hello my name is Laura Ennis I'm one of
the co-hosts on paper wings podcast calm
today I'm going to show you my process
for lettering my comic the dreamer using
a program called Comic Life I have my
file opened here for the next page in my
webcomic as you can see I don't have
final art done yet I do all of my
lettering during the rough stage of my
comic so this page here is full size for
print so when I go to send my graphic
novel off to the publisher it's already
set up everything is within the proper
guidelines for print and I won't have to
make any changes down the road which
when you get to the end of a book making
changes on 150 pages takes a lot of time
so I learned that the hard way so I have
my panel set up on their own layer and
then I've got my rough sketch here and
the reason that I letter my comic at
this point is because I'm an independent
comic creator I do every step of the
artwork myself and if I letter at the
beginning and there isn't enough room
for the word balloons it's very easy to
make a change at this point so it's
really easy to drag and drop something
scale something move something make a
panel longer or taller or whatever needs
to happen right now whereas if I waited
all the way till I did final art those
changes would be a lot more difficult to
make because I'm lettering it myself it
makes sense that I would just do it
earlier in the process rather than later
so to bring this file in to Comic Life
in a way that I can use it I'm going to
save it as a JPEG and I save it straight
to my desktop so it's really easy to
find
after I'm done working in comic life I
don't need this file so I'll just throw
it away when you open Comic Life up
you'll get this template chooser and I'm
just gonna pick a blank page
but once I'm in here you can change the
size of your file to match the print
size of your file so you can make a
custom size anytime you want even though
they have got a bunch of presets in here
already so they have some of their own
preset comic paper sizes that you might
want to use or a book size or just
traditional print printer paper sizes
here but I have set up my own particular
sizes that match the width of the page
and the height that I need it to be so
we're gonna go ahead and open this up
and now my page got much bigger but it's
the size that I need it to match my JPEG
so over here on this side window here I
just picked the finder tab and since I
saved my page straight to my desktop I
can find it right there and you just
drag and drop now it will show up small
like this but it's it's still full-sized
you just need to scale it and we're just
using this in here
just as a placeholder whenever we export
our word balloons we're gonna delete
this jpg out of here anyways up under
View you can turn on show pages and
styles which will pop up on the left
over here so if you have a multiple page
document they'll be showing up in this
left Pages box and you also have this
styled document here for your word
balloons and down at the bottom here you
can find all of your different word
balloon shapes to pick from I'm just
gonna take a standard balloon this is
unless I'm doing a caption I almost
always typically just go for a standard
balloon now to save yourself time from
having to retype everything you can just
open up your comic script in pages or
word or whatever program that it is that
you use and from here you can just
highlight and copy your text
and then come back into Comic Life and
paste the text in there now it's not
going to look good right away so if you
pull up your font window highlight it
you can play around here until you find
the font that you like that's the right
size that works for your book when you
export it that's gonna look good on
print or on the web whatever it is that
you use but once you know that it's easy
to repeat it every time because you know
what size for me I do digital strip with
their regular font in a size 11 and
whenever you copy it sometimes it will
less left justify depending on the
program that you have it from so up here
you can just pick the center and center
that in your balloon now this is too
thick of a line for me so I'm going to
go up to stroke and then just reduce it
slightly to four and you can zoom in if
you want to zoom in closer
now this is the part of Comic Life that
works either really well or not very
well and so it's sort of a balloon by
the balloon panel by panel problem as
you put the words in the balloon it will
automatically try to Center them in this
space for you so as you change the
balloon how tall it is or whatever it's
automatically resizing in here and
that's one of the things that I love
about the program is how easy it is to
make changes that you're not constantly
changing your bounding box and things
like that but sometimes it gets a little
bit awkward in here and it might work
better if you make one or two tweaks so
I'll go in here if something doesn't
look quite right and I think maybe it
could fit better and then I'll put some
of my own returns in manually and when
that happens it usually resizes it
pretty well to fit in that space so when
you're putting your text in the balloon
you want it to be in a diamond shape the
best that you can so that it fills up
that circular space as naturally as
possible with as few dead spaces as
possible now you don't need to re select
your font size and the font name every
single time or even the stroke on your
balloon over here on the left is a
Styles window so we can take this
balloon that we just created and you can
save a style right here it has a check
mark so you can see which balloon it is
that is your favorite way of making word
balloons so now when I create a new word
balloon it'll automatically pop up in
that style and if it doesn't then you
can just click that style right there
and it will format everything to match
the way that you've saved it so this is
just a big time-saver
sometimes if it's just a small balloon I
won't if it's just small text I won't
copy and paste from my pages document
now I'm gonna add an extension balloon
here this little balloon down here with
the plus mark is an extension you grab
this and drag it up until you get that
yellow circle around your balloon and it
will add a second one connected to this
one so I'll just paste my text there and
again you can see it's pasting the
strange colors but when we go back here
and click on our style it will
automatically format it for us it even
does the center justification so we
don't even need to worry about that and
then you can just do it again if you
have another bit that you want to drop
in and this will format the whole thing
now the downside to that
is that it I had this panel here in bold
but that's an easy fix to to change
so you can grab the the ends of your
balloons and point them towards your
characters mouths but you also can
change the curvature and the thickness
depending on how and what you do with
this anchor and you can do a complicated
tale if something's coming from around a
corner this is really customizable too
because he's sort of interjecting I
don't want a soft curve I want it to
look like he's his Texas kind of darting
out of his mouth so I'll take the curve
out of there and by breaking up his
balloons a little bit like this then
seems more like he's stuttering now just
looking at it right now I am assuming
that when I go into Photoshop these two
characters back here are covered that
his head is covered by her word balloon
so I will probably come in and grab them
and drag them down a little bit either
make them smaller or move them down a
little bit so that they have a bit more
breathing room from that balloon which
is why you want a letter at this point
did the downside to using the style
button just like I said before is that
you lose your formatting on italics in
bold so I just have to if I notice over
here that there is a word that's in
italics I need to just make sure I make
that change myself so right now I'm
noticing a problem in this layout
it's not looking like I have much room
at all to drop in this second word
balloon that this character on the right
is saying this is probably going to be a
little bit of a problem
he's going to be overlapping our main
character in the foreground and that's
since he's the star of this page it's
not a great idea because this balloon in
panel one is overlapping these
characters heads and I was going to have
to make a change anyways I will probably
go back into Photoshop and stretch these
panels out and give them more breathing
room at the top and the bottom and make
that fix there because there's not very
much lettering on the rest of the page
so I easily can cut into some of these
other panels a little bit still have
plenty of room on them but they're not
going to feel cramped but it's gonna
give these word balloons up here some
some space to breathe so I'm really glad
that I did my lettering at this stage
because if not I would have been unhappy
with a final art if it was covering up
these some of these key elements if you
want to move along you could copy and
paste all of your text at the same time
and then come back in and do the
formatting doing things in bulk just
often speeds up process so these are my
four remaining word balloons and I'll
just format them all at the same time
and then come back one at a time so this
is a voiceover a character is talking to
her from off camera so I'm just going to
cover up the tails of the word balloons
you there's actually no way to delete
them but you can just take your balloon
and pull it down so it overlaps with
that tail and then it disappears if you
want to get it back then you just grab
it drag it and it reappears at any time
so just a quick note on lettering as I'm
dropping these balloons in because your
leave reading left to right top to
bottom when I have a voiceover like this
on a panel I try to put the first one on
the top left and the last one on the
bottom right and you can sort of stagger
them throughout for the panel a bit if
that's what you if you have multiple
ones just to make sure that it's reading
left to right top to bottom and then
once we get down here a reader
intuitively is going to know to jump
back to the left and then work down to
the bottom so
by staggering these panels like this
you're forcing a reader to read through
the panel and notice the artwork in
between and on this panel here number
five of the blank sheet of paper there's
going to be important text on there that
I drop it in Photoshop once I have the
final art of the page so by doing that
by spacing these voiceover word balloons
in the places that I have I'm forcing
the reader to read through the page
they'll read the text on the piece of
paper and then jump back to the
voiceover and then they will jump down
to this balloon read through her
expression and then wind up on this
final word balloon down there so you
want to be thinking through that through
that sort of thing up here in panel two
I do the same thing I'm going to have
one at the top and one at the bottom so
that the reader is going to spend the
time to go through the panel if this
word balloon even though I don't have
the space but if I put it up here
somewhere I've got a little bit tangled
up if I put it up here and you know
we'll say that we have the extra panel
space now that these guys can breathe
with their dialog you jump from one to
one and you instinctively are gonna want
to go down to the next panel so by
spacing the balloons apart from each
other you spend more time reading
through his expression as he leans into
the character in the foreground and
really talks to him and this is just it
reads a lot better your readers gonna
spend a lot more time on this panel and
after you take the time to to make the
art you want someone to notice it and
more than that I think the magic of
comics is that comics are stories that
are told with words and pictures and the
wonderful thing about being both writer
and artist is that you can decide
whether a picture or a word tells your
story better sometimes it's a little bit
of both but whatever it is you want to
make sure that that is not being
overlooked by a reader just because you
made a poor layout decision so if an
expression or a reaction is a key part
of telling that story there's no need to
write it into the
dialogue but make sure that your art is
actually able to convey the types of
events and reactions and emotions and
things clues that you can hide in
through script you want to make sure
that all that is showcased and is
evident so as you can see on this page
there is a lot that is happening that
has nothing to do with the dialogue but
it's just the art alone is sort of
telling the story especially we've got
this strong reaction panel here and in
these two panels the word balloons are
coming from a character off screen and
the more important part of the story is
what we're actually looking at than what
we're hearing because she's not really
paying attention to him so it's supposed
to be more in the distance and her
reaction is the strongest point so make
sure that when you're creating your
layouts your layouts showcase that
there's no need that we see her cousins
snarky comments to her when the poll
point of the stories that she's about to
make a very serious revelation well I'm
gonna save my document you could put it
wherever it is that you you will know
where it is and I always save it at this
point so that if I make changes all I
need to do is make sure that there's a
JPEG with this same name on the desktop
and it will automatically load it into
this document next time I open it but I
want to export just the word balloons so
I'm going to without saving it delete
out that background image and then go up
to export and I'm going to export to
images I'm gonna pick JPEG and I'm going
to make sure it's 300 dpi so it's a
high-res print quality and I'm going to
save it straight to the desktop
now in Photoshop I'm going to open up
the panel with the word balloons and at
this point I do a really quick once-over
again
Comic Life isn't a perfect program when
it comes to sin during some things and I
did notice a few problems now I'm gonna
go ahead and just go through this now
during my rough stages just to show you
the my entire process but typically I
don't put the final word balloons in
until I've had a chance to drop in the
final finished line art and make sure
that I don't have any strange tangents
happening at the last minute but I want
to show you this process and centering
it into these word balloon spaces I just
want to make sure that it's in there
perfectly and sometimes it's not always
in there perfectly now to grab my word
balloons because it is a flat JPEG image
I get my my magic wand and I set the
tolerance high I set it to 45 so that
you don't get a white halo around the
edges of the balloon and then just
select the inverse and copy it come back
above your panels layer and paste your
word balloons in now I'm going to make
some really simple changes at this point
just gonna make that panel longer and
under my rough sketch here
just gonna move all that artwork down a
little bit now in that top panel I've
just got a little bit more breathing
room to play with
and I'm gonna reduce the art in this
panel slightly so it's not overlapping
though one character's head then it can
come back here to my balloons layer grab
this stuff and tweak it
well now I feel confident that I am
ready to take my layout sketch and move
on to final art everything's going to
read in the right orders and my readers
won't be confused my artwork will stand
out and everything is clear the way that
it ought to be so that's the way that I
personally use Comic Life to letter my
comic the dreamer and hopefully you will
find it out full - if you have any of
your own Comic Life time-saving tips
head on over to Paper Wings podcast.com
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