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Here is my own bad example from a few years ago. I made a lot of the same mistakes that I see in the digital lettering of others, so I'll break down my own bad example.
1) Left alignment - Couldn't be more boring. You'll never see a hand-lettered word balloon that's left justified, so to do that digitally gives the whole thing away. If I were to letter that panel today, I would've centered the main block of type and used separate text boxes for the three words that stair-step down (so that the free-floaty word wouldn't be so rigid in their placement). The three words would also be farther to the right so that the "so" isn't directly under the last word of the previous line. "Makes" from the second line could probably drop down to the third line as well for a cleaner flow.
2) Font size - IIRC, the final size of the font when printed should be around 8 or 9 points. Again, this is just aping the hand-lettered look and there are cases when you'll want to go bigger or smaller. Important rule of thumb tho. My font looks a bit too big, so probably one point size down from where it is now would've been better.
3) Font as an element of page design - Too often, and certainly in my own case, lettering a page is an afterthought. It looks so easy on the surface: Copy text from the script, paste text into page layout program, done. Not so. Usually, digital lettering is done in a purchased comic-style font or Comic Sans MS. The purchased stuff is okay if you work at DC. Comic Sans should never be used by ANYBODY, EVER. (BTW, that is not Comic Sans in my example). Everyone recognizes it, and I think the familiarity takes something away from a page rather than adding to it. Find a good handwriting font that's easy to read, has all the characters you might need, and fits the story in some way. Also, consider whether the lettering should be all uppercase, upper and lowercase, small-capped, etc. Scale the type a little too (but nothing under 85% as another rule of thumb). Kerning, too, is important. Again, it doesn't have to be much. Maybe a -2 or -3 kern. Maybe +2 or +3. But something. Little tweaks to the type to make it your own and make it work with the story. If I were to do mine over again today, I'd probably use upper/lowercase and I'd have the width of the font set to 90% and the kern at -2.
4) Sound effects - Not in my example link, but trust me. I have made my fair share of crap sound effects. Of course, you want to find a blocky, sans serif font, but this is where tweaking to make it your own is especially important. This kind of lettering is probably best done in Illustrator, where you can warp and treat the sound effects to really make them come alive. I think you want to follow lettering conventions to a certain extent (crackly block type on a wavy path for RRRRUMMMMBBLLEE, etc.), but sound effects is where you can really bring the weird shit and take advantage of the digital medium. A little restraint (take it easy with the drop shadows!) and you can't go far wrong.
Hope that helps a little. |
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