Lettering with Illustrator: A Guide to Download!

[chilipenguin]

Jim, any chance you could answer a quick question for me?

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art? I am working on pages that are uncoloured so obviously don't know which colours will be best for each instance.

[Jim_Campbell]

Jim, any chance you could answer a quick question for me?

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art? I am working on pages that are uncoloured so obviously don't know which colours will be best for each instance.

I've done whole books with nothing but black outlines and white fills for the FX. If you don't know what colours are going to be on the final artwork, I'd honestly suggest sticking with that -- otherwise your colour choices might clash horribly, or be so close to the rest of the panel that the SFX disappear completely.

On pages that are already coloured, I vary the colours depending on the kind of the sound effect. Fiery KABOOMs are red, yellow, orange, watery SPLOOSHs are blue-green, and so on. I like to use a radial gradient and start the gradient at the centre of the impact/explosion/gunshot.

Cheers!

Jim

[chilipenguin]

Cheers Jim. Yeah, I kinda figured on the elemental colours (fire, water etc) but just wasn't sure about uncoloured art. It's not gonna make much difference really (it's one of the sample scripts that was done by one of the members here, so won't be coloured at any point), just for future reference.

[Jim_Campbell]

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art?

Here's my new thing… I'm leaving my FX with a white fill, and I'm using the eyedropper to pick up the darkest non-black colour from the artwork in the panel, and I'm using that for the stroke colour. It seems to make the SFX sit more naturally with the art.



Cheers!

Jim

[Danbo]

Utter novice here and can I apologize first because I'm not sure what it is exactly called what I'm after(dumb I know,the link at the start of the thread didn't work so instead of trawling I just thought I would ask )
I want to be able to put text on my drawing,not speech bubbles but say if I was doing a pic of Dredd and I wanted to put 'He is the Law' on there,how do i do it?
If you could point me to a tutorial on youtube or something it would make my day.
I got asked to do a fanzine cover but I don't have a clue how to put the things title on there so had to decline.
Thanks and again sorry for asking what I'm sure is pretty obvious beginer stuff that still seems like witchcraft to me.

(I have photoshop and manga studio if that helps)

[Jim_Campbell]

the link at the start of the thread didn't work so instead of trawling I just thought I would ask

Ack. I forgot that this thread links to the now defunct MobileMe version of that PDF. I've asked if a Mod can edit the link on Pg1, but in the meantime, you can download the PDF here:

http://db.tt/cPOvpitz

That refers almost exclusively to Illustrator but if you have to letter in another package, do it in Photoshop -- MangaStudio is pretty much useless for lettering, IME. You should find some of what I describe in there, particularly about balloons, can be applied to Photoshop, using the vector shapes and pen tool.

Cheers

Jim

[Danbo]

Cheers for that Sir,I will have a good butchers this weekend.

[Jim_Campbell]

Cheers for that Sir,I will have a good butchers this weekend.

No worries. Feel free to post any questions you may have here, and I'll do my best to give you a helpful answer!

Cheers

Jim

[Danbo]

Thanks again,no doubt I will have a few

[Mike Gallagher]

awesome

[Jim_Campbell]

Dash it all!



Quick, but hopefully informative, blog post about giving your SFX a dashed outline for extra emphasis and a bit of an old-school vibe… :-)

No, really, it IS a new blog post!

Cheers

Jim

[Professor Bear]

I have to do several panels of characters talking Pashtun and I'm tempted to just put the word "gibberish" in each balloon, but have concerns that this might break the fourth wall for readers, and obviously it doesn't convey tone of voice* - so does anyone have thoughts on methods of portraying someone talking in another language?  I have seen panels where the text in the balloons is presented fully as untranslated text - or pictograms - and then subtitles pasted along the bottom of the panel, but this seems like it might be an unnecessary waste of space to me unless you have specific aims of replicating a filmic quality to the stroytelling, as it arguably forces the scene into a particular pacing.




* tellingly, "cultural insensitivity" is not on my list of concerns.

[Jim_Campbell]

I have to do several panels of characters talking Pashtun and I'm tempted to just put the word "gibberish" in each balloon, but have concerns that this might break the fourth wall for readers, and obviously it doesn't convey tone of voice* - so does anyone have thoughts on methods of portraying someone talking in another language?

Blambot has a very nice selection of 'gibberish' fonts that I've frequently deployed for dialogue that's supposed to be unintelligible for any reason…

Cheers!

Jim

[Hawkmumbler]

Thanks Jim, this'll come in handy when I can finally start my webcomic.

[Jim_Campbell]

Just as a follow-up to Bear's two-year-old question about dialogue in a foreign language, on the (really rather good) Burning Fields for BOOM, I was asked to mimic Deron Bennett's approach from Hacktivist, which looks like this:



Cheers

Jim