Clip Studio Paint's New Tool Lets You Turn Character Drawings Into Customizable "Rigs"

In case you missed it, Clip Studio Paint has recently shipped version 4.0 of its renowned software, introducing a neat new feature called Puppet warp that allows you to distort your drawing by bending it through specified pins that act like joints, essentially making your 2D drawings behave similarly to customizable 3D rigs.

To use it, you can simply select the layer or layers containing your image and apply the tool, which will cover your drawing with a triangular mesh. You can then place red "pins" on the mesh, marking the areas that will remain fixed during distortion, and then, by either moving the center of the pin or dragging the outer handle and rotating it around the pin, you can transform your character's pose, with the studio comparing it to "moving a puppet," hence the tool's name.

Manga Artist Hei Taro was among the first to experiment with the novel feature, showing how it can be used to adjust the pose of a monochrome manga character. "It can be applied to multiple selected layers, so if you use a tone layer or a monochrome expression color layer, moire, or graying of the lines will not occur. It's great to use when you want to move around a little bit," commented the creator:

You can learn more about Clip Studio Paint Ver. 4.0's Puppet Warp by checking out this comprehensive tutorial prepared by the team. You can also try it out yourself by downloading the latest version of CSP.