Well, today, we had that 5.9 earthquake southeast of us and for Ayne, she really appreciated it; the distraction allowed her to actually take a break and field mails, tweets and posts from people freaked out about something that's considered a minor distraction in LA and/or Tokyo.  

It also let her relax and think about her toning a bit.

No, not that toning.  Congratulations: you fail at internets (I, on the other hand, win the internets, or at least at Google Image Search.)  Meanwhile, this is the toning we're talking about:

Aren't they nice? They run about 500JPY a pack, though, and they mess up really easy.  Like Reynolds Wrap easy.  And you need a lot of it.  How much is a lot?  Well, figure that 500JPY is roughly $5.00.  According to an unconfirmed report, at one point manga group CLAMP was going through approximately $5000 worth of screentone per month.  Let me spell that out for you: five thousand dollars (five hundred thousand yen) worth of screentone per month. And remember, they're known for keeping a pretty light touch with screentones (they prefer to bury their art in oceans of white-out instead.^_^)  They're nowhwere near as insane as some other artists out there who pretty much think "Would you like some inking with your screentones?"  So you can pretty much imagine the plasticine damage they go through.

Let's just say you don't want to deal with it.  It's like Colorforms for the damned, and as I mentioned yesterday, the best ones come from DELETER, though Tombow, British company Letraset and US company Printmasters also make good screentones.  Next….

Okay, this is a little better: digital screentones.  They're reusable, they're inexpensive, for each pack you buy, you get 1.21 gigawatts worth of them (okay, not really, maybe 1.21 megawatts.)  In any case, they're great.  MangaStudio comes with a whole pack of "Computones", and in Japan, CelSys has put out a free program called ClipStudio which lets you make more (DO YOU HEAR ME, SMITHMICRO, GET OFF YOUR MAC-VENERATING BUTTS AND PORT THIS NAO!)  Comicworks (for you masochists you there) are much luckier, as that disaster program also comes with tones and the Japanese extra discs are compatible with the US version of Comicworks.  However, fortunately for us who can't get them, Letraset has come up with digitized versions of their own and you can use them in either program, plus Photoshop, Illustrator et al.; you should be able to find them in any shop.

As to how you use them, it's just simple: you do it the same way you fills in Photoshop or whatnot.  It's as easy as going from this:

to this:

See?

So now that you know the secrets of toning (you in the back, put down that barbell!), get to work!

Tomorrow, we'll talk about dialogue lettering.

Tomorrow: Day 6 – Will the Madness Ever End?: Process Lettering, Part One