6 replies to this topic

[Jonny Archibald]

Aloha,

I'm looking to letter my comic strip which I'm finishing inking. I was wondering if folks could recommend (preferably free) software for lettering. I've currently got the Gimp and Inkscape and I find neither particularly user-friendly. I've got some excellent free fonts from Blambot.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Jonny

[O.S. Georg]

Personally, I use Inkscape. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get there, it works.
What I do is create a circular shape of roughly the right size.
Then I draw a tail with the pencil tool. The best way to do this it to set the smoothing (which you´ll find right above the drawing screen) to about 70% draw one line, then press the end your want to be narrow of that line and drawn a new line, finishing the tail.
Okay now select the tail and the circular shape and press ctrl + “+”, this will link them. Now you can use the “edit path by notes” tool (hotkey: f2), to change the shape. Again, this takes a little getting used to, but you can change quite a lot. Another useful thing is "Fill and stroke" (hotkey: ctrl + shift + f) this can help you change line thickness, opacity and color.

Hope this was of use.

[Jonny Archibald]

Hi Georg,

Aye, that's magic, thanks. You've provided a good walk-through for me. I really need to bite the bullet and sit down to learn how to use Inkscape properly. I've scanned my pencilled and inked pages and need to adjust contrast and brightness and tidy up a couple of panels. Inkscape is probably my best bet for that too.

I bloody hate inking, so I should look into digital inking packages when I get a Mac in a couple of months.


What font size do you recommend for pictures sized 1381 x 2025? Do you resize and then letter or vice versa?

Thanks again,

Jonny

[O.S. Georg]

Cool. I´m glad it helped! I remember the first time I tried Inkscape, I was pretty confused until a friend of mine gave me a tutorial.

I´ve noticed that font sizes vary quite a bit in Inkscape, so I´m hesitant to give you any specifics. It seems that the right size is approximately 12 in word if the page I roughly A4 sized. (Sorry, don´t really know what size that is compared to 1381 x 2025!) But I re-size the page and make sure that all pages of the same thing are the same size and then I just font it accordingly, if that makes sense.
I don´t know if Inkscape is particularly good for inking or contrast work. I find it pretty hard to draw free hand in it. but you can try to use the paint bucket and adjust the threshold to try to mimic inking, but I´m not sure the result would be any good (I doubt it).

[Jonny Archibald]

I reckon I'll try 14 or 16 font size and see how that goes. I'm a total novice on the package and I've not even adjusted the brightness or contrast yet. Yes, I really am a total doofus.

Doofus is a good word.


Jonny

[Dan Fish1000]

I use GIMP, I agree it isn't very user friendly, especially when you want to mix fonts & styles in one balloon. I use a technique like this: http://en.wikibooks....o_a_Comic_Strip

You can see recent results here: http://zombiesvsdino...the-beginning-2
or earlier (awful) attempts on my website, eg here: http://fish1000.blog...tant-stuff.html

[Jim Campbell]

I bloody hate inking, so I should look into digital inking packages when I get a Mac in a couple of months.

MangaStudio has -- for my money and for a number of pro artists I know -- by far the best inking tools on the market. The 'Debut' version is ludicrously cheap and Smith Micro has a sale every few months on the full EX version, where you can usually pick it up for $99. It took about a year before I really felt I was bumping up against the limitations of the Debut version, so you should have a chance to get used to Debut, and then upgrade to EX if the need takes you (and it's worth it just for the 'Perspective Snap' feature, IMO, but you get a LOT more for the money).

Cheers

Jim