Page 41, Tuca Fits Betty with a Gas Mask

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page40_tuca_betty_masks.blog.jpg, Easter Island, Rapa Nui, gas masks, sulfur dioxide, Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop

My initial sketch for Page 41 shows Tuca putting a gas mask on Betty Burro so that she can continue her climb into the volcano. She’s going to confront the volcano demon and rescue her friends. Tuca, at this point, has decided to confront his fear of the demon and help Betty even though he’s still crazy scared. Well, who wouldn’t be afraid to go head to head with an angry, spiteful volcano monster.

My work flow goes like this.

  • Envisage the characters in action

  • Sketch in Photoshop

  • Import the PSD into Clip Studio Paint

  • Do the inking in CSP in a vector layer

One reason for using vector layers for inking is that I can change the weight of any line. In this image, I inked with a variable width brush and it looked like crap because I didn’t maintain consistent pressure. To fix the mess I used CSP’s “Correct Line” tool to set the width of all lines to one unit. CSP doesn’t set line widths to pixels, just something called units. The Correct Line tool is a life saver when the line widths are all over the place.