Brittle Wings

Okay, here it is! Finally, my review of Tria markers by Letraset. Remember this ain’t a be-all-end-all, it’s just my own personal opinions and my experience of using them so far:

Shonen 24 Set

The set I ordered contains 24 “carefully selected” pens aimed at creating shonen-style manga art. I actually wanted to use them for creating flash, so I chose them due to the vibrancy of the colours (the others seems paler in comparison, and I like nice bright colours in flash). I touched on the lack of certain colours yesterday, but I’ll go into it in detail further down.

Delivery and first experience

Service from Letraset was good as always. I ordered my pens (along with some paper, nibs and a replacement fineliner as I had binned the last one and wanted to see if working with Tria as opposed to Pro made any difference), they arrived promptly on Tuesday via 1st Class post (Letraset even included a money off voucher for my next purchase).

I ripped them free of the box and immediately started doing colour swatches on my A4 Daler Rowney bleedproof pad. For the first few moments I thought “Wow! The colour is really bright!” but then when I went to blend some pink and red, I discovered that there was a complete lack of suitable pen for this purpose.

“Why didn’t you buy the blender?” I hear you shout, along with “Well, you chose that set and you seen the colour swatches before you bought it, it’s your fault!”

Okay, so maybe part of it is my fault, but the fact remains that the 24 pen sets are packaged as “all you need to create blah blah blah”, whether it’s the fashion set or one of the “manga comic art” ones. They most certainly do not contain all you need. The shonen set lacks grey (instead of giving me four very similar blues, they could have supplied one less and replaced it with a darker, petrol blue or a grey suitable for blending). I don’t really see why I should buy the blender seperately if you can’t use the pens how you want it without it. Again, instead of giving me so many of the brown/grey shades, give me a blender! Or give me a ligher yellow or green I can overlay with!

Okay, so still is mostly my own fault, but still. C’mon. You can’t just grab the set and create fantastic looking artwork with it as it does not contain the right balance of colours as far as I’m concerned. And I thought I was being smart getting the most vibrant looking set!

More experiences

I put the fact that I don’t have a blender (I have my ProMarker one, but it don’t work so well neither it do) or suitable overlay colours aside and though “Right, no matter! I’ll just have to make flash with shit loads of blue and brown in them”. So I started doing some rough pencil and ink sketches on the Letraset bleedproof marker pad I got the other day in town. I decided to give the fineliner one more try, seeing as I was using Letraset paper, Letraset markers and nothing could possibly go wrong.

How wrong was I. And this was after at least one minute of drying time (I also don’t like the bleed you get out of the fineliner):

Letraset claim (and I quote) “They provide smooth, accurate performance and can be used for outlining and detailing your marker work without bleeding into the marker”. Yeah, they might not “bleed” in the normal sense of the word, but they smudge everywhere as soon as they come into contact with one of the markers and completely ruin your artwork.

I think what’s annoying me the most about Tria is that now that I’m working with them, I’m noticing practically no difference whatsoever between them and the much lower priced ProMarkers.

Compare:

The one on the left is Pro, the one on the right, Tria. Now, is it just me or is there really not much of a difference between the two? So little in fact, that I’m getting quite angry that I spent so much on a set of markers which are really exactly the same as the cheap ones I’ve had for months. Right, there’s a bit of a difference, but is it worth the price gap? I think that’s the pivotal point of this review: that I don’t feel there is a markable (heh, see what I did there?) difference between the two pens to warrant the cost.

Woteva

As I’ve already mentioned, this is my own experience of using the pens, but I would seriously consider buying the cheaper ProMarkers to start with if you are new to markers. I really don’t think I’ll be using them much again, which is disappointing if nothing else, especially with all the hype around them. Digital colouring wears a bit thin after a while (plus, it’s so clean and I like to get my hands dirty!).

Nope. The Letraset fineliner is still a piece of shit. Dries fast? Doesn’t bleed with markers? Bullshit. And it’s not me, because I have two different Letraset bleedproof pads (thick and thin gsm) and that stupid pen is still smearing all over my linework. The Staedtler fineliners that I have been using for as long as I can remember are much, much better in comparison at holding their form when the marker is passed over the top. I’m also not impressed with the “range” of skin tones supplied wiht the shonen set of Tria’s i.e. one that is very, very orange. There is no real pink colour, and the grey’s aren’t grey at all. They’re obviously brown when you see them on the marker paper.

Just like me to notice what’s wrong with them and I’ve only had them the sum total of six hours… I’ll do a proper write up about my experience with them when I have the time (I’m off to the Isle of Skye next week to sit in a tent and speak Gaelic and my bunnies are back and forth at the vets just now so they need nursing and pineapple).

Got to love the 270gsm cartridge paper from Letraset though… It’s so thick…

So I treated myself to some new ProMarkers by Letraset. I have not used markers before, so I thought it would be better to go in at the shallow end and buy the cheaper version, rather than splash out on a set of Tria or Copics only to find that I don’t like using them. The set I bought was the Comic Art Set 2. I’d like to share my experiences since using them.

The Box Set

Comic Art Set 2

I chose Set 2 because most of my art leans towards the colours favoured in this set. Set 1 seemed a little too “shojou” for me (I likes it gritty). Set 3 was too “chibi”. However, one problem I picked out before ordering was that there is not a single green tone in Set 2. These are the colours listed:

Cool Aqua, Poppy Red, Henna, Dusky Pink, Sandstone, Saffron, Petrol Blue, Cool Grey 2, Cool Grey 4, Black

I ordered the following additional pens as singles:

Lime Green, Grass, Moss, Lemon, Pumpkin, Blender

One colour set I completely forgot about though was purple. I do not have a single purple tone. This is mostly my own fault, as I was the one who forgot to order one, but looking at the ranged available in each set, the only one offering a purple with it is Set 3, which is just a little too pastel for my tastes and needs. Also, looking at the additonal 5-pack sets you can buy, I would be doubling some that I got in Set 2 up. That’s why I bought some individually, though of course I forgot a purple (and thinking about it now, a nice pink, since the only thing close is Saffron and it is more peach than pink, but I’ll discuss that later).

Ordering

Since I ordered from the official Letraset site, I thought I’d include a little section on them too.

I’m not overly keen on the different sectioning on the site. Searching “ProMarkers” brings you to the Manga section of the site. Unaware that I could view ProMarkers in the Design section (yes, I was being slow, but bare with me – It was Hogmanay after all!), I missed out on looking at the Aqua ProMarkers before buying. I strongly urge anyone who’s looking to buy ProMarkers to look at them before purchasing. The Manga section of the Letraset site does not offer the full range of ProMarkers available from them. I don’t know why (maybe they assume that manga artists have no interest in the watercolour look), but I thought that it was a bit shorthanded of them.

Saying this, buying from the Letraset site was a joy. I am a bit funny about buying online. I normally choose to buy straight from the official sites, even if it means it costs more. They have a very secure payment system, though I will say that they do not clearly state on their main site what types of card they accept. This ultimately wasn’t a problem for me, but I can understand how it could be to a younger artist who perhaps only has a debit card (don’t worry, they accept them) and no Paypal account.

Delivery was sharp. I ordered on the 31st of December and had them on the 6th. Taking into account the holiday’s plus the weekends, it was a quick delivery. No complaints there!

Performance

To start with, don’t kid yourself that you can use markers (alcohol-based ones anyway) on regular paper. You can’t. It won’t neccessarily soak the paper and rip, but they will ruin whatever you have below your paper (as the living room table found out the moment I had them out the box). You will need to get some bleed proof stuff. Letraset of course sell it, but I bought a Daler Rowney from my local art shop.

Despite the initial problems with my colour-selection, Set 2 offers enough for me to experiment with. The first problem that I come up with, however, is that the fine liner Letraset supplied me with in the set is next to useless. The word “smear” comes to mind (Heh… Smear…). After one quick sketch with it, it has been abandoned, never to be used again. Not only did it streak all over the paper as the ball of my wrist swept over it, but black fingerprints magically appeared too. Even after allowing it to dry onto the paper, the ink from the fine liner bled horrifically with the ink from the actual markers (and this was on bleed proof paper). Suffice to say, I am sticking with Staedtler Pigment Liners, which have been good to me for a very long time.

Anyway, once I discovered the problem with the Letraset fine liner and prompty binned it, I got onto sketching and colouring with the markers. Soon, another problem reared it’s head.

Bleed prood paper is not very scanner-friendly.

Having to photograph sketches makes me a sad panda

This means that everything I have done with markers, I’ve had to photograph. Not really something you think I should be complaining about, since it’s not Letraset’s fault, but marker work does not reproduce very well. After changing umpteen settings on the scanner and the camera, it still comes out looking nothing like the original piece. There may still be a way around it, after all I have only been experimenting with them for a few days. Overall, they are very easy to use. My only other problem is that I am used to using 0.05 fine liners, and the thin-ended tip of the marker is just a little too fat and clumy to fill detailed line art.

Conclusion
I would still recommend buying ProMarkers to get a feel for using them before spending a small fortune on a set like Tria or Copic. However, I don’t feel that any of the three sets offered by Letraset give you “what you need” to make comic art (or flash). Therefore, I would suggest buying individual markers first, and if you are using it for comicking, buy the 5-Set Skin Tone set. Out of the two flesh tones I recieved in Set 2, only Dusky Pink is of any use to me. As I said earlier, the Saffron is a little peachy for my tastes. I would rather have just had a proper pink included.

I don’t think I’m going to go much further with markers. I will use them for sketching and designs, but as for serious artwork, they are just not fine-tipped enough for me. As fussy as I am, I will only draw on A4 paper (unless it’s for a fitted piece of flash). Therefore to get the amount of detail that I am happy with, I would have to draw on A3 plus. Then there is the fiasco of making copies of the original line art to take into account… No sir, the marker and I don’t look as though we have much of a future!