Anyone else curious about these mysterious beings? Ellie De Ville? Annie Parkhouse? They seem to just be hadwriting-ish fonts with peoples names attached.
Yeah, in the old days they used to actually write them. used to impress me no end. Guess there's still a lot of arranging/positioning to do and stuff like that. Then putting them in bubbles n stuff. Oh, and adding bold and stuff.
Of course I'm sure Tom Frame still does his by hand :o)
No he switched to font even before the others.
This looks to me like the easiest job in the world.
You've never tried it then! Yeah- loads easier than it used to be- but there's still a certain artistic quality required. I'm a terrible letterer.
Matt
You know how some jobs *look* easy and turn out to be really, really f**king difficult?
...Yeah. Lettering's one of those, which is why there are so very few professional letterers - it's a dying art :(
J-Bo-1
Tom Frame is a god-like genius, and I'll fight anybody who says different :)
Whatever happened to that other guy who dissapeared around prog 1200 who'd been there since the beginnning? Steve Potter? I liked his style.
i could been the worlds greastest letterer me.
if only it wasnt for the fact that my spelling around the standard of a seven year olds.
I have huge respect for all letterers, I know I definitely couldn't do it. And anyway, isn't writing the words only part of it? Don't they also have to work out where the bubbles go? And isn't there a load of asinine rules they have to adhere to like "Don't cross the tails"? Letterers are great.
But why does Ellie DeVille always do her Qs backwards?
it is indeed more than just writing the letters. There are one or 2 books on lettering which expose how much of it is an unseen craft. I've done a fair amount of lettering on my own stuff (not lately tho) and it's not as easy as it seems.
Also, the current letterers tooth uses all designed their own fonts, which in itself is a painful and time consuming task, especially if you want it to resemble your handcrafted letters. and there's all the additional FX fonts which they need to design.
plus bear in mind that some art can come in with spaces all int he wrong place (hey, we ain't perfect) and the letterers have to make sure it reads as well as it can without screwing the art up.
Ellie is my favorite:)
F
isn't there a load of asinine rules they have to adhere to like "Don't cross the tails"?
Can you break this rule if facing a 30-foot tall Mr Stay-Puft the Marshmallow Man?
I don't think I've ever really thought about letterers. It'd be interesting to see someone like Ellie DeVille in the Megazine's Interrogation Cube interview pages.
That's just what I was thinking yesterday!
Speaking as someone who is just learning how to use PC lettering techniques, It can take me longer to letter a page than to actually draw the damn thing. Using a PC is 'easier', but the end result is lacking some of the balloon shapes I like to use.
It (Lettering) is one of the hardest 'comic-book' skills to master, as it is technically invisible.
I too would love to see an article on how current tooth letterers go about their craft, as they could so easily make the mag unreadable.
Heck, a lettering masterclass would definately be on my to-do list.
Bolt-01
I'm curious: a lot of the strips appearing in Tooth and the Meg recently have had some pretty naff sound-effects. Are these added by the letterer, or are they inserted by someone else? I ask because they seem of such poor quality in comparison to the rest of the lettering that I can't believe they're done by the same person.
i always used to wonder if all the letterers were girlfriends or related to artists / writers
that certainly seemed to be the case with most of them
I'm willing to bet they're subbed in by the editorial team. If that's the case, may I make a plea: please stop adding stupid sound effects to the comic. We can see from the art if something's exploded, and having Sha-koooom across the page in a crappy comic-sansesque font really doesn't help. In fact, in most cases, it totally ruins the art and cheapens the comic.
"having Sha-koooom across the page in a crappy comic-sansesque font really doesn't help. In fact, in most cases, it totally ruins the art and cheapens the comic."
Absolutely. A recent - and absolutely appalling - example was the Strontium Dog story, "Roadhouse": lovely black & white art with great big red SFX slapped on top, all in some naff font.
I don't have any objections to SFX being used, but they need to be done properly - take a look at the work on Durham Red, or even the Jock strip along the top of this page. The same applies to the use of computer lettering on computer displays, newspaper headlines or any one of a dozen other uses of naff computer lettering in the weekly.
tom frame is our board hero when it comes to lettering. he has been there with us from the early days.
he was at dreddcon last year wasnt he?
unsung hero if ever there was one.
"take a look at the work on Durham Red"
Speaking of Durham Red,anyone notice the sound effect used recently as Red tackles yer boy round the chops with her thighs?
"MUFFF!"
That Harrison droid,you couldn't be at him
;)
M.