Important Question!

[tasteslikeevil]

Alright, quick question - I'm currently trying to decide how I'm going to letter the "graphic novel" thingy that I'm currently working on. I know hand lettering ROCKS, but I'm considering going with computer lettering because of the time/labor saving element. Is this a good idea? Will I lose all my cartoonist street cred if I don't hand-letter?

Comments

[anonymous]

i wouldn't consider your street cred forfeit, but ONLY because its dialogue heavy ;)
i don't know what comic you're talking about of course, but if appropriate, perhaps you could manage some kind of hybrid? pick nice computer fonts for certain moods of heavy dialogue, and perhaps hand letter the super-expressive/ more ephemeral bits? mark oakley's thieves and kings comes to mind, tho i can't remember off hand if any of it is hand lettered...
-john from hamilton

[spinolio]

You crazy anarchist and your ideas. heh

[jogs6000]

I imagine you'd avoid lots of headaches if you did computer lettering first off. Then, maybe if it bothers you extremely, switch to hand-drawn. A font based on your handwriting would be cool, too....but! You're going to have to get shot, arrested and/or release a sex tape to keep your street cred!

[mattyoung]

This advice is totally spot-on in my opinion. There are many free fonts out there that work well in a comic and save so much time and effort, with one provision in my mind - computer lettering falls down when it tries to do anything more dynamic than captions and dialogue. Once it tries to become sound effects or the like is when it's well-deserved ire starts accumulating. Would other agree on that?

[tasteslikeevil]

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Also, I'm totally going to try to find some cops and try to convince them to shoot me and then have sex with me while I tape them now.

[jogs6000]

hot!

[tasteslikeevil]

Heh, aw... thanks! :)

[anonymous]

Ryan Claytor of Elephant Eater Comics recently gave a great little talk at CCS and uses a neat method that gets the best of both worlds: He lays out the text in indesign in a font he likes, prints it out, then hand letters over the font. I'm going to try this myself the next chance I get. Indesign takes out so much of the guess work and technical problems and the hand lettering over it gives it that traditional feel.

[sempaimiles]

above comment is me...sorry...forgot to log in!

[tasteslikeevil]

That sounds like a cool method, but probably not quite as time saving as what I'm sort of hoping for right now...