Hello! My name is Liz Staley and I’m a long-time user of Clip Studio Paint (I started using the program back when it was known as Manga Studio 4!). I was a beta-tester on the Manga Studio 5 program and for Clip Studio Paint, and I have written three books and several video courses about the program. Many of you probably know my name from those books, in fact. I write weekly posts on Graphixly.com and on CSP Tips, so be sure to come back every week to learn more Clip Studio Tips and Tricks from me!

I recently watched a new sequel series to my favorite anime of all time - one that I watched back in the early 90’s! - and it’s made me really long for the anime styles that I grew up with. I looked at old articles that I’ve written about how to get a retro look to your art and realized they were quite complex and didn’t need to be! So I decided to revisit it with a simple, three-step process to get a vintage look for your images in Clip Studio Paint.

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Add Blur and Noise to Line Art

Add Chromatic Aberration

Add Retro Film Filter

Let’s travel back in time!

Add Blur and Noise to Line Art

First we’ll do a little bit of filtering to the line art of our image. Make a duplicate of your line art layer by right-clicking the layer and selecting “Duplicate layer”.

With the line art copy layer selected, click on Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur. Set the strength to around 5-10 (this may change depending on your personal preference and image size). We just want to add a little bit of a “halo” to the line art and make it look soft. 

Click OK to set the blur, then click on Filter - Effect - Noise on the same layer.

Set the color mode to “Color” and then adjust the Noise Strength. You want just a little texture. This mimics the look of film grain in old VHS tapes!

Now, on to the next step!

Add Chromatic Aberration 

Next up we’re going to add some chromatic aberration - also called “color fringing”, which is a color halo effect that happens when a lens fails to focus all colors to the same point and can make older anime look “soft”. This happens a lot along high-contrast areas in images, such as along the linework in anime! So we’re going to continue this on the line art copy layer we made in the previous section. 

Select Filter - Effect - Chromatic Aberration.

The Mode dropdown allows you to change the angle from either radial (will pull from the middle point of the canvas out) or Use Angle, which allows you to change the angle of the effect using the Angle slider. Try both to see which you like better!

The Intensity slider controls how far away the “fringing” is from the layer contents. I like to keep this pretty low to make it subtle, but adjust to your own preferences! You can check and uncheck the “Preview” box to compare the before and after as you adjust if you wish.

Click OK when you’re happy with the look. 

You can stop here if you just wanted your lines to look softer, or continue to step three to make your entire image look like a screenshot!

Add Retro Film Filter

Our image looks pretty good now, but it’s still a bit too smooth and ‘clean’ to really look like something from the 80’s or 90’s. 

Make a new layer above your entire image and fill it with a medium gray color, then select Filter - Effect - Retro Film. You can choose a preset look from the Preset drop down menu, or set your own using the Effect, Intensity, and Noise strength sliders. 

Click OK when you like the look. Then set this layer to Overlay and lower the opacity a bit. I lowered mine to around 20%.

Below is the original image I started with on the left and the adjusted image on the right! 

Conclusion

Time travel isn’t really possible, but it’s easy to use tools to get a retro look on an illustration!

For more information on CLIP Studio Paint, please visit https://www.clipstudio.net/en  or https://graphixly.com