And so, at long last, begins my series of lettering critiques! The first sample up for review, which Ive attached to this post, is from Shaun Speight. First of all, thanks for participating, Shaun. It can be nerve wracking putting work up for public dissection. Hopefully what follows will be helpful as opposed to discomfiting! Its sometimes said that anybody can arrange dialogue text and balloons on a page. In truth, I think that sentiment overlooks the fact that balloon lettering still requires a certain amount of knowhow and expertise. There are still some important things to keep an eye out for, and these can make the difference between professional work and a rough-and-ready lettering job. With that in mind, there are some issues with this page that might not necessarily be immediately obvious, so Ill get into those and explain them momentarily. Before that, though, Ill mention some more obvious stuff. First up, balloon shapes. Im really not a fan of this type of balloon at all. Im guessing theyre drawn with the ellipse marquee tool? I see this a lot - sometimes even in mainstream comics. What you get, if you rely on the ellipse marquee as a point-and-click type of deal, is exactly this - mechanical, sterile looking balloons. They tend to be wider at the top and bottom than necessary, and too angular at the sides. If youre working in Illustrator, this is a simple fix - click the curving arcs of the balloon, and square them off by pressing the cursor keys to nudge them into a more attractive shape. Half the battle with balloon shapes is in the composition of the text they contain. This is one of those things that seems like it should be simple, but can be MADDENINGLY frustrating until youre practiced in it. Basically, what you need to do is make the dialogue text a symmetrical shape all by itself. Then you can worry about drawing the balloon around it to fit. Dont be afraid to spend time over this - once youve nailed it, things generally look much better for it on the page. Id personally suggest that you try to avoid elongated balloons like the one in the final panel. They can be the ones that cause the most problems when trying to get a pleasing balloon shape to fit them. I also notice you have a balloon link in panel 3. You can do this, by all means, but its not really necessary. You might save yourself some work by simply joining the lower balloon to the upper, without the link. I personally tend only to use links if I have a panel where one character interrupts the flow of anothers dialogue. Sometimes, they can be more trouble than theyre worth. Your balloon placements could use some work. I see a few where youre creating unsightly tangents, which is something practiced pros are always looking to avoid. This is the problem that fits the description of not immediately obvious, and it crops up in panels 1 and 3. In panel 1, the upper left arc of your balloon butts up against the top edge of the photograph, while the lower right arc sits uncomfortably close to the background detail. In panel 3, the extreme edges of both balloons sit either right on top of vertical lines in the background art, or very close to them. This sort of thing takes time and patience to develop an eye for, and it can prove to be VERY frustrating. Sometimes, youll move a balloon to avoid one tangent, and end up creating two more! Spend a little time with each balloon nudging it around over the art until you find a solution that avoids this - but be prepared for some trial and error. This is one of the single biggest invisible things that letterers are in the business of getting right, so if you can ace it, youll be getting into some good habits. Final placement issue - panel 5 has ACRES of dead space in it, so use it! The balloon here doesnt need to sit close to the character art, and the tail doesnt need to stab right down onto him either. In practice, you can have a balloon tail end halfway between the characters mouth and the balloon and youll be fine. A positive I can offer about your balloon placements is that youve got an intuitive left / right balance going on here, which is good. Sometimes, on pages as sparse as this (one character on panel throughout the whole thing) it would be easy to place all the lettering on either the left or right of panel, and weight the pages to one side or another. By changing it up, you keep the readers eye moving over the all-important artwork, which is good. Also, good use of bolding. Thats a surprisingly under-utilised tool in the comics arsenal. Its AMAZING how often I see comics or scripts for comics that dont use it at all - really a shame, as to me, its a part of what makes comics look like comics. It may seem as if Im offering up a lot of negatives here, but with lettering the devil is truly in the details. Sometimes, knowing the concerns is half the battle, so I hope this post has been informative.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 16:58:14 +0000
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