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)
