My first lettering

[samy]

These are the first two pages I have ever lettered. I was wondering, if I'm doing anything horribly wrong, if anybody could possibly point those things out now, before I get set in my ways.

A huge amount of thanks to you guys. Without this forum and all your talk, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea where to even begin. And even bigger thanks to Payton for the awesome Ninja Lettering flash tutorials, and to Nate for awesome free fonts.

You people have helped me so much more than you know.

[Piekos]

That's actually pretty good for a first try. Watch the spacing in the balloons/captions and tell the writer that the script could be cut down by half. :)

~N

[samy]

Thanks Nate!

I am the writer, actually, and yeah, I'm well aware that I'm being very verbose. But that's kind of what I'm aiming for, to take the "words per page" crown away from Claremont. :laugh: I want the story to be very dense reading, lots to chew on, because I'm trying to get away from the "five minute comics" reading experience of today. But maybe I overreacted and went a little too far. :D

[Piekos]

I agree with you about the 5-minute comic. But what I see here isn't the solution. You're sacrificing subtlety for sheer word count.

Not commenting on you, per se, but the #1 problem I see with beginning comic writers, is waaaaaay overkilling the script. It stands out like a sore thumb as the mark of an amateur.

Claremont may be verbose, but he knows how to self-edit. No need to rush through all that info if you've realy got a great story from the very first caption.

And if you're REALLY good...you wouldn't need to slap the reader with all that back story at all...you just let it play out and be subtle about inserting background info. Think long-term.

Read Stephen King's book, ON WRITING even if you're not a King fan. WONDERFUL resource. SHould be required reading for anyone who wants to write anything. (Along with Strunk & White's THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE.)

We need an editing forum. Sorry to go off course.

~N

[augiedb]

Overall, it's really good for a first try, but one thing bugged me: Too many balloons on that second page get stacked one on top of the other, all of which have exactly two lines per balloon. You've done well with the diamond pattern inside of other balloons, but try using it more in those balloons. Divide the dialogue into 3 lines per balloon and see if the balloons wind up looking more interesting. Also, don't put them one on top of the other directly like that.

-Augie

[samy]

Yeah, back to lettering. :)

[samy]

Gotcha, Augie, I'll see what I can do about livening up that part.

[samy]

How the heck does one do a thought bubble, is there a tutorial on that anywhere?

[theflash]

comicraft has a tutorial on their site on thought balloons among many other things. hit the tips and tricks section and you'll see it.

[samy]

Thanks, on my way!

I just found the "Zig Zag" filter and I'm so tempted to do both radio transmissions and thought bubbles with it because it'd be so easy, but I'll see how their tut looks.

[Jason Arthur]

Thanks, on my way!

I just found the "Zig Zag" filter and I'm so tempted to do both radio transmissions and thought bubbles with it because it'd be so easy, but I'll see how their tut looks.

Filters by themselves are never a good idea.

Just saying.

-- J

[samy]

Yeah, I guessed. Anything that's *easy* is rarely the best looking way to do things. It just tempts me until I figure out a better way.

[samy]

Well, I went for a lot of filters *for now* until I learn a better way.

I tried looking for a thought balloon tut on Balloontales, but I could only find flaming bubbles, buzzsaw edges, roughened edges but nothing on thought bubbles. Does anybody have a more precise link handy?

In the meantime I tried out some filters on a few things...zigzag for radio transmissions and roughen + puckerbloat for thought bubbles. They look to me like a reader would understand what they're meant to be, but certainly don't look none too pretty. Functional but ugly. Kind of like when you're making your first woodcarvings.

In that very last panel on last page, I just *couldn't get it to work*, the Balloontales tutorial that tries to show how to use Scissors to split an object into two parts so you could send one to front and one to back. I just couldn't get it to work, I spent hours on that one, arggh. So I just squeezed in a long tail just barely along the edge of the panel instead of going under another panel.