Screentone
- tone sheet
- manga tone
- dot tone
- ben day manga
Grey built from printed dots and lines stuck to the page, never from a wash.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
One colour printing has no grey, so grey has to be faked with a pattern of black dots on white paper. What began as a limitation became a language: the size and density of the dots now carry mood, distance and material.
How it works
A pre-printed adhesive sheet of dots is laid over the artwork and cut to shape with a blade. Different densities do different jobs. Highlights are scratched back out of the tone with the same blade, which leaves a white mark with a torn edge.
When to use it
Use it whenever a picture should look printed rather than rendered. Avoid it at very small sizes, where the dot pattern collapses into flat grey and the effect is lost.
Told apart from its neighbours
Shojo Ink and Shonen Ink are styles that use this tool. Halftone Newsprint in the print catalogue is the same physics used for photographs on cheap paper, not a sheet cut by hand.
- Shojo Ink
- Shonen Ink
- Halftone Newsprint
Where it is used
It suits a comic page, a poster, a zine, a t-shirt and anything that wants a print surface rather than a screen surface.
- Printed manga of every genre
- Independent comics and zines
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<character>, screentone style, black and white with every grey area built from a regular pattern of small printed dots rather than from a grey wash, the dot pattern clearly visible at close range, several different tone densities used for different surfaces, hard cut edges where one tone meets another as though the sheet were cut with a blade, some areas scratched back to white with a blade, pure white paper and pure black ink with no true grey anywhere
What goes wrong
A smooth grey airbrushed picture comes back. Ask for the dots to be visible, the tone edges to be cut hard, and for no true grey anywhere in the picture.
Leave out
smooth grey, airbrush, a soft gradient between tones, blurred tone edges, colour
Watch for
Say the edges are cut. Tone was applied as a sheet and trimmed, so the boundary between two tones is a hard line, and a model that blends them loses the whole look.
Questions
Draw it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
