Lettering Practice

[Tomas M91]

Hi Guys,

I know how awesome this forum is for helping people so I figured I'd post my work for you guys to see.

I'm starting to learn to letter, and have read Jim's blog about lettering, Comicrafts book, balloon tales, blambot, etc, and want to get better at lettering.

Here's a sample from the archives here, I'll try go through all of them before showing other work. I've messed around in Illustrator before but have only a small amount of knowledge on graphic design.

[Evan Henry]

This was one of the first pages I did! It's been a while since I critiqued lettering work, but...

- "The creature is mine!" is left-aligned for some reason. That should not be.

- You have crossbar I's all over the place. Ow.

- I'm pretty sure "Ditto, Chica" is attached to the wrong guy's mouth in the last panel. At least, I remember that I had it coming from the same guy who says "Ditto" in tiny print. I may have been mistaken.

- Try to think of the way you break text into lines as having the goal of making a roughly plus-sign shape. For example,

You'll do
nothing but
my bidding after
I sup on
your genes!

might look better as

You'll do
nothing but my
bidding after I sup
on your
genes!

You do an excellent job of this in the "let's move the car over here" panel, actually.

- I feel like your balloons are a little too tight to the text overall

- Other than that, pretty decent work. I dig your sound effect!

[Tomas M91]

Thanks for looking Evan. I can't believe i missed all those I's lol.

Here's an updated look

[Evan Henry]

Comin' along nicely! Some Is still sneaked by, though. Try this:

1. Open script in Word.

2. Hit Ctrl-H

3. Enter "I" in the FIND field and "i" in the REPLACE field, then click REPLACE ALL

4. Enter " i " (note the spaces) in the FIND field and " I " (spaces again) in the REPLACE field, then click REPLACE ALL. This changes standalone "i" (the pronoun, uncapitalized because of what you did in step 3) to "I".

5. Repeat the process with "i'" (lowercase i followed by an apostrophe) in the FIND field And "I'" (uppercase I followed by an apostrophe) in the REPLACE field.

[Tomas M91]

Thanks again for looking Evan. Probably should have done that instead of eyeballing it. On another note, I've read that it's OK to have I in the case of contractions (I'm, I've, etc) instead of lowercase. I'm still debating about whether I should use these in this case or not.

Cheers

[Comics Commando]

Look at Evan's instructions, again. He covers the use of the personal I.

You're also missing a bunch of commas. Next to the period, the comma is most common, so you should know how to use it--even if it's missing in the script. It's 8th-grade English.

Ditto, Chica...is correct. He's talking to Chica. Eat aerostar freak is incorrect. She's talking to whomever she's calling a freak, yes? Add the comma.

Wow Rox, you...is almost correct. Should be: Wow, Rox, you...

For Thor's sake, don't get your punctuation cues from Facebook!


Best,

Kurt Hathaway
---------------------------------
Cartoon Balloons Studio
---------------------------------
Lettering • Logos • Pre-Press • Graphic Design • Video
for Print or Web • Entertainment, Advertising or Education!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETGevjPkZso

[Evan Henry]

Originally Posted by Tomas M91

Thanks again for looking Evan. Probably should have done that instead of eyeballing it. On another note, I've read that it's OK to have I in the case of contractions (I'm, I've, etc) instead of lowercase. I'm still debating about whether I should use these in this case or not.

Cheers

Yep, I use crossbar I's in contractions. Step 5 takes care of that!

[Tomas M91]

Sweet, thanks for all the help

Here's the final version. i really only want to do a max of 3 versions of each piece.

Cheers

[JimCampbell]

For my money, this is the toughest page of the exercises and your latest version is a creditable stab at it. Panel 2, especially, is a swine.

One thing I would highlight, though, is your tendency to put balloons/tails on characters' faces when there's no need to.



Cheers

Jim

[Tomas M91]

Thanks for looking Jim You're actually one of my favourite letterers, especially your work with Zenescope (seems like you're the lone letterer there) and your tutorials are really good

[Piekos]

Thanks again for looking Evan. Probably should have done that instead of eyeballing it. On another note, I've read that it's OK to have I in the case of contractions (I'm, I've, etc) instead of lowercase. I'm still debating about whether I should use these in this case or not.

You should ALWAYS use crossbar I for personal pronouns. That includes contractions. That's what it's for. Almost* all other instances of the letter should be the straight line I.

* It can be used for denoting Roman numerals. For example, "World War II", in comics dialogue.

~N

[Evan Henry]

What Jim said! Great work on this one.

Here's mine, in case you were curious.

[Tomas M91]

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm sure Nate can recognize the FWOOSH font (it's one of his )

You're page looks good for a first attempt Evan. It's awesome to see where people start from and gradually see their improvement

[JimCampbell]

Originally Posted by Tomas M91

You're actually one of my favourite letterers, especially your work with Zenescope (seems like you're the lone letterer there) and your tutorials are really good

That's very kind of you, Tomas — thank you! (And, yes, I have been lettering pretty much Zenescope's entire line for about the last three years, although recently sheer volume of work has forced me to release my vice-like grip on their output, so expect to see other letterers working their magic on a variety of Zenescope books in the next few months…)

Cheers!

Jim

[Tomas M91]

Ok, here's another page from the activity archive. I don't think I'm gonna have a crack at logo design yet so i'll stick to sequentials for now