Tones

Screentones and effect tones.

What a tone is

A tone is the grey of manga: dots, lines and effects laid over an area instead of grey paint. In MangaLoft a tone is not painted on. It is a shape that fills itself with a pattern, so you can move it, resize it and change its settings at any time.

Twelve tones side by side: line tone, dot tone, dot gradient, concentration lines, speed lines, rope hatching, rain, sparkles, hearts, whole flowers, shock and flames; and three decorated lines: flower garland, lace and lightning — Tones made in MangaLoft. The three at the bottom are lines drawn with a pattern, not tones.

Choose a kind

The tone tool is the square of dots in the strip. Right-click it to choose the kind (on iPad, touch and hold).

The tone tool's menu: Bitmap Tone, Concentration Lines, Dot Gradient, Speed Lines, Rope Hatching, Script Tone

Bitmap Tone — even dots or lines. The everyday grey.
Dot Gradient — dots that fade from dark to light.
Concentration Lines — lines bursting in toward a centre, for shock and focus.
Speed Lines — lines streaking one way, for movement.
Rope Hatching — hand-drawn-looking crossed hatching.
Script Tone — patterns such as rain, sparkles, hearts and flowers.

On iPad, touch and hold the tone tool to choose the kind.

Lay a tone

First choose the panel it belongs to (see Your first page, step 3). Then, with the tone tool, drag across the area.

A rectangle of dot tone inside the lower panel. On the right, the tone's settings: Authoring with Rect, Lasso and Bezier, Pattern with Dot and Line, and sliders for LPI, Density and Angle

Authoring, on the right, is the shape you draw: Rect is a rectangle by dragging, Lasso a freehand outline, Bezier an outline placed point by point.

For a Bitmap Tone, three sliders set the look:

LPI (lines per inch) — how fine the dots are. A higher number is finer. The pictures here use a low value so the dots are easy to see; 60 is a common choice for a printed page.
Density — how dark the tone is.
Angle — the direction of the rows.

Pattern switches between dots and lines.

Change it afterwards

Nothing is fixed. Choose the selection tool and click the tone: its settings come back on the right, and handles appear around it.

The tone selected: eight square handles around it and a round one above, with the same settings on the right

Drag the tone to move it.
A corner handle makes it bigger or smaller.
A side handle stretches it one way. The pattern is not stretched with it: the tone refills at its own density, and a side snaps to the panel border as it nears it.

The tone stretched to fill most of the panel, its right side flush with the panel border. Callouts: snapped to the border, and the round handle that turns the tone — The same tone after dragging its bottom and right handles. The dots stayed the same size.

The round handle above the tone turns it. Only the shape turns: the rows of dots keep their own direction, which is the Angle slider on the right.

The tone turned to a slant by its round handle. The dots inside still run in the same direction as before, and the part outside the panel is cut off — Turned by its round handle. The panel border still cuts it off.

Aim a burst or a gradient

Concentration Lines burst toward a centre. Lay the tone, then drag the small green square: the lines follow it.

Keep the centre inside the tone, and not too far to one side: the lines have a fixed reach (Outer R), and if the centre goes too far a corner of the tone is left bare.

Concentration lines filling a rectangle, with a green square at their centre. A callout says drag the centre

The same lines, selected, after the centre was dragged a little to the right — The centre moved a little to the right.

On the right, Rays is how many lines there are, and Inner R is the size of the clear space in the middle.

A Dot Gradient fades from one end to the other. It has two squares: blue at the light end, red at the dark end. Drag either to change the direction and length of the fade.

A dot gradient below the burst, fading from light at the top left to dark at the bottom right, with a blue square at the light end and a red square at the dark end

The same dot gradient twice. First it fades from the top left to the bottom right. After the red square is dragged to the lower left corner, it fades from top to bottom — The red square dragged to the lower left: the fade now runs from top to bottom.

Head density and Tail density set how light and how dark the two ends are; Swap head and tail turns the fade around. LPI is the size of the dots: the picture uses a low value, 15, so the dots are easy to see; a printed page usually uses a much finer one.

Speed lines, rope hatching, script tones

One page with three tones, labelled: speed lines streaking to the right, rope hatching in crossed bundles, and a script tone of scattered flowers

Speed Lines streak from a blue square to a red one, thin at the start and thick at the end. Drag the red square and the lines turn to follow it. Spacing sets how close they are.
Rope Hatching fills the area with crossed bundles of lines. Re-roll pattern draws a different arrangement.
Script Tone scatters a pattern. Choose which from the list at the top of its settings.

The Script Tone list: Soft snow, Rain, Sparkles, Glowing sparkles, Hearts, Bubbles, Falling petals, Whole flowers, Stipple, Fading dots, Soft clouds, Light from above, Moon, Shock, Flames, then Custom… and From Library…

Each pattern has its own sliders: for flowers, how many, how big, and how many petals. Roll scatters them differently.

Custom… and From Library… at the bottom of the list are for patterns you write yourself as a small script. You can leave them alone until you want a pattern the list does not have.

Fix an edge

A tone does not have to stay a box. The edge tool, below the text tool in the strip, moves a tone's edge without redrawing it.

Choose the edge tool and click the tone, so it is selected.
Press on the edge and drag. The part of the edge under the brush moves with you, and the edge on either side follows smoothly.

A dot tone whose bottom edge has been pulled down into a point in the middle. On the right, Edge Push with a Brush size slider

This is how a shadow is fitted to a face: lay the tone roughly, then push its edge to where the shadow should end. The same works against any drawn line.

Edge Push on iPad: a few strokes push the shadow's edge to where it belongs. The dots are hidden while a stroke is in progress and come back when the pen lifts.

Brush size on the right sets how much of the edge moves at once. Zoom in before you push: a small gap is easier to close when it is large on screen.

Right-click the edge tool for its second kind, Edge Smooth. Push moves an edge to where you want it; Smooth leaves it where it is and takes the wobble out. Sweep along the edge, and again if it needs it.

Edge Smooth on iPad: a jagged edge, swept along with the brush, comes out clean.

Smoothing on the right sets how far the edge may move from what you drew: higher gives a calmer curve.

Reshape a tone point by point

A tone's outline is a path, so the path tools work on it. Right-click the path tool and choose Path Edit (or select the tone and press Edit Path on the right). Click the tone's edge, not its middle: the outline shows a square at each corner.

Drag a square to move that corner.
Click the edge between two squares to add a point there, then drag it.

A dot gradient in Path Edit, with a square at each corner. A point added on its top edge has been dragged up, so the top of the tone rises to a peak. Callouts mark the Path Edit tool in the strip and the new point

The edge tool is quicker for a soft, freehand fit; Path Edit is for exact corners and straight sides. More about points in Paths and shapes.

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