Aight, simple question; do you use tones for your comic? And I'm talking real tones, the ones you use a knife and stuff with.

I used to make the tones digital, but I switched to traditional tones about two-three months ago. Even tho it was hard to master at the beginning, it's really fun compared doing it digital.

I hope I'm not the only one who use real screentones on my webcomic here. If you do tones digital, have you ever considered switching to traditional?

EDIT: I've made a tutorial on deviantArt about working with traditional screentones (thought it would be fun since there's only tutorials in digital screentones).
link: http://bittersweetdisease.deviantart.com/art/Traditional-Screentoning-129577449

I made my first foray into zip-a-tone/screen-tones very recently with a short story I did for an anthology. Nothing you'll see on the web at the moment.

I did them digitally, and since I work 100% digitally, that's probably how I will do them for the time being.

i hate zip-a-tone. its nasty stuff and frustrating to use. i give you kudos for trying it though.

I can't imagine why anyone would still want to traditionally tone, it's painstaiking to do and on top of that scan. Why bother when you open up photoshop and do in 2 minutes what just took you over an hour.

Scan your screentones or something and then do them digitally.

I get what you mean, but it's not that hard to use tones. I used to do digital, until I got fed up using the lasso tool and crashing the program from time to time. also I get more out of using traditional, when you have learned the techniques to scrape those nifty effects with you box cutter you get result that I wouldn't get with photoshop. And well it's more fun than doing it digital imo

I disliked the lasso also, i just used an eraser. It's a billion times easier to do once you have a tablet tho :P
Ah well to each their own

oh god, the lasso. My wrists hurt when I think about it :P

QUICK MASK MODE people!

I do have a tablet, but well... I guess I'm better at doing it traditional. I used the lasso tool to make it quick so I could upload the page, but as I said. I got pretty tired of always doing it digital.

There's a lot of artists out there who search out or real screentones etc. cause they like the aspect of working with them. I think they're pretty difficult to find these days?

Not really, you can order them from sites like...

Blue Line Pro

Annnnddd hereee

I'd love to try out screentones traditionally. Sadly, it just won't work with my comic. I'm already using copics to tone it (gray, of course) and I think it works better with my style. Rob Schrab, who did Scud the Disposable Assassin used them traditionally, and his pages were gorgeous. Where he placed the tones...damn. I'm seriously so envious of the guy.

So, I don't use screentones. Even digitally, they just don't work for me :P

They're not that hard to find, more importantly is to buy the right tones (stuff like linecount etc is a must to know if you're gonna spend money on tones)

I get my tones from deleter.com which has a lot of good material when it comes to comic/manga making.

I keep reading/hearing older artists/cartoonists who used to use it back in the day and they can't find it. I guess they're still searching for it under name "zipatone" as it was commonly known (which was actually one of the brands). I guess with the popularity of manga it's available again.

Not that I would use it myself, the idea of cutting and sticking things to paper is a scary one (I tried to do collage/photocopy art at some point and quit after 10 or so images).

Well yeah it's not a recommendation if you are afraid of super-sharp knifes. It definitely needs training and precision when working with tones traditional.

I can cut a curved line even when I'm using a ruler, haha. OR, cut the ruler itself (so it ends up having "wavy" edge). So yeah, no knives for me :P

I know right?

oh, I try to tone like Clamp did in X so it takes a bit longer then 2 mins to tone (about 15-30). I did met 2 other people at a con that did their work all traditional from coloring with markers to toning and pasting the lettering.

I used to do it that way about 15 years ago, but it cost way to much to keep buying toner so after getting photoshop 12 years ago I scanned in ever bit of my toner and use the Clone tool to paint them in place. Sure the traditional way looks nice, but computers are more cost effective and you can create some interesting effects that the same time.

Still nice to see some still use the traditional methods. Makes me not feel so old.

Kat

I used to love playing with tones but I just couldn't afford it. I had to learn to do digital toning instead. I wasn't happy with that either, so now I use copic markers in the greytone sets; it's cheaper than screentones but still more hands-on. I generally prefer traditional approaches, working with them I mean, and I have a hard time mastering digital (mainly because I just don't like it as much) so if it was cheaper I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Another alternative I've seen is to use different pen and ink techniques in place of screentones. This method is used a lot in Bizenghast, and outlined pretty nicely in one of the how to create/draw manga books. (I hate admitting I use those, generally, but this one focuses more on materials and techniques.)

I love traditional screen tones over digital. I made my own, scanned and zip tones before and nothing looks better than the traditional (though traditional looks better anyways). If I had the will and the money I would convert to traditional xD

Zip-a-tones were nice in the days of "manual" color seps. The only problem I see when using zip-tones is the "moaree" patterns when you scan them, and then, some artist love that.

Anyway, with tools like; tablets, mask, layers, magic wand, tone filters, etc.
I can manipulate the tones with out affecting the original artwork.

That's just me but If you feel the need to stretch your artistic with zip-tones, more power to you, and keep creating.

Hmm it seems like alot of you guys think it's expensive. I've never run into that (...yet?) since I try to use every bit of tone that's left. Technoscreen (which the swedish webshop for deleter sells) comes as pretty large, so if you only use the tones for haircolor/skintone/clothes and do the shadows on your own, you can save a lot of tones.

When I run out of a tone (like a gradation-tone) I can just add it by photoshop. My scanner is good enough to scan the pages so the traditional tones can fit with the digital ones. But in times like these with the economy and all I guess the money will run out for me aswell.

still I think it's worth the money I spend on them.