Something I rarely ever see talked about here - lettering

Something I rarely ever see talked about here - lettering.

Over the decades, art styles and writing have evolved. Some for the better, some for the worse. I can understand -even if I don’t agree, that some of the older art styles can be a tun off for new readers. Then there’s shit like Liefelfd who I can’t fathom why he was ever popular.

The editorial process has changed too. I’d argue that the job of an editor today has changed to the detriment of the medium. Too much personal politics has leaked into the job.

Writing, art and editorial get talked about, praised and criticized here all the time.

What about lettering? I think it’s one of those things that kind of escapes our notice.

From my limited perspective, I think the style of lettering has improved. Some of the word balloons in older comics look fucking ugly, and the font is certainly more difficult to read. Although off the top of my head, I can’t really think of any style differences between the lettering of Marvel vs DC or any other modern book. Has the whole process become simplified and streamlined? Is it a good/bad thing?

I’m curious to hear what you guys think of lettering, and it’s evolution with the industry.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=5t1YLxb2hbY
blambot.com/articles_grammar.shtml
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

lol a thread actually discussing on making animation?

Sup Forums is strictly for discussing little kid cartoons on a surface-level, sorry you didn't get the memo

Is it true that TDKR invented the Comic Sans font?

>I’m curious to hear what you guys think of lettering, and it’s evolution with the industry.

I don't have any big opinions on lettering, other than it's like sound design in film and TV in that if it's done well, you don't even notice it if it's done great it's really impressive and if it's done bad it's really bad.

Some random thoughts/facts on lettering.

>In the 40's,the creator of the modern comic book format Max Gaines was convinced into buying an expensive Leroy Lettering System for his company. It produced that really straight, stencil looking line style that EC synonymous with EC Horror comics. Bill Gaines hated it and wanted to use hand lettering since it looked more naturalistic, but his father had spent so much money on it he insisted they get back their investment so it stuck all the way into the 50's.
youtube.com/watch?v=5t1YLxb2hbY

I find hand lettering to be ugly, I’m honestly glad it became industrialized.

I’ve always liked it when a character -usually a villian, is so powerful or alien, that they talk in a completely different font.

At least I used to like it when it was a rare thing. These days it feels like everyone is doing it. I don’t care how crazy the Joker is, he’s a normal human with normal vocal chords. He shouldn’t have his own fucking font.

What do you think about the Ultimate Marvel comics using lower case text? I honestly didn’t mind it. I’m guessing most comics use upper case as a holdover from early days when everything was handwritten and thus upper case was easier to read?

I remember in the seventh season of Buffy, Felicia Day’s character was named Vi. When they put her in the season 8 comics, they had to rename her “Violet” because of course Vi in upper case will look like the Roman numberal for 6, and would be visually confusing.

Nah, it was invented by Vincent Connaire because Microsoft needed an informal font for a program in the 90's.

Also
>The font is nonetheless very popular with educational users, up to high school level, with some schools in the United Kingdom requiring it in their style guides. Some have even imposed monitoring to make sure that it is used enough as part of their good teaching checklists.[19][20]

Why the fuck would schools REQUIRE it? Like, I understand that the font isn’t as offensive as everyone makes it out to be... I understand that it’s somehow shitty and cheap looking, but I don’t think it quite deserves the hate it gets, I’m sure Microsoft has worse fonts.

But on the other hand, who the fuck makes it mandatory? For what purpose?

I've always admired the craftsmanship Schulz put into his lettering. It's notable, because it was unusual then for an comic illustrator to do their own lettering rather than hand it off to an assistant.
>I think the style of lettering has improved. Some of the word balloons in older comics look fucking ugly, and the font is certainly more difficult to read.
What I've noticed in older comics (pre-1950s), is the used of sentence-case, rather than ALL CAPS. Good lettering is at the very least uniform, and all caps lettering makes things more readable.
>who the fuck makes it mandatory? For what purpose?
Comic-sans is supposedly more readable that other fonts, particularly for dyslexics. So I suppose it was figured that it would be a good idea to make that a part of a style guide.

Dave Sim has some of the most expressive lettering in the history of western comics in Cerebus.

>Then there’s shit like Liefelfd who I can’t fathom why he was ever popular.
I'm going to go on a tangent here with this. Liefeld got popular because readers were tired of Shooter's preferred artstyle of low-key naturalism and preference for a muted color palette. Liefeld's art was bold and dynamic, and his artistic failings were covered by quality inkers.

>animation

I completely agree that lettering should be uniform. I guess that’s why it was okay when Ultimate Marvel used lower case lettering -the technology has reached a point where it doesn’t matter, and it’s readable because as you said, it’s uniform.

I feel like this thread is just a conversation between two people here, but that’s okay I guess.

Do you prefer lower or upper case?

I’m curious, does the letterer decide how balloons are layed out? I imagine it must sometimes be difficult to stop the balloons getting in the way of the action, especially when the script is dialogue heavy.

I hate it when a page has so much dialogue between multiple characters that it becomes a chore to trace tightly packed word balloons to individual characters. Know what I’m talking about?

Well,since we're talking about this, is there by chance some sort of thing worth reading to figure out what kind of lettering you should use on your own work?

At this point im just picking whatever looks nice, but im not sure it fits.

I find pages like this quite informative.

blambot.com/articles_grammar.shtml

It was inspired by both that and Watchmen, but it wasnt directly ripped from them and instead made ''from scratch''

Anyone else kinda wish we had threads like this more often?

>Do you prefer lower or upper case?
Depends. Sentence-case needs to be executed very carefully, given it is more complex and prone to irregularities. But it works good on long-form works, things that are sort of read as a novella. Tintin is perfectly readable to me.
Short form works, such as newspaper and web comics, can get away with all caps. The overall syntax of short works is not likely to be important.

Lettering is all Adobe Illustrator these days.
Often the letterer will position the balloons before forwarding the pages to the inker. No point in having the inker spend time on an area which is going to be covered over. Also, since the words are an a separate layer, an editor can order they be moved if he thinks it will improve the way a page "reads".

A good book is "The Insider's Guide to creating Comics and Graphic Novels" by Andy Schmidt.
Covers all aspects of producing comics. Chapter 10 is on lettering balloons and F/X, written by Chris Eliopoulos.

In the Golden Age, the trouble wasn't the lettering. It was the reproduction. All sentences ended in exclamation points because periods tended to vanish.
Certain words were also banned. Like "FLICK" because the letters ran together on cheap pulp paper.

OP here, I’m really enjoying how knowledgeable you are on this subject user.

Ah yes, Voyager, the uh, OTHER Avenger. Yep. Been with us the whole time.

What on earth are you talking about?

It is made by computers now, right?