I need help with lettering comics

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I love to draw. And I love being able to tell stories with my art. sadly as much as i love making comics i'm not skilled in all facet of it. i was told that my latest comic A Night with Coco was hard to read. the balloon placement was bad. that the multiple color text was detracting. That Comic sans is no good for comics. and i should add sound effect.
I cant say that the person was wrong, and they gave me good advice but i personally dont know how to fix it, so i'm asking you guys and gals for help, where are better places to put the word balloon? what are good fonts to use for text and sound effect? I'm using manga studio to add text id that help.

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Added:	5 years, 10 months ago 14 Jun 2018 08:34 CEST

10 Comments on this Journal

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EtherSaga

5 years, 10 months ago

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The main issue is upper-case and lower-case letters. They get disjointed when read in comic format. I'd recommend finding a font that is all caps.

The one I've been using is Acme Secret Agent.

I'd also recommend reading published comics to get a better feel of dialog formatting. The flow of placement, and spacing of the paragraphs. As an example from my own comic. It's not perfect, but making sure the words can fit better if properly spaced.

If you need further help, I'm always opened if you feel like it. Cheers m8!

SenGrisane

5 years, 10 months ago

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@ EtherSaga

I like the look of upper/lower case letter text, but it is hardly used by professionals.

If you don't mind, could you explain what you mean with disjointed?

EtherSaga

5 years, 10 months ago

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@ SenGrisane

I suppose 'disjointed' was a bad word to use. Rather 'jarring'? It's just this thing when you read short paragraphs in a small area upper and lowercase letters start to look... weird.

I don't really have a detailed explanation for it. I just point to many different examples. It's just easier to read when it's all uppercase, I suppose because it's easier to tell one letter from another. An uppercase 'i' is identical to a lowercase 'L' more or less...

SenGrisane

5 years, 10 months ago

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@ EtherSaga

I see. Thank you ^^

joykill

5 years, 10 months ago

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Edited 5 years, 10 months ago by Owner

@ EtherSaga

figured it out
thank you

EtherSaga

5 years, 10 months ago

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@ joykill

Glad to hear. Heh, I was gonna start doing screen caps. That would take too long.

paoguu

5 years, 10 months ago

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www.makingcomics.com is a great resource for any and all area of comic book creation. Worth checking out if you want to keep the comics coming!

ThaPig

5 years, 10 months ago

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I don't see anything wrong with the comic, but it could be improved.
The first thing that sometimes makes a comic confusing is when the order or text balloons is not intuitive and the reader reads the dialogue in the wrong order. The best way to avoid this is to always have a left-to-right and op-to-down distribution of the balloons. Even if the page has irregular frames and shapes, try to put the speech balloons in that order.

Some artists use other methods, like adding arrows to point at the order the frames should be read, but sometimes that makes the confusion worse. I prefer the left to right way even if it means having to rearrange the frames or the page design.

I don't see a problem with different color text. Many artists do that, but usually not different colors in the same balloon. Usually, this is done to indicate one character has a different like, for example, Deadpool's speech balloons are usually yellow while other characters have regular white ones. You could have your own unique way to use text colors, as long as you keep it consistent.

As for the fonts, Comic Sans has a bad reputation on the Internet. It's kind of a meme thing to hate it. There are lots of free fonts out there for all kinds of use in comics.

Here are some good ones for sound effects: http://blambot.com/fonts_sfx.shtml

paoguu

5 years, 10 months ago

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@ ThaPig

There's definitely a science to making a comic legible, and it's not always obvious things. Like you said, though, left-to-right, top-to-bottom is the first approach you should be taking in western media.

As for arrows, IMO if you have to resort to them then you need to rethink your layout as a whole.

I'll have to bookmark that page too. I'm a sucker for good comic fonts.