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 :-
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.
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.
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 007 | Part 008 | Part 009 |
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