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Ye Olde Lettering Skill Appreciation Thread

Started by ming, 01 June, 2013, 07:28:37 PM

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ming

I've always liked the fact that Jim views original artwork in a slightly different way to many of us who, somewhat understandably, get distracted by all the pretty pictures.  It's nice to see such appreciation for the lettering skills evident on the pages and I'm sure he's not alone in this.  Hence this thread - sod the art, this is just for the lettering!  I'll post up bits and pieces of text - dialogue, sound effects, etc. - from various lettering robots from days gone by, and if anyone else wants to chip is with favourite examples then please feel free!

On to the lettering...


Tom Frame - Judge Dredd - Prog 66








Peter Knight - Black Hawk - Prog 131








Tom Frame - The VCs - Prog 150








More to follow...

Simon Beigh

Like the idea, Ming. Perhaps slightly biased on this one, but it's a favourite...

Judge Dredd - Prog 899 - Ellie De Ville

PHEEEEP!


ming

Lovely.

Before I get too carried away cropping text, would complete panels be more interesting than just boxes of text?  Seeing how the letterer makes the text and dialogue work around the artwork might make more sense than just giving examples of personal lettering styles, I guess...  Jim?

Spikes

A nice, if slightly odd - thats odd in a good way, idea for a thread. Full panels, or as full as is reasonable/possible would seem to make more sense??

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: ming on 01 June, 2013, 07:50:10 PM
Seeing how the letterer makes the text and dialogue work around the artwork might make more sense than just giving examples of personal lettering styles, I guess...  Jim?

I definitely think the whole panel would help — context is all important!

I notice 2000AD seemed to favour that taller, thinner style in the early days — Frame, Knight and Aldrich were all very similar. I wonder if Tom had a hand in training the other two...

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Spikes

#5
Progs 259 (freshly scanned today for use over on CAF) and 61 respectively, both by Mr Tom Frame.





The Cursed Earth Episode One art was the first original art i owned. And one of the many thrills was seeing Tom's lettering first hand - thats 2000ad for ya, even the letterer's were (rightly, in Tom's case) stars. That particular page is chockablock full of his choice lettering.

Steve Green

Apart from the regular lettering, the one thing I loved about 2000AD/Starlord in lettering was the thought put to the bubbles to identify different voices.

The chamfered boxy robot voices, the voices of the biochips in Rogue, the Dark Judges dialogue, Spectral Torquemada's dialogue etc.

Apart from speech and thought bubbles this was the first time I'd actually noticed a conscious (and pretty consistent) design choice in speech balloons.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Steve Green on 01 June, 2013, 09:17:52 PM
The chamfered boxy robot voices, the voices of the biochips in Rogue, the Dark Judges dialogue, Spectral Torquemada's dialogue etc.

Although I'd be the first to acknowledge the towering contribution the Frame droid made to the Galaxy's Greatest, I do feel that Steve Potter's contribution has been somewhat unfairly overshadowed — his lettering in Nemesis Bks I-III is brilliant. To this day, I still can't figure out a way to replicate that Torquemada balloon digitally, and the way the spiders' balloons were surrounded by webbing that anchored to the panel borders in BkII was just superb.

(Annoyingly, my Nemesis TPBs are in a box somewhere and I can't lay my hands on 'em for a scan.)

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Steve Green

Yep, he did an amazing job lettering Nemesis.

HdE

Bloody hell, I already love this thread!

Gawd bless ya for starting this up, Ming. We letterers need all the love we can get.

Also: Totally agree on Steve Potter's lettering. I was ploughing through my Nemesis collections recently, for the first time since I actually started lettering with any serious intent, and the quality of his work leaps out. His title logos during the Redondo era are breathtaking.
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Steve Green

First time I've noticed that it's Brother Solom and Gomorrah in the Cursed Earth panel - not Sodom.

Spikes

Quote from: Steve Green on 01 June, 2013, 09:49:05 PM
First time I've noticed that it's Brother Solom and Gomorrah in the Cursed Earth panel - not Sodom.

Aye, its little things like that, that often go un-noticed - but once seen......
Like the way the speech balloon is in front of Anderson.




Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Judge Jack on 01 June, 2013, 10:50:51 PM
Like the way the speech balloon is in front of Anderson.

Ah, now, y'see I would never have done that. I'm quite happy to mask parts of balloons so that artwork appears to be in front of/behind balloons and FX, but that one makes no sense because it's on a different plane to the character. (Worse yet, it's in front of the Dredd balloon which means that Dredd's balloon must be even further back.)

Personally, I'd have butted McDonald's balloon to the top edge of the panel, like Dredd's, moved it to the right, and taken a chunk out of it so it looked like it was behind his own head.

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Daveycandlish

I love this thread already - but we need scans of the Nemesis panels from someone!

Lettering is the unsung talent in the creative team. If you don't believe me, check out the twilight graphic novel


Imagine that in the prog, spoiling Zombo ...  oof.

Now let's get back to the good stuff
An old-school, no-bullshit, boys-own action/adventure comic reminiscent of the 2000ads and Eagles and Warlords and Battles and other glorious black-and-white comics that were so, so cool in the 70's and 80's - Buy the hardback Christmas Annual!

Jim_Campbell

Holy shit. I thought I'd seen some crappy lettering in that Twilight book, but nothing as bad as that!

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.