Lessons Learned

Hello,

As some of you might know I’ve been working on a Kids Comic Anthology with 33 other creators. Recently we got fully funded on Kickstarter, meeting all of our stretch goals and then some.

Like many other participates this is my first anthology and my first finished mini comic and I've learned a lot, especially when it comes to the design of dialogue, speech balloons and sounds effects (sfx). Which is what I'd like to talk about today.

I come from a picture book background so speech balloons, sfx and dialogue are a little new to me when it comes to designing a layout and as a result when I first started figuring out where mine would go I didn't put much thought into them. Essentially I approached them as roundish shapes that needed to be big enough to fit the text within them. And that worked at first but the more I worked on my comic the more I realized that you can use the shape, style and color of the speech balloons and sfx to better convey emotion and story.

For instance in my story there is a sequence that takes place underwater and there is some limited talking going on. I eventually came up with the idea of making the speech bubbles in this scene look like bubbles. 

This worked pretty well initially but then I decided to push the idea even further by changing the color of the bubble interiors and outlines. Doing this better conveys the bubble idea and better integrates the speech bubbles into the panel.

Further into the story you come to a panel with the main character laying exhausted on a dock. Below you can see three different versions of that panel. Other than the color the only big difference is how the speech bubble and text is treated. This panel is meant to represent a quiet moment for the protagonist after an escape, she's essentially catching her breath. Given that which speech bubble treatment best captures that? If you are like me you'll say the last one. 

The smaller speech bubble and the smaller text implies quiet while on the other end of the line in the first panel you have the biggest speech bubble with the biggest text. Doesn't the bigger text and bubble make it look more like she's shouting, which is clashing with her body language. This may be a small thing, but small things can have big impacts.

The version of this panel that's in the anthology is the middle one, but if I had to do it again I would push things even further, maybe remove the speech bubble all together and just have the text, small and in undercaps, like a whisper... "whoa".

It seems obvious in hindsight but I wish I had spent more time thinking about the design of the dialogue and sfx, because they too are tools in your toolbox to convey the story and emotion that you are trying to communicate to the reader and they are easy to overlook. So here is a checklist of some things to think about when designing your sfx and speech bubbles.

1. Is the shape of the speech bubble the right one to convey the emotion of what's being said? Would a different shape work better, for instance one with sharp edges or maybe it should be some other identifiable shape like the shape of a horse if your character is horse crazy, implying that even when they are speaking they are thinking of horses.

2. Think beyond a speech bubble being big enough to fit the text.  Should the bubble be bigger? Smaller? Is the character speaking naturally shy, loud, angry, happy? How do these emotions or character traits effect how they talk and how can you use that to inform the design of your speech bubble and font to convey that?

3. What color is your font and speech bubble? Would a different color better represent this scene? Maybe the speech bubble should get darker and darker as the character talks to convey the idea that they are getting more and more unhappy or maybe the text should be so light in color that it almost disappears into the panels background, conveying the idea that this character doesn't feel like they are being heard.

4. Think about the font. In this instance would changing the font or the font size better fit what is going on in the panel?

5. Consider not having a speech bubble. Maybe just the text on its own, with nothing around it would make a stronger statement. 

6. Think about how the flow of the text could be changed to better communicate what the character is saying? The text doesn't need to look like a paragraph on the page of a newspaper, lined up in neat straight lines.  You can curve it, make it jagged, make it whispy like smoke, etc...

I hope this checklist gets you thinking about your own work and if you need some inspiration from a master I highly recommend you check out The Girl and the Glim by India Swift not only is it a great story but the color, composition and lettering in the book are fantastic. Here's one of my favorite spreads from the book.

I love how she treats the sounds and dialogue here. The large “Thump Thump Thump” of the girls steps with the shouted “Mum” that overtakes everything, plus the added sound that the radio makes and then the girls faded dialogue as she moves away from the kitchen. It’s all just done soooo well.

As I've said this is a new discovery for me and I'm just starting to explore how to use this in my own work but I'm excited to incorporate these ideas in my next comic and I hope that you are too.