Posts Tagged ‘fonts’

5 results.

Comic Font Creation – Making Your Own Comic Font

by Jason Brubaker on January 14, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Making Graphic Novels
Custom comic fonts.
After looking around at all the comic font websites and seeing how much it costs for a good looking font, I had the brain buster idea to look into creating my own font.  I’ve worked with plenty designers and some who even created their own fonts and sold them to companies so I knew it was possible and maybe even easy.

After a quick internet search I found this site with a simple looking program called FontCreator from High-Logic.  It costs $79 for a home version which is as cheap as any semi-good font out there and I could potentially make as many as I want without worrying about any complicated licensing fees.

I did anther search and found this site that looks even easier. It’s called YourFonts.com.  You download a template and print it. Then scan and upload the filled in template and it generates your font for $9.95.  (If you want to buy a font at Your Fonts, please use this link so that I can get a commission for sending you there.)

http://www.yourfonts.com

I downloaded the template and filled it in on my computer using a Wacom Cintiq.  It only took 10 minutes or so just like they said.  Once I uploaded my completed template it took about 40 seconds to create the font ready to be downloaded.  I was really blown away with how easy it was.  My only problem is not being able to control the kerning of the letters but you can do that in Photoshop or Illustrator.  They suggest using FontCreator to get more technical.  But as far as a font made out of your own hand writing, I’m impressed.

Better yet, I happened to stumble across the site when they had a free promotion code so I made a bunch just for fun.  Here they are:

I made a few more just just for fun.  Hey what can I say, they were free at the time.  If anyone is interested in using some of these then let me know.  I’m sure we can work something out.
Here is another font creation site that looks like it takes more time but it might be what you are looking for.

http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

Here is a tutorial on making your own fonts with Photoshop and Illustrator.

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Create_Your_Own_Font

And finally here is a FREE font creation program.  It is a bit more complex then YourFonts.com but you can really get in there and control the kerning, add a bold to your fonts and all the nit-picky details that any anal font creator will love.  Oh yeah, and it’s free.  I downloaded it for my Mac and it’s running like a charm but I need to sit down with the documentation to fully use it.  I was able to import my fonts I created at YourFonts.com to adjust a few minor details that were bothering me.  Here’s the link:

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

Now I’m not saying I understand everything about lettering or fonts but I do know that in a perfect world I would want my comics hand lettered in a style similar to what I created above.  Most of the professional comic fonts out there are perfect looking. That’s fine if your artwork is perfect looking too but in my case it distracts from the hand drawn artwork.  Plus when I look at old comics that were hand lettered I notice all kinds of random flaws.  It’s those flaws that give it the charm of being hand lettered.

Anyway, I still need to master my word balloons and sound effects.  I’ll save that for another time.  Plus, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve learned this week.

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7 reasons to NOT use Comic Sans in your comic.

by Jason Brubaker on April 1, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Making Graphic Novels

Here are my seven reasons to avoid using Comic Sans MS in your comic or graphic novel. I learned the hard way.

This may seem like a no brainer to some of you but I know that there are many who have no idea why Comic Sans is a bad choice. I know because I was one of them. In fact I completed three whole comics in Comic Sans MS and paid tons of money to print ‘em. I still have copies of these books and I’m embarrassed to try to sell my leftovers. Other newer comic creators have asked me to explain why Comic Sans MS is so bad so here is my list.

1. Just because it has “COMIC” in the name and it’s FREE doesn’t mean you should use it in your comic that you spent years laboring over. In fact, because it comes free on every computer in existence know to mankind, you might want to choose a different font for the sake of standing out from the massive crowd who blindly use it.

2. You will instantly look unprofessional to anyone who has already learned this lesson no matter how good your art or story may be. Designers and Letterers will want to roundhouse kick your face.

3. Comic Sans has uneven default kerning. Some letters are spaced weird which hurts the flow of reading. Below is an example of bad kerning. This is Comic Sans but I pushed the kerning so it was obvious to a non-letterer.

4. Comic Sans is an incomplete font when it comes to comics because it WASN’T really made for comics in the first place. For example, Comic Sans is missing breath marks which come before and after some sort of cough or sputter. (unless there is some special way of getting them I don’t know about.) Here is my own personal font with breath marks.

5. With many professional COMIC fonts, the lower and upper case letters are all capitals with a slight variation so that repeated letters can look somewhat random. Below is the same sentence with the top line in lowercase and the bottom in CAPITALS. Although the “I” stands out the most, they are all slightly different.

6. If you use the letter “I” with crossbars within a word, many letterers will want to drop kick you. In many comics the capital “I” with the crossbars is reserved for the personal pronoun only. Below is an example for clarity. Notice the “I” within the words “think” and “right”.

So which one is correct? That depends on who you ask. The majority agrees that the last one is correct. The top one is also fine. Some argue that “I’m” can be used either way and some argue that it should never have the crossbars unless the “I” is by itself. My main point here is Comic Sans only looks like the middle line which is by far the ugliest version.

7. Lettering is the one thing that people will stare directly at as they read your comic. Making it blend to your art is important. A badly chosen font will distract people from your work and story. Comic Sans will not only distract readers but get you hate mail. Good typography should be invisible. It shouldn’t call attention to itself unless there is a specific reason for it. Comic Sans will never be invisible because there is such a large group of people who hate it that you will most likely be hearing more comments about your font choice than anything else in your book.

[Edit] The uproar that a discussion of it raises, is adequate proof that people should move away from it in their comic books.

If you are still in need of convincing then I encourage you to watch this video.

http://bancomicsans.com/home.html

Still not satisfied? Here is a great article about the history of Comic Sans.

http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/comic-sans-the-font-everyone-loves-to-hate/

Here is an article from a professional letterer talking about why he thinks Comic Sans MS should never be used for comics. I thought I had a pretty original list until I found this one. Oh well.

http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=3599

Here are some other posts I wrote about comic fonts:

Making Your Own Comic Font.

Comic Fonts and Grammar.

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I’m going to start calling them pages now.

by Jason Brubaker on April 5, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Here are pages 42 and 43. (Spread 20)

I decided to start calling the spreads "pages" now because I don't like that Google's number 3 keyword for my site is "spread". In case you are wondering why the page numbers don't quite match up to the spread number, it's because I'm using the page number of the printed book just so I don't get confused. Worry not, you are still seeing all the pages here.

How to get 10,000 unique viewers in 3 days.

So if anyone wants to know how to get 10,000 unique viewers in 3 days, then write an article about how much you love or hate Comic Sans MS and submit it to a few sites. A warning though. With great arguments comes heated comments. Not so much on my blog but on the websites linked to my article. 

Most of the negative comments came from my statement that people will hate you for using Comic Sans in your comic. Now I know the truth, may people will hate you for talking about Comic Sans no matter what the context. So to please all the haters, I have changed my statement from "many people will hate you" to "many letterers will want to dropkick you." I hope you will take me seriously from now on. I never joke. Comic artists don't exaggerate anything. EVER.

I was going to compose a top ten list of hate comments from other sites linking to my post but it would be to hard to weed through. Plus, some are so vulgar it would make a drunk navy trucker quiver. So I decided to share one of the funniest comments I read among the rantings. And here it is:

"Comic Sans is based on Watchmen. Why do you hate Alan Moore?"

This quote truely sums up the power of the internet. I laughed, I cried. I scratched my head because, Wow!

First of all, Watchmen was written by Alan Moore, not lettered by him. Dave Gibbons lettered Watchmen and in an interview with him he says Comic Sans is "an appalling-looking font" and "Comic Sans is so ugly" and "The major sin about it that really bugs me is that it only includes the uppercase I, the one with bars on the top and bottom, which as you know, you only use in comics for the first-person pronoun."  Read the interview here.

With all the opinionated controversy behind me, it's time for my next subject. Why Mac's are better then PC's. ha!

I finally got my Page Rank back!

I'm sure there are a number of you who love this technical stuff like PageRank and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I am mostly clueless about making my site stand out on search engines. From what I know, search engines like Google, rank websites depending on things like who and how many links they have going to them. The more incoming links a site has the higher the page rank. The higher the page rank, the better chance that site has of being displayed in a search with similar keywords.

Before I switched from Blogger to WordPress, my site had a 3 out of 10. Shortly after I switched, it dropped to 0 and I couldn't figure out how to get Google to know I had switched. Apparently I didn't submit a sitemap to google. My IT guy helped me and a week later my site was recognized by google again. I now have a 3 out of 10 page rank.  The funny thing is, I still had the same amount of traffic after dropping to a "0" as I did with a "3" from before. So now I'm trying to figure out why. It seems like many of you understand this better then I do so maybe you can shed some light on it. I also read that there is a difference between a PageRank and a page rank. So confusing. Anyway, I have a 3 now and I feel better about myself but I'm not sure what it's really doing for me.

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Easy word balloons

by Jason Brubaker on April 8, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Photoshop Speech Bubbles – How I make word balloons

I already talked a bit about Fonts, Lettering and Creating Your Own Comic Font so now I’m going to try to walk through my process of making speech bubbles. I made a video. Not just any video. A video I made really late at night after drinking to much coffee and wondering what I should post. I tried to make a better one but every version kept getting sloppier until all forms of helpfulness went out to door to make way for muttered grumblings and miss-clicks. Don’t even ask why my word balloon points to both Victuals AND Sonja. I guess I was just showing off how abstract my story telling ability could get.

Anyway, when I started making this video I thought it was a great idea. Now that it’s time to post, I am wondering if it’s clear enough. I guess I’ll leave it up to you to tell me. I can always make another one to replace this if I have to. Below the video is also an explanation of what I do to make my word balloons for reMIND.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I finally found this method of making word balloons for reMIND. I went through all my pages and recreated them from the ground up and here’s how I do it.

First I create a folder in my layers called “Text”. I keep all my text and bubbles in this folder so I can easily turn it all on or off. Next I create a new layer that I call “bubbles”.

Then I double click on the new “bubbles” layer that I made in Photoshop even though nothing is in it yet. A “Layer Style” window will appear. On the left side at the very bottom of the list of  layer styles is a filter called “Stroke”. Click on “Stoke”. Make sure it’s highlighted so that the adjustment window will change. If you just click the check box it will turn on the feature but adjusters will not be visible.

Once the “Stoke” property box is open, I change the size to “4″ and the position to “inside” and hit “OK”. A line, 4 pixels thick, will appear over the edge of anything I create in the balloons layer from now on. This line will be drawn on the inside 4 pixels of any shape with an alpha. (a transparent background)

Now I start drawing in bubbles with the “lasso” tool. I love doing these by hand so that I can have an organic hand drawn look. You can even use a solid pencil or hard edge paintbrush if you prefer but the lasso is nice for getting crisp lines easily.

If you are looking for really perfect bubble lines then I suggest using “Paths”. Nate has a great tutorial about using Paths to create word balloons. Check out his blog if you haven’t already. His project is AMAZING!

Now all you have to do is use Comic Sans MS to letter the stupid thing! (I’m going to milk this as long as I can)

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The Best of reMINDblog – The First 6 Months

by Jason Brubaker on April 29, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Nearly 6 months ago I started reMINDblog.com and I’ve seen many new comments and I want to welcome you all and thank you for partaking in this journey with me.  In hitting the six month milestone, I’ll leave you with a list of my 10 favorite Thursday posts to date.

My Top 10 Favorite reMINDblog Articles…so far.

  1. Before You Start Your Graphic Novel – This was the first real article I made to try and convey something I learned about the GN creative process. It started as an answer to a question that someone asked me in a forum. I didn’t feel like I was qualified to answer but once I started writing it, it was clear to me that I had some important things I wanted to say and warn people about. I’ve updated it since it’s inception so check it out again.
  2. Outsourcing Comic Pages (Specifically Flats) – What I learned in this series of posts on Outsourcing really changed everything for me. I was able to color my last 2 pages in an a hour and a half last night, and it was largely because I learned about flatting and outsourcing. This article has a few parts to it so keep clicking.
  3. Interview with Ian Hannin (a professional comic colorist) – It’s not everyday that I get to interview someone working on Batman. Plus it’s very informative of the creative process of coloring comics.
  4. Making Your Own Comic Font – When I first started my graphic novel, I didn’t seem to care about my fonts or anything to do with Lettering. After showing some pages on forums, my eyes were opened and I realized that the Lettering is just as important as any other aspect of my comic. I tried to find the right font but had trouble getting one I was happy with that matched my style. Shortly after, I learned how to create my own font and never looked back.
  5. Blogger Vs. WordPress – I started out using Google’s Blogger for reMIND but once I starting getting serious about blogging I learned about WordPress and the ComicPress theme. What I discovered completely revolutionized the direction I took with reMINDblog.
  6. RGB Vs. CMYK in Photoshop – This has been a tricky learning curve for me because there are so many opinions of the right way to do things. Even so, I never understood the real working difference in Photoshop until I made this video comparing the two modes. Decide for yourself which mode you want to work in but only after you see what the difference really is.
  7. 1000 Ture Fans – This is an encouraging article about making a living off your comics or graphic novels. The linking article by Kevin Kelly is a must read and can really change the way artists think about their work.
  8. 7 Reasons to NOT use Comic Sans MS in Your Comic – This is by far my most trafficked and controversial article to date. Some hate it and some love it. Before just plopping the first comic font you find into your artwork, check out this article.
  9. Easy Word Balloons – I made a quick tutorial a while back about word balloons. I’ve made them many ways over the years and this is the easiest and best way I’ve discovered.
  10. Unnatural Talent – I know this is a new article but I think it’s one of my most heart felt posts I’ve written so it definitely deserves to be on this list.

Thank you for all your support and comments over the last 6 months. If it wasn’t for all your warm encouragement I’d still be trying to finish the first Chapter.

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