To make your own halftone brush in Procreate, create a seamless black-and-white dot pattern, import it as the Grain Source of a new brush in Brush Studio, and set the grain to Texturized so the dots stay locked to the canvas instead of sliding with your stroke. Then tune spacing, scale, and rendering so each stroke reveals the pattern instead of smearing it. Set the grain scale by typing an exact percentage rather than dragging the slider, which helps your halftone dots line up and stay consistent in size.

What You Need Before You Start

A halftone brush is a normal Procreate brush with a dot pattern as its grain. Brush Studio has two texture slots, and each has a different job:

• Shape Source: the footprint of each stamp. For halftone work, a simple soft or hard-edged round shape is usually enough.
• Grain Source: the pattern revealed inside that footprint. This is where your halftone dots live.

You need three things: Procreate with Brush Studio, a tileable halftone texture, and a clear idea of where the artwork is going. If the art will end up in After Effects, Premiere Pro, or Nuke, decide on your final resolution first, because dot size is baked in when you paint.

Step 1: Build the Halftone Grain Texture

You have three practical ways to get a dot pattern.

Use Procreate's own Halftone adjustment. Fill a square canvas with a linear or radial gradient, then go to Adjustments → Halftone and pick the Newspaper option for greyscale dots. Procreate's handbook describes this as a digital effect, so it works for texture generation but isn't a replacement for a physical screen-printing process. Flatten and export the result as a PNG.

Generate the pattern in another app. In Photoshop, converting a grayscale image to Bitmap mode with the Halftone Screen method gives you clean dots. In Illustrator, a repeating pattern of circles at a fixed angle works well. Either way, export a square image.

Draw your own. Irregular, hand-inked dots feel more like aged print than a mechanical grid. A worn or uneven pattern is often better for illustration styles that should feel printed rather than rendered.

Whichever route you take, follow these rules:

• Make it square. Use a power-of-two size such as 1024 or 2048 pixels per side.
• Make it tile seamlessly. If dots are cut off at the edges, you'll see visible seams in large fills.
• Keep it high contrast. Black dots on white give the grain the most definite on/off behavior. Soft gray mush produces soft, smudgy halftones.
• Include a tonal gradient if you want pressure response. See the pressure section below.

Save the image to Photos or Files so you can import it.

Step 2: Create the Brush in Brush Studio

Open the Brush Library, tap the + icon to create a new brush, and work through the settings.

Stroke Path

Set Spacing low. Around 5% gives continuous coverage, so strokes read as a solid field of dots instead of a series of stamps. Set Streamline and Stabilization to taste. Lower values feel more immediate; higher values smooth wobbly lines.

Taper and Dynamics

Turn off tip animation and remove pressure taper if you want uniform dot fields. Tapered ends cut through the dot pattern and produce odd partial dots at stroke ends. You can add taper back later if you want softer ends.

Shape

Tap Edit on the Shape Source and import a simple round or soft shape from the Source Library, or your own. The shape decides the stroke's edge. A hard circle gives crisp boundaries, which suits comic and print looks.

Grain

This is the important part. Tap Edit on the Grain Source, import your halftone PNG from Photos or Files, and confirm. Then adjust the grain behavior:

• Movement: set to Texturized so the grain is fixed in canvas space. With Moving, the dots travel with the brush and stack unevenly. Texturized is why overlapping strokes reveal the same underlying dot grid.
• Scale: this sets dot size. Tap the percentage number and type the value instead of using the slider.
• Zoom: push toward Cropped so the grain doesn't rescale with brush size. You want brush size to change the stroke width, not the dot spacing.
• Contrast and brightness: raise contrast so dots are crisp, and adjust brightness to control how much of the dot pattern shows.

Rendering and Wet Mix

A glaze-style rendering mode with a crisp edge keeps dots sharp. Set Wet Mix values such as Charge and Pull to zero, so the brush doesn't smear dots into neighboring pixels.

Apple Pencil

Reduce the tilt effect if you want consistent dots. For opacity, a moderate pressure response lets you build tone by overlapping strokes without breaking the dot pattern.

Name the brush, tap Done, and test it.

Step 3: Test for Alignment

Open a blank canvas and paint overlapping strokes in black. Zoom in to 400% or more. If the dots from different strokes sit on the same grid and merge cleanly, the brush works. If you see doubled or offset dots, check these in order:

1. Grain movement is set to Texturized.
2. Scale was typed in rather than dragged.
3. Zoom is cropped, not tied to brush size.
4. The grain image is square and has no edge artifacts.

The typed-percentage rule matters because the slider displays rounded numbers while the actual value can include fractions. Two brushes that look identical on screen can end up with slightly different dot sizes, which breaks alignment when you layer them. Typing the value removes that ambiguity. Dragging the slider on a finished brush can introduce drift, so after you've dialed in a scale, write it down.

Step 4: Add Pressure-Sensitive Tone

A halftone that grows bigger dots with pressure isn't possible with a static grain, but you can fake it. Build the grain texture with tonally graduated dots: some dots darker at the core and lighter at the edges, or several dot tones within the same pattern. Then set pressure to control opacity. As you press harder and opacity increases, the darker tones in the grain begin to register. The dot grid stays fixed while the dots appear to swell.

You can use the same idea for line screens. Swap the dot texture for parallel lines and rotate the grain to switch between horizontal and vertical hatching, then use grain scale to control line frequency.

Step 5: Make Variations

One brush rarely covers everything. Duplicate your working brush and change one thing at a time:

• Fine screen: small dots for highlights and skin tones.
• Coarse screen: large dots for bold pop-art shading.
• Angled screen: rotate the source texture so layered screens don't produce moiré.
• Irregular screen: hand-drawn dots for aged-print looks.

Keep a consistent naming scheme with the scale in the name, such as "Halftone Round 25". That way you can reproduce settings later.

Using Your Brush in a Motion Pipeline

For motion designers, the brush is only half the job. The rest is getting the artwork into a composite without ruining the dot structure.

Paint at final resolution. Halftone dots are sensitive to resampling. If you paint at 2K and scale up 200% in After Effects, the dots soften and the crisp print look disappears. Match the Procreate canvas to your comp size, or paint larger and downscale by whole-number ratios.

Export with transparency. Paint shading on its own layer, hide the background, and export as PNG so you can multiply or overlay the dots over other footage and renders in After Effects.

Watch for moiré. Animating or scaling a dot pattern can produce interference patterns against video compression and display pixels. If you see shimmering, change the screen angle or dot size, or render at a higher resolution before scaling down.

Avoid mixing real and fake halftones. If you're going to a physical print process, let the printer generate the halftone; Procreate's effect is a digital approximation.

Create boiling frame-by-frame variation. For a hand-made look, paint several versions of the same shading with slightly different strokes, export them, and cycle them on twos or threes in your timeline. The fixed grain keeps the dot grid stable while the stroke edges shift.

Where Styleframe Fits

If you want to extend a halftone look past what you can paint by hand, Styleframe can help. It's an AI video and motion tool that can use reference images, such as a halftone illustration from Procreate, to carry a look onto footage or animation.

You can then bring the results into a compositing tool like After Effects or Nuke, where you keep your usual compositing, grading, and finishing. Check the dot structure after any style transfer or upscaling pass, since halftone patterns are exactly the kind of fine detail that benefits from review before delivery.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

Dots look blurry. The grain image may be low resolution, or Rendering is too soft. Use a larger source image and sharpen contrast.

Strokes look like stamps. Spacing is too high. Lower it until strokes read as continuous.

Dots shift between strokes. Grain Movement is not Texturized, or scale was set with the slider.

The pattern changes when you resize the brush. Zoom is linked to brush size. Move Zoom toward Cropped.

Seams appear in large fills. The source texture does not tile. Rebuild it with matching edges.

Moiré in the final video. Change dot angle or size, or work at higher resolution before downsampling.

Quick Checklist

• Square, seamless, high-contrast dot texture
• Grain imported as Grain Source, with a simple round shape
• Low spacing, no taper, Wet Mix off
• Texturized movement, cropped zoom
• Scale typed as an exact percentage
• Test overlapping strokes at high zoom
• Paint at final comp resolution and export with transparency

Once these settings are in place, you can duplicate the brush into a full set of screens and reuse it across projects, so the dot grid stays consistent from the sketch stage through the final composite.

To make your own halftone brush in Procreate, create a seamless black-and-white dot pattern, import it as the Grain Source of a new brush in Brush Studio, and set the grain to Texturized so the dots stay locked to the canvas instead of sliding with your stroke. Then tune spacing, scale, and rendering so each stroke reveals the pattern instead of smearing it. Set the grain scale by typing an exact percentage rather than dragging the slider, which helps your halftone dots line up and stay consistent in size.

What You Need Before You Start

A halftone brush is a normal Procreate brush with a dot pattern as its grain. Brush Studio has two texture slots, and each has a different job:

• Shape Source: the footprint of each stamp. For halftone work, a simple soft or hard-edged round shape is usually enough.
• Grain Source: the pattern revealed inside that footprint. This is where your halftone dots live.

You need three things: Procreate with Brush Studio, a tileable halftone texture, and a clear idea of where the artwork is going. If the art will end up in After Effects, Premiere Pro, or Nuke, decide on your final resolution first, because dot size is baked in when you paint.

Step 1: Build the Halftone Grain Texture

You have three practical ways to get a dot pattern.

Use Procreate's own Halftone adjustment. Fill a square canvas with a linear or radial gradient, then go to Adjustments → Halftone and pick the Newspaper option for greyscale dots. Procreate's handbook describes this as a digital effect, so it works for texture generation but isn't a replacement for a physical screen-printing process. Flatten and export the result as a PNG.

Generate the pattern in another app. In Photoshop, converting a grayscale image to Bitmap mode with the Halftone Screen method gives you clean dots. In Illustrator, a repeating pattern of circles at a fixed angle works well. Either way, export a square image.

Draw your own. Irregular, hand-inked dots feel more like aged print than a mechanical grid. A worn or uneven pattern is often better for illustration styles that should feel printed rather than rendered.

Whichever route you take, follow these rules:

• Make it square. Use a power-of-two size such as 1024 or 2048 pixels per side.
• Make it tile seamlessly. If dots are cut off at the edges, you'll see visible seams in large fills.
• Keep it high contrast. Black dots on white give the grain the most definite on/off behavior. Soft gray mush produces soft, smudgy halftones.
• Include a tonal gradient if you want pressure response. See the pressure section below.

Save the image to Photos or Files so you can import it.

Step 2: Create the Brush in Brush Studio

Open the Brush Library, tap the + icon to create a new brush, and work through the settings.

Stroke Path

Set Spacing low. Around 5% gives continuous coverage, so strokes read as a solid field of dots instead of a series of stamps. Set Streamline and Stabilization to taste. Lower values feel more immediate; higher values smooth wobbly lines.

Taper and Dynamics

Turn off tip animation and remove pressure taper if you want uniform dot fields. Tapered ends cut through the dot pattern and produce odd partial dots at stroke ends. You can add taper back later if you want softer ends.

Shape

Tap Edit on the Shape Source and import a simple round or soft shape from the Source Library, or your own. The shape decides the stroke's edge. A hard circle gives crisp boundaries, which suits comic and print looks.

Grain

This is the important part. Tap Edit on the Grain Source, import your halftone PNG from Photos or Files, and confirm. Then adjust the grain behavior:

• Movement: set to Texturized so the grain is fixed in canvas space. With Moving, the dots travel with the brush and stack unevenly. Texturized is why overlapping strokes reveal the same underlying dot grid.
• Scale: this sets dot size. Tap the percentage number and type the value instead of using the slider.
• Zoom: push toward Cropped so the grain doesn't rescale with brush size. You want brush size to change the stroke width, not the dot spacing.
• Contrast and brightness: raise contrast so dots are crisp, and adjust brightness to control how much of the dot pattern shows.

Rendering and Wet Mix

A glaze-style rendering mode with a crisp edge keeps dots sharp. Set Wet Mix values such as Charge and Pull to zero, so the brush doesn't smear dots into neighboring pixels.

Apple Pencil

Reduce the tilt effect if you want consistent dots. For opacity, a moderate pressure response lets you build tone by overlapping strokes without breaking the dot pattern.

Name the brush, tap Done, and test it.

Step 3: Test for Alignment

Open a blank canvas and paint overlapping strokes in black. Zoom in to 400% or more. If the dots from different strokes sit on the same grid and merge cleanly, the brush works. If you see doubled or offset dots, check these in order:

1. Grain movement is set to Texturized.
2. Scale was typed in rather than dragged.
3. Zoom is cropped, not tied to brush size.
4. The grain image is square and has no edge artifacts.

The typed-percentage rule matters because the slider displays rounded numbers while the actual value can include fractions. Two brushes that look identical on screen can end up with slightly different dot sizes, which breaks alignment when you layer them. Typing the value removes that ambiguity. Dragging the slider on a finished brush can introduce drift, so after you've dialed in a scale, write it down.

Step 4: Add Pressure-Sensitive Tone

A halftone that grows bigger dots with pressure isn't possible with a static grain, but you can fake it. Build the grain texture with tonally graduated dots: some dots darker at the core and lighter at the edges, or several dot tones within the same pattern. Then set pressure to control opacity. As you press harder and opacity increases, the darker tones in the grain begin to register. The dot grid stays fixed while the dots appear to swell.

You can use the same idea for line screens. Swap the dot texture for parallel lines and rotate the grain to switch between horizontal and vertical hatching, then use grain scale to control line frequency.

Step 5: Make Variations

One brush rarely covers everything. Duplicate your working brush and change one thing at a time:

• Fine screen: small dots for highlights and skin tones.
• Coarse screen: large dots for bold pop-art shading.
• Angled screen: rotate the source texture so layered screens don't produce moiré.
• Irregular screen: hand-drawn dots for aged-print looks.

Keep a consistent naming scheme with the scale in the name, such as "Halftone Round 25". That way you can reproduce settings later.

Using Your Brush in a Motion Pipeline

For motion designers, the brush is only half the job. The rest is getting the artwork into a composite without ruining the dot structure.

Paint at final resolution. Halftone dots are sensitive to resampling. If you paint at 2K and scale up 200% in After Effects, the dots soften and the crisp print look disappears. Match the Procreate canvas to your comp size, or paint larger and downscale by whole-number ratios.

Export with transparency. Paint shading on its own layer, hide the background, and export as PNG so you can multiply or overlay the dots over other footage and renders in After Effects.

Watch for moiré. Animating or scaling a dot pattern can produce interference patterns against video compression and display pixels. If you see shimmering, change the screen angle or dot size, or render at a higher resolution before scaling down.

Avoid mixing real and fake halftones. If you're going to a physical print process, let the printer generate the halftone; Procreate's effect is a digital approximation.

Create boiling frame-by-frame variation. For a hand-made look, paint several versions of the same shading with slightly different strokes, export them, and cycle them on twos or threes in your timeline. The fixed grain keeps the dot grid stable while the stroke edges shift.

Where Styleframe Fits

If you want to extend a halftone look past what you can paint by hand, Styleframe can help. It's an AI video and motion tool that can use reference images, such as a halftone illustration from Procreate, to carry a look onto footage or animation.

You can then bring the results into a compositing tool like After Effects or Nuke, where you keep your usual compositing, grading, and finishing. Check the dot structure after any style transfer or upscaling pass, since halftone patterns are exactly the kind of fine detail that benefits from review before delivery.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

Dots look blurry. The grain image may be low resolution, or Rendering is too soft. Use a larger source image and sharpen contrast.

Strokes look like stamps. Spacing is too high. Lower it until strokes read as continuous.

Dots shift between strokes. Grain Movement is not Texturized, or scale was set with the slider.

The pattern changes when you resize the brush. Zoom is linked to brush size. Move Zoom toward Cropped.

Seams appear in large fills. The source texture does not tile. Rebuild it with matching edges.

Moiré in the final video. Change dot angle or size, or work at higher resolution before downsampling.

Quick Checklist

• Square, seamless, high-contrast dot texture
• Grain imported as Grain Source, with a simple round shape
• Low spacing, no taper, Wet Mix off
• Texturized movement, cropped zoom
• Scale typed as an exact percentage
• Test overlapping strokes at high zoom
• Paint at final comp resolution and export with transparency

Once these settings are in place, you can duplicate the brush into a full set of screens and reuse it across projects, so the dot grid stays consistent from the sketch stage through the final composite.