Madefire 2

I've been working on my Madefire motion comics page. I identified a sequence of panels from my first Vermeer comic. I had created these in Manga Studio 4, as a file with large numbers of layers in each panel (to create a painted colour effect). When making the original document I intended to cut and paste elements within the original story, so created it in folders of layers, for e.g. background, props (e.g. curtain), individual figures, balloons, text, etc. Given the huge number of layers, I wanted to avoid risking any damage to the original, so prepared these for Madefire as follows:

• I pasted the complete target panel into a new MS 4 document;
• isolated the key elements, and exported them as multi-layer PSD files
• opened each of them in turn in Clip Studio and changed the backgrounds to transparent
• exported them as single layer PNGs

Because the balloon tails overlapped, I had created them as single item (but with two layers, one a buff colour and the other white). I tried merging the layers but it lost the white layer and so made them too dark. I then created three copies, and carefully deleted (on each layer) parts to create three separate balloons. This was helped by the fact I had originally drawn a single tail  through the three panels - the vector file still had this info, making it possible to delete around it.

I have now created a new page in Madefire and imported this set of assets and created a multi-layer file on Madefire, to which I will later apply the motion elements.
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