in the sub tool settings.


Drawing Panel Outlines

With the rulers divided up, you can now drag them to a new layer above the panel folder and draw your lines. The blue triangle icon on a layer indicates that a ruler is active on that layer, and dragging it onto a blank layer will make a copy of it to use there. You can use any line tool or inking pen on these rulers (I use my background inking tool to draw the borders) as long as the "Able to snap" box is checked in the tool's settings. To make sure it's checked, go to the "Sub Tool Detail" window (the wrench and gear icon in the Tool Property window) and go to [Correction>Able to snap].

From here, you can lock this layer and start inking your comic! Your lines will be kept within the panels as long as they're drawn inside the panel folder, and so will your colors, text, and anything else placed inside.

If you want to have something on top of your borders (like text bubbles or something sticking out over the edge), just make sure the layer is placed above the panel folder!

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I hope this was a helpful guide! If you're interested in paneling comic pages in other programs or have any ideas for future mini comic tutorials, let me know and I'll do my best to make it happen!