The Shy Experiment

Author notes

05 - Bad Thing

Inkmonkey

on July 30, 2006

Is it just me, or does Green's happy face look a bit like the Scream face?

I didn't give myself as much room for adding text bubbles this time, partly as an experiment in word layout. A lot of sprite comics make the mistake of color coding word balloons or text to convey who is talking. I'm sure a lot of people would have made red's text actually red, and there's a problem with that. It makes it appear as though everything Red says is especially angry (not that he doesn't tend to be angry in the first place…). The reason professional comics don't color code text is because doing so implies some sort of special inflection in the voice of whoever gets the special letters. You have to reserve those sort of things for special moments, or specific characters. Take, for example, Ghost Rider; his text is often done with scratchy, white letters over a black word balloon. This gives the impression of darkness and a harshness to his voice, which makes him special. Red, however, is not special enough to warrant a special color for everything he says.

A similar problem also arises with some colors that just don't show up very well. I don't know how many spriters just don't realize that we can't see bright yellow over a white balloon, or grey, or light blue. This isn't a problem exclusive to sprite comics, but it seems to come up in that medium most often, for whatever reason.