Shawn Lenore

The process of making speed look good

Added 2025-01-28 00:08:32 +0000 UTC

Okay, so I take a lot of inspiration from manga techniques when it comes to making fight scenes, but the hard part is adapting all that into color. Manga is black and white and you have the benefit of not having to work around big blocks of color and the visibility of the colors you're using when in motion, so I had to adapt a little.

Picture 1: I planned out the speed lines in the pencil drawings and put them over my finished inked drawings for reference

Picture 2: I adapted and simplified the directions the speed was coming from

Picture 3: I drew the inked speed lines using the Parallel Lines and Parallel Curves rulers in Clip Studio

Picture 4: I took my work into Photoshop and duplicated the speed line layer so I could go back to it if I made a mistake. I used the Path Blur tool under the Blur Gallery (in Filters) to make a curved blur line. This helps my speed lines not look as stark and helps them not overpower my artwork.

Picture 5: I duplicated the folder all my character artwork was in, flattened it into one layer and applied Path Blur to the artwork as well. Then I set the speed lines (original and blurry) to Overlay so they wouldn't obscure my original artwork, and took the opacity down on my blurry character artwork until everything blended nicely.