Lettering tips: General

I recommend that lettering (and all final production work) will be done digitally, to allow for easy translation and editing.

Because this sort of project is not working from a full script (due to the amount of time necessary to write a full script), the writer may need to change dialogue to cover something that comes later. It’s important to have that ability.

Translations

In addition, if you want to do the story in multiple languages (as we did with the first GNW), it’s better to be able to redraw and modify the balloons and text boxes. Why? Because lettering itself is an art, and there is also an art to translation work in comics. A translator working in comics would generally always prefer to be working off of the unlettered original pages, because then they can translate the intent of a sentence, rather than the words in it, and draw a balloon that fits that text well.

Within comics, this isn’t always possible, and often they will get the pages with the word balloons already present. This means that the text has to be written to fit the specific size of the balloons. And because the text has to fill out the balloons more or less uniformly, the translator has to carefully work through the text to make it the same size as the existing balloons. This takes considerably more time that re-lettering and creating new balloons would. It also takes a considerably more specific experience than simple translation would. It’s more like trying to dub dialogue over an existing film and match the movement of the speakers mouth than it is like subtitling.

Hand lettering

If you want to hand letter, and you have a skilled hand letterer (or letterers) available, then the key to making that work is probably to create a rough guide for the text and placement during the event. This could be done by printing, and drawing text in pencil over the art, or things like that. The more stable the text is at the end of the day, the easier it is for the hand letterer to work. Editing may be more difficult, however, so it is likely that you would want the hand lettering to be done after the end of the event. So, make sure you have the text placements figured out, and a final script typed up by pencils down.

If you are going to letter or hand letter, I recommend working with the writers and the artists to make sure you can fit what they need in the space available before you start lettering.

Font size

As with the page sizing, you will want most of your dialogue and narration text to be the same size (with the exceptions or yells and whispers, which should be larger or smaller to indicate how the person is speaking).

Unfortunately, font size itself is never going to be a clear standard. Even if we consider the art and resolution to be a standard of say 300dpi at 11×17 inches, I can’t tell you a font of 9pt or 13 pt would be the best choice. The is because fonts themselves vary in size widely. You pretty much have to eyeball it.

Often the best way to determine the font size to use may sound pretty weird. Scan an existing professionally made comic book page (with text), put it into your lettering software, and add text. Size the font to match the size of that page’s text. That’s the font size you should use for this font in your project.