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The difference between good lettering and bad

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Cobbled this together VERY quickly as a visual aid to show people why Photoshop lettering, Comic Sans and a host of other ills can ruin a comic.

Artwork is from Shahrazad #4, by Big Dog Ink. Wonderful art by Mike Krome and colours by Nei Ruffino.

I've lettered both versions, trying to ape the most common problems I see with DIY lettering jobs at small press level. Lettering in books put out by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and IDW books DOES NOT look like this, and that's no accident.

(Sorry for defacing it, guys!)

Here's the list of problems on the annotated pages:


1 - The balloon placement is terrible. Never obscure a character's face if you can help it, even if they're not speaking on panel. Notice that this balloon's tail points to the back of the boy's head, as opposed to making a direct line towards his mouth, which is what you ideally want.

2 - Again, poor placement. Because it sits higher than and closer to the first balloon, it could conceivably pull the reader's eye to read it before the other balloon. There's also a nasty tangent between the bottom of the balloon and the top of the wall in the background, and character art is obscured again. Additionally, apart from the tail being way too thick, it points to the boy's eyebrow.

3 - Suddenly, the balloon style changes! The tails on both balloons are weak, one being poorly shaped while the other is merely a black line. The tail and the body of the first balloon haven;t been united properly, and the text within isn't centered. Tails also sit way too close to the characters.

4 - This is a weak burst balloon. Poorly shaped, with an indistinct tail, and the font choice doesn't scan in the least. it's also poorly arranged, butting against the balloon outline.

5 - A number one pet hate of mine. I see this a lot with Photoshop lettered comics. Stroking the text in white may seem like a good idea, but it's honestly quite unsightly. Also, the balloon tail makes it appear as if the warrior's shoulder is talking. Placement is also poor. There's significant space in the panel that this balloon doesn't need to sit over the panel border.

6 - A prime example of poor font choice for effect, coupled with a bad choice of colour. That's quite hard to read, isn't it? And it hardly reads well with the admittedly awful Comic Sans above it. The balloon tail is also poorly shaped, and doesn't clearly indicate who is speaking.

7 - Multiple problems with these two balloons. First, the elliptical balloon is a HORRIBLE shape, much too angular, with too skinny a tail. Also, the text is arranged poorly. Font choice in the second balloon is poorly judged, doesn't read well alongside anything else in the panel,  and the awkward composition of the first balloon means that it overlaps the tail of the second, which is too thick. Never, EVER cross balloon tails or bisect them with balloons completely.

8 - Have you noticed that both these pages use Comic Sans for a dialogue font? NEVER use it! EVER. The text in his particular caption is poorly arranged, and the caption box butts too close to the text itself. There's also consistent misuse of the serifed 'I'. It's also, let's be blunt, a really boring caption design. White rectangle. Yay.

Notice as well, on the 'as published' version that the caption still sits over character art. This is unfortunately necessary. You won't see it on the page, but the top edgeof that scroll caption sits RIGHT on the edge of the bleed area. So there's a strong likelihood that moving it up would see it either chopped off at print or placed too close to the edge of the page to look decent. Moving it to the right would upset reading flow, and cover the sparks coming off the shield. NEVER obscure storytelling information like that.

9 - Another badly arranged caption. Long lines of text are to be avoided. See how it obscures important character art.

10 - NEVER adjust point size for captions or dialogue arbitrarily! Also, the placement is terrible. Why position it here when there is ample negative space  in the panel to avoid overlapping?

11 - I HATE seeing SFX like this. No effort was made to choose a complimentary font. No effort to add life to the SFX was made either. You can always judge a letterer by the quality of their SFX. The edge of this one is also likely to get lost at print in the trim area.

12 - There is no 12. See what happens when you do these things in a hurry, kids? Seriously - when you blaze through a project, stuff gets missed. Pay attention!

13 - This one's more a personal peeve. This SFX is better than the last... but still lacks life. It also features one of the most recognisable fonts in existence, Blambot's Badaboom. Nothing wrong with that, but you could be more creative. I have banned myself from ever using this font, just because I feel it is overused. I feel similarly about the Angry Birds font, the proper name of which escapes me right now. Both are great fonts, but I want to distance myself from them in my lettering work. They're literally everywhere.

14 - Way too much space in this caption! And it sits close enough the edge of the page that it could be chopped off at print.
Image size
1617x2437px 4.02 MB
Make
Canon
Model
CanoScan LiDE 110
© 2014 - 2024 hde2009
Comments7
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EnigmaResolve's avatar
look's great! what is a good font size to ensure that it's not too big and not too small?