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A UX designer's sketchbook…

Bristle brush for Manga Studio 5

by Paolo Limoncelli on 28 June 2014, no comments

Tip based brushes are really good looking, but sometimes can be very slow…

strokes

Bristle brush: a good balance between fast strokes and a realistic look

This short tutorial will show how to create a nice bristle brush with a grainy and painterly look, without textures and with some specific curves for a bit quicker response.

1. Create a custom bristle Nib

Start from a 2048x2048px canvas, and use a large spray brush for the thinner bristles.
The Droplet tool included with standard materials will work perfectly.

step01

Add some density in the center with the Tone Scraping tool

step02

Now you are ready to save the tip: remember to change Expression color to Gray and and Select all (Cmd+A).
After these steps choose Register image as Material form Edit menu, checking Use for brush tip shape in the dialog.

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2. Create a basic brush

From Sub Tool palette choose Create Custom Sub Tool

createBrush

…and form Brush Shape > Brush Tip choose the one we have just saved.

Remember to enable pen pressure form Brush Size, then back to Brush tip vary thickness to 52 or whatever… As you can notice, the brush looks grainy and textured, but no texture was applied. The scattering of the nib acts as paper

brush01

To have a more dense look, uncheck Adjust brush density by space and from thicknessEffect recreate a curve like the one showed

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This will intensify the “stripes” of bristles for low pressure, but leave them still visible.

Now let’s tweak a bit density response to a non-linear behavior as shown…

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And this is the result… Pretty awesome and very good for Dry Media look

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To avoid (if you want) the thin/fat stroke due to line direction check Direction of line: this step is not “mandatory”, but can be useful for blocking large areas easily.

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One last step is the Stroke panel: change the gap value (the spacing of Nib repetitions) to the value of 2 and affect it with a non linear response to pressure as shown below.

 

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strokes

 

Now you have a perfect bristle brush, pretty fast, with an opaque/flat response.
To gain a bit of “character” enable the Mix ground color parameters, and your brush will be as a fluid ad Oil and be able to mix and stretch colors, or tuned as a watercolor.

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Download the preset here!

Can find more on my brush set here, and if you want, purchase it using the link below!

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