Speech Bubbles

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Having listened to the latest ecbt2000AD podcast episode 58, with the special guest Mr Shark, I thought I better get off my arse and mention this!

When I went to the Demoncon in Maidstone the other month I bought a TPB of a comic called By The Book, by Peter Anckorn. Now the thing what surprised me about this book was the way the speech bubbles let the reader see more of the coloured artwork, without losing any of the clarity of the words in the actual speech bubble. I will post two pics to show you what I mean in a moment.

Shark (I think) mentioned that he would have loved to have seen some of the art behind certain bubbles in one of the strips and having seen this book I can't see the reason why the letterer's can't employ this technique on coloured strips. I'm sure there might be a reason but if not, why has no-one seemingly gone down this route.

Anyway, here are two panels just to show what I mean!

[The Legendary Shark]

Hmm, I think I like that idea...

[SmallBlueThing]

Without being able to see the panels you posted, i will just say that Requiem Vampire Knight uses a similar style. In fact i was thinking last night that it was cool that the 'ooooh' speech bubble didnt therefore obscure Claudia wanking a cock. But at the same time, why then put said bubble over said cock, and not to the side?
SBT

[Emperor]

I'm sure Jim will have more to say about this but I often find I hate that kid of speech bubble - it isn't as easy to read because you don't get the contrast you would with black on a white background and it screams "newbie mistake" at me because either the artist hasn't done their job properly and left enough space for speech bubbles, or the writer has tried to cram too much into each panel and too many panels to a page or the letterer isn't confident enough in their lettering to either find the right placement so that it doesn't obscure the art or all of the above.

It is why most professional comic publishers don't do this - this is a poor solution to a problem that shouldn't arise and if it does an editor should catch it early on (you'd also hope an artist might kick a script back to the editor if they though this was going to happen).

I'm sure when used on the right story, with a team right on the top of their game such speech bubbles could work (perhaps with an ethereal character and you want to get over the idea that their words are difficult to hear) but unless you are confident in your team and the story I'd tend to err on the side of caution and suggest this should be avoided.

[Danbell]

To be honest, I think every aspect of the lettering in these panels is terrible. The balloon shape, the tails, the font, the balloon placement, the placement of the text in the balloon, the fact it's in 'case'...

The transparency of the balloons is 'icing on the cake' for want of abetter phrase.

Bad lettering really spoils a comic for me.

[M.I.K.]

Whoever lettered that hadn't the remotest idea what they were doing.

[Colin_YNWA]

From a purely subjective point of view (I'm sure more qualified members of the board will be able to add a technical logic) I think it looks bloomin' horrible. Perversely it detracts more from the art to me.

[Noisybast]

And then there's the atrocious spelling...

[Dandontdare]

Don't like it. 

The mix of upper and lower case is always a turn off as far as I'm concerned, and I find the pale text difficult to read. Being able to see the image behind adds nothing - if it was an important detail it would simply detract from the words. In the first two panels, standard balloons would work just as well, and in the third, the balloon pacing is all over the place. And I agree that the direction of the tails seems wrong.

[Emperor]

Bad lettering really spoils a comic for me.

At Bristol a few people said variations along the lines of "nice comic but the lettering is horrible", slightly tongue in cheek as Jim was there (and you wouldn't want him to sneak up on you while you were complimenting bad lettering) but also... it is true.

Here it looks like the letterer was at fault, with the horror show that was the Twilight manga it seems to have been an artist's decision, in which case the artists needs a slap (granted an artist won't want to put anything in that obscures their art but these are comics and you have to make everything work together):

There's one last thing I do have to ask about in terms of the "Twilight" book, and that is that there are certain people in the comics industry who were a little non-plussed with the lettering in the graphic novel, both in terms of it not looking like more traditional letting in its technique and in terms of there being some awkward placement and such. How did some of those production issues and choices come about?

Well, those weren't production issues. There seems to be a misconception within the comics community here about how that was put together. When you're working in American comics, yes, it is standard to go out and assign a letterer to letter a book, but that is not what you generally see in Asian markets. It's not what you see in Japan and in Korea. So for the original books that we work on, we ask the artists to do the book themselves. This was not a book that was lettered by a letterer...this was lettered by the artist.

And as far as the balloon work goes, a lot of what I heard was "Oh, these are just randomly placed." That is absolutely not the case. When you're talking about a professional letterer working in comics, the role of the letterer is to stay out of the way of the art. You would absolutely never see a case where the letterer is allowed to place a balloon over a character's face. When the artist is doing the balloon work and she's selecting where that lettering is, if she places a balloon over a character's face, there's a reason for it. I've seen one panel held up time and again as "How was this done?" Well, it was done because the artist had a very specific reason for putting it there. [Laughs] It's funny, because I see a lot of the comments, and I've seen some people speak to that because they recognize what she did. But people aren't looking at the book and trying to ascertain why the book was done that way. They're putting the presumption of how things are done in this industry and trying to apply it to a case where it's the artist making that call.

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26401

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Loving the replies but I'm only on about the translucent bubbles. I know there are rules on placing them on a panel, as has been mentioned in the replies but I thought it was an interesting concept. I better not tell the bloke to look at this thread 

[Danbell]

If we're just talking about the translucent bubbles, I'm still not a fan.

As for the Twilight thing...

'the role of the letterer is to stay out of the way of the art'

I've had to letter some stuff where the artist has left absolutely no room for dialogue. As someone said before, it's a sign of an artist not paying attention or simply not caring.

[The Legendary Shark]

I always look at lettering in the same way as the artwork and the script; part of a whole and hopefully unique story. I like to ask the letterer to do weird things to emphasise the dialogue - like adding a Gaussian blur to simulate mumbling or whatever. Lettering is a sadly overlooked art with, I feel, a great depth of potential. The opaque speech bubble has its place in the art of comics.

[Colin_YNWA]

Making the lettering opaque I think draws more attention too it as you have an areas you're looking at more intently to try to see what's behind. I'm of the opinion that lettering is very much a part of the art and a necessary function of what makes comics unique (most the time, we can discuss silent strips another time). To try to preteend they aren't there, or reduce there place seems strange to me.

[NeilFord]

I find this example of translucent speech bubbles pretty hard to read without my specs I'm afraid. I imagine that this technique would reduce the readability quite considerably, particulary if viewed on a screen/mobile device?

 I can see how it might be useful as a a 'special effect', but I'd likely give up on a whole book of that style of lettering. I have to force myself to slow down and 'read properly' at the best of times, so find my eyes just sliding overthis text - sorry to whoever did it , don't mean to be so negative, just feel this example isn't too succesful - interesting idea though.