Comic Strips - Any One Can Make It (Part five)

In past few months we have rapidly gone through various topics on making a comic strip of your own. Starting with simple shaped comics to gyan filled articles along with some doodles and sketches etc. Last month we had a glimpse of the process of inking for comics and this time we bring in the most common but overlooked topic.

Speech Bubbles and Captions

Now what the heck is that? Anyone who have seen a comic panel knows, what it is. It’s simply the dialogues that appear in comics panels and things that express the emotions and expressions of the characters in the story. Umm.. don’t speech or dialogue bubles are just lame texts that are written at the corners of comic panels. Yup, but the shape and different style of speech bubbles make it quite dynamic to read a comic. Such shapes helps to skip the texts like, ‘..and X replied’ or ‘she yelled on him’ all such texts are expressed to the reader through bubbles and it patterns.

So, how’s caption different from the dialogue bubbles? It’s used for the the narration or the voice over of a character who is not present in the comic panel. The role of captions is quite important and it is used extensively  when it’s a flash back scene or a long narration. It can be used in various beautiful ways. Some artists even use it for the dialogues but it’s not so popular and sometimes gets uneasy to understand in complex scenes with three or more characters speaking at a time.

And it’s time for some sketching.

Let’s go through different types of bubbles :-

Regular Speech –

They make the most of the appearance among the various types of bubbles in a comic book and are widely used and accepted.

Some artists also use, just the texts for writing their dialogues and a line  below it pointing the speaker.

There are artists who make the dialogue box/bubble above or below the comic panel too.

Thinking -

It looks just like a cloud  and points out the speaker with the smaller clouds in a queue.

If one is using dialogue box/ bubble above or below the comic panel, it should be  drawn in a shape of a squarish cloud, that will let the reader know that it’s being thought in the head. Moreover the story and the gesture of the character in the illustrated panel will too tell the reader that it’s being thought.

Scream –

It’s made in a kind of star shape, out completely of a zig-zag outline or border which refers that the dialogue is being screamed out.

A similar but with more frequent zig-zag is made out for loud announcements, or for radio transmission etc.

Whisper - 

It’s  bubble with broken borders like an ant-march.

Several other types of speech bubbles are also used like the colored ones, on the left or the right side of the comic panel etc. It’s totally upon the artist to choose which one to draw and how to draw it. You can always come up with new one but that must be reasonable.

by Simmi Singh simmi@fagangstuffs.com

 

Part 001 | Part 002 | Part 003 |

Part 004 | Part 005 | Part 006 |
Part 007 | Part 008 | Part 009 | 

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