Hi,

I'm hoping someone here who is experienced with comic strip creation, and Manga Studio 5 may be able to point me in the right direction. .....

I'm trying to find out a question about SmithMicro Manga Studio 5. It seems to be the highest rated "comics creation" software, however I need a good sized library of "pre-made" characters and backgrounds. You see, I'm not a very good illustrator, and I'd like to be able to quickly use the program to make comic strips without having to spend hours and hours creating characters from scratch. I'd like to be able to just pick a character and background from a library, drop it into a comic strip template, and add word balloons & text, simple as that. (for now).  I will explore drawing my own creations later on, but for now I need quick. SmithMicro tech support said the content it comes with is "limited", and it's more of an illustrator's type program, but he really didn't say exactly how limited the libraries are. I'm wondering since it is a very good program, maybe I can find a big library of free license cartoon-type characters and backgrounds I can purchase to import into the program, to make up for MangaStudio's lack of included content?

The only other software I've found that is similar is Comics Creator by Summitsoft, but it's not as highly rated as Manga, and it only exports in PDF.

The other thought I had was I may be able to use Comic Creator, which although is a very basic beginner program, has quite a bit of included content, (supposedly 500+ characters and backgrounds), so maybe I could make my basic layout with characters and background in a strip template, then export to PDF, then somehow import that PDF into Manga Studio. I'm wondering would that possibly allow me to further edit and color the imported file in Manga?

Another thought I had was maybe I could export some characters from Comic Creator as PDF and import and rig them with bones in Manga? I don't really know if I could import PDF into Manga for further editing though. These are questions I'm hoping some experienced users here could answer for me, before I decide on what program(s) to purchase.

I do also have a copy of PoserPro2010, but my PC I was using Poser on is very slow, so I haven't upgraded or used the program in quite some time. My laptop isn't much faster, but comic illustration would probably be less taxing on my resources than animation would I'm guessing.  (My laptop is a single core i3, 2.53GHz, 4GB RAM, standard Intel HD graphics card.)

Creating comic strips is something I've always aspired to do, and now that I'm retired I'd like to explore it to see what I can do with it. Hopefully I can create some stuff that will make people laugh! :-) Could some of you experienced comic creators please help me? I would greatly appreciate it, thank you!

Musikman