Lettering comics with Macromedia Flash

 

Iintroduction:
To color and assemble comic pages with Photoshop it is absolutely foundamental to work with files of 300 DPI resolution at least, if not 600 DPI (usually for black & white comics), if you'll ever hope to see your work published on paper one day;even if you only do webcomics, remeber that somebody will ask you one day for printable copies of the pages.

By the way, lettering with photoshop requires only a 72 DPI copy of your page, as a reference to place the balloons, the text and the captions. This 72 DPI page is only a reference, you'll have to delete it before exporting the lettering file.

Macromedia Flash: why?

  1. Softwares like Adobe Illustrator are slow to open and close. Vector based graphic softwares slow and weighty to load as the traditional graphic ones... that's why I don't use them. Flash runs and executes any task immediatly, without loading times and without slowing down your computer.
  2. Managing balloons and texts is incredibly easy and fast: most of all, when your text is written down fitting the balloon around it takes only a click or 2, even if you previously drawed it too large, too short, too big or too small.
  3. You can export your lettering page in every resolution you need and in every file type. Lettering a 72 DPI page and exporting it even in 1200 DPI if needed, witouth the slight loss of quality, ready to be pasted on your photoshop Hi-Res page.

Flash tools for lettering:

  1. A 72 DPI page, jpg, gif or bitmap;
  2. A lettering font - I suggest the Comic Book Commando that is freeware, you can download it here
  3. Oval tool (4) set it with white fill and black line contour
  4. The Arrow (1)
  5. The Line tool (2)
  6. The Free Transform tool, to rotate, resize and more (5)
  7. The Paint Bucket tool (7)
  8. The Text tool (3)
  9. The Eyedropper tool, to get the colour or the line tightness form the other balloons if needed (8)
  10. The Ink Bottle tool, to change the color and tightness of the lines, if needed (6)
  11. The line color, set on black, and the fill color, set on white, tools 9 and 10

Instructions:

On photoshop save a low-res 72 DPi copy of your comic page ( Image > Image Size > Resolution).

Import the low-res page to Flash (File > Import).

Lock the page layer with the Lock, to work better.

3) create a new layer, on wich you'll write all the texts and draw the balloons.

4) Click the Oval tool, take care that the fill is set on white and the line is black; draw an oval to fill later with text, as in the picture below.

Tools - pic. 1

As you can see the balloon (1 on the pic) is done directly with the black contour that you can tighten as you please after it's done, setting a different number on the Properties - as in the pic here on the right, #2. Window > Properties to open the panel.

Click the border with the arrow (1 tool) and change the number on the properties panel to tighten the line.

Here is the result, line border #3

Double click the balloon: you'll have it all selected, the contour line and the filling. Try to rotate distort, resize, copy and paste it, just to practice. See how it's easy to manage?

Click on the Text tool (3). On the Properties panel, make sure the color is black and the font is the one you need (to me, comic book commando as you can see in the image below). Here are the text options:

  1. font
  2. font size
  3. font color
  4. bold and italic
  5. alignment
  6. the text when it's written on the page


Once the text is written we need to resize the balloon, that is too big. Double click it with the arrow tool (1) and resize it with the transform tool (5) as you see on the images below

Now the balloon is ok. We only need the pipe. You can do it with the Line tool (2) drawing 2 V lines, as in the 1st pic below; then fill it with the bucket tool with white color and curve it with the arrow. Then, hust delete the lines you don't need (last image of the row).
Line tool (2)
Paint Bucket (7) - fill the empty space with white
Arrow tool (1). Drag the lines curving them until you like the result.
Delete the lines you don't need selecting them with the arrow and hitting DEL.

That's all. Time needed to do a balloon: about 1 minute. Remember now that you can reuse this balloon copying, pasting, rotating, deforming and resizing it at your will, to fit it for other comic panels! This will save you time. You can also do rectangular captions with the rectangular tool (near the oval one). For sound FX, add noises - it's all up to your imagination and a good font.
After the page lettering is done you need to export a 300 DPI file to open with photoshop and drag on the Hi-Res page. So you need to delete the page layer leaving only the balloons and text one. Hiding the page is not enough, delete it, then export a transparent PNG 300 DPI (or 600 or whatever is your Hi-Res page size) - File > Export.

If you aren't sure about wich PNG settings use to export your lettering just remember to give him the same resolution of your page and that it has to be trasparent (24 bit with alpha channel).

You can also copy the settings in the image on the right.

That's all!

Serena

www.furaffinity.net/user/vixinecomics/

Vixine.com

BloodySugar