“a subdued calvin & hobbes”
That’s a term that was recently used in description of my comic writing.
That’s an interesting observation. I’ve noticed that myself actually… There are a few ways to interpret that comment, and certainly my own characters are more laid back than calvin and hobbes, but I’ve also noticed something similar from a purely visual standpoint. I use a font I created to letter my comic. Recently I’ve been studying lettering more, and if you look at some of the mid to later C&H strips, you’ll notice Watterson does an excellent job of varying the pitch and tone of Calvin’s voice just by lettering. I think that in the modern computer font era this is really an overlooked skill.
Personally, I’m already working on some more fonts for different characters and tones, but I’m also trying to hand letter more for when I need a particular attitude expressed. I wonder though… What does sarcasm look like in lettering? Can it be expressed? Or what about boredom? Certainly, the character’s expression will play a part, but people usually read the words first… So how can expressions be encapsulated in letter shapes and strokes? Are there are books about this sort of thing? Maybe I should look into typography books? Could anyone recommend anything?
I’m assuming you’ve already read Scott McCloud’s “Making Comics”?
http://www.scottmccloud.com/makingcomics/
His first book “Understanding Comics” is worthwhile too.
Thanks Maggie. You’re correct in your assumption, I found both books last year. They’re fantastic aren’t they?… I only wish I had found Understanding Comics back when it first came out!
Good thing you posted this, you reminded me to check Scott’s website, and he’s posted the dates for the last leg of his US tour promoting the book… Phoenix in July 20th… I’ll have to look into that!
Recently I picked up “Comic Book Lettering The ‘Comiccraft’ Way” which is what caused me to become more sensitive to my own lettering. I believe Comiccraft was also responsible for crafting the font that Scott McCloud uses in his books. It’s based on his own handwriting I think.
Mm… I’m not so sure typography is supposed to do the job of expressing emotions. I like clear, easy to read lettering, some special effects are okay too, but that’s it. If you need your character to say something sarcastic then the words (writing) should sound sarcastic and the character should have an appropriate expression (art). Even Bill Watterson didn’t use any “special” typography – he has done nicely with faces and sometimes used emphasized words, but it worked well even without them. I tend to think that it’s all about art and writing. Finding the right voice for ones characters is essential. And that, I think, you do very good, Jim.
Thanks for the feedback! That being said: I beg to differ…Pardon me if I don’t post examples here (i really should, but I don’t have the time to scan them in right now) But if you look at some of the old C&H strips (I’m looking at some of the early nineties ones), Watterson did alter the typography for expression. Perhaps I’m not explaining what I mean… I don’ t mean to suggest that I would make each character’s speech bubbles a jumble of different fonts, but there are times when letter weight and proportion would change depending on how they’re talking. For example: Moe the Bully in C&H always spoke in upper and lower case letters. When calvin pretended to be a robot, he spoke in a pointy and straight-lined lettering. Then there’s the classic bold-italic shift to show emphasis on words… That’s what I’m referring to when I speak of typography… Watterson also had a shouting style of lettering too, which was very similar to his regular dialog lettering, but if I were to scan in his regular lettering and just enlarge the font, it wouldn’t look the same as his hand drawn “shouts.” Sometimes his shouts even vary in width of the lettering depending on how drawn out the shout is. If I get a chance later, I’ll post some examples of what I’m talking about…
Oh, okay, I agree with that. Yes, Watterson used different lettering for different personalities (like Calvin the robot). What I tried to say was that setting different typography for various moods and emotions could cause more damage than good. So, perhaps, I misunderstood what you really meant and I agree with your latest post.
And now for something completely different
. I like appocalyptic/futuristic landscapes and stories – it’s my personal weakness so to say. I couldn’t but notice that your landscapes are great (meaning exactly the kind I like). I wonder, do you have a batch of strips drawn ahead or do you create them as you go?
Heh heh heh… Web cartoonists working ahead?
I try to work ahead, sort of… The art is my strength, so I’m actually far more concerned with working ahead on the writing as of right now. I’ve currently got maybe six jokes loosely written, three to four more in outline format… My strip for monday is layed out and penciled, but I have to ink it tomorrow, so I guess when it comes down to it, you could say I create them as I go.
I’d like to be ahead, but unfortunately my main focus is making the best possible comic strip, so whenever I start getting ahead, I end up spending that surplus time raising the bar on quality control or I look over my past strips and think about how I could improve those yet to come. If everything goes as planned though, I’ll eventually get to the point that I’m a couple of months ahead… and when that happens, I’d like to increase my posting frequency. Eventually I’d also like to start working in the occasional full color larger format sunday strip as well, but I’ve got to take it one thing at a time.
There’s certainly room for creativity in lettering typography.
I’m reminded of Walt Kelley’s work in “Pogo”…in particular P.T. Bridgeport, the show-business bear whose speech balloons were always done in circus-poster style, Deacon Mushrat, who spoke in Gothic (Pogo was a favorite of my daddy, who was a clergyman), and Sarcophagas Macabre, a vulture who worked as a mortician, rendered in the black-bordered script of a death notice. These always beautifully conveyed the context and cultural milieu from which these characters spoke, illustrating the Emersonian idea of “what you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say…”.
(by the way, there’s a bug on the PHP script on this site that redisplays comments after posting; it’s trying to emit HTTP headers after the response body has already started….might want to alert the tech folks about it)
Hey thanks maggie… I’ve heard quite a bit about pogo, and heard it mentioned as an example of typography, but I’m not terribly familiar with it unfortunately…. I’ll have to do some research.
Thanks for the tech info, I’m the tech folk though, and I’m new to this so what you just said is not something I completely comprehend (that’s what google is for right?) I did just upgrade to the latest version of wordpress though, so maybe that fixed it? If not, it might be something that I screwed up while messing around with the comicpress theme to make it wider… I’ll take a look when I get a chance.
For another variation on typography representing character as well as emotion, see Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” graphic novels. Many of his characters have speech balloons designed to represent who and what they are as well as what they are saying and feeling. Dream, the title character, is an extreme example. His words are printed in white letters on a black background, suggesting an eerie voice effect. The words of his sister, Delerium, are usually colorful and somewhat jumbled to suit her name and nature. Et cetera.
Serious students of comic art should know about Pogo; I’m just barely old enough to remember it. Sometimes the stories were fairly topical political commentary, so some of it needs its historical context to really be appreciated. More here: http://www.pogopossum.com/
If I get the crash messages again when I post this, I’ll capture them for you…..done some web programming myself, as it happens.
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Margaret Stephanie Leber CCP, SCJP SCWCD
http://voicenet.com/~maggie
AOPA 925383 — Amateur Radio Station K3XS — ARRL 39280 — AMSAT 32844
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change
and to preserve change amid order.”-A.N.Whitehead
Here we go:
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WordPress database error: [MySQL server has gone away]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_ID = ‘164′ LIMIT 1
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The drift of the warnings is: you can’t set any information that appears in HTTP headers once the page output has started. Line 33 of wp-db.php wrote something to the output stream, so it’s too late for wp-comments-post.hp or pluggable.php to change them.
Doesn’t seem to be fatal though….and even though contact with the MySQL server has been lost, the posting of the comment seems to make it in anyway.
Thanks Maggie… Doesn’t seem fatal you say? Well, it looks like it will take a backseat to some of the other items on my ‘to do’ list. Maybe it will be fixed when the new comicpress comes out, or I’ll have to check it out later.
Hey Jerry, Thanks for the feedback, sorry you got swallowed by the spam blocker for some reason. I’m not familiar with Sandman either… (I’ve got to start reading more) but I’ll have to check it out.
@jim: It it was fatal, I couldn’t have told you about it, of course.
Oh yeah, duh… my thought bubble must have been out running amok when I thought that.