Thread "Let's talk about fonts!" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 4:11AM, Nov. 20, 2015

Zud juice is still available online. Try 1001fonts.com
http://www.1001fonts.com/zud-juice-font.html
I think I might have found a new font. I kind of liked the Pig Iron family which was part of the old Comic Book Creator software. One of my comics was done in it. I've used Digitalstrip too. And now El Cid has revealed his font and I am one step closer to mediocrity!

Posted at 6:11AM, Nov. 20, 2015

Oh, cool! Zud lives!

Hey, I'm a Zud enthusiast, so… Zud away!

Posted at 8:11AM, Nov. 21, 2015

I buy pro fonts, usually waiting for some kind of sale if they're Comicraft ones, whereas Blambot ones are a bit more affordable. I started off using free fonts and there are some which look as good as paid versions, but I soon got tired of their incompleteness compared to their paid equivalents. I want to be kind to my readers and make the text as accessible as possible, with nothing to impede smooth reading. A one off payment of fifteen quid seems like a small price to pay, considering how much time I spend on each word balloon.

As for sizing choices, more than once I've downloaded or scanned what I thought were well lettered pages and scaled them up as layers on a page in progress, so I could size my fonts accordingly. Awfully Decent Fellows uses a Comicraft font called Meanwhile and the lettering is done on copies reduced to publication size, not on the full size artwork.

Posted at 8:11PM, Nov. 21, 2015

I don't use fonts… ever…

Posted at 10:11PM, Nov. 21, 2015

A lot of my fonts I got through work.
Scarf is right, they do have more variation. Mainly I'll use that for other graphic design stuff than comics.
Blambot does have pro versions of his fonts with extra characters.

Extra options in pro fonts include anything from just the normal italic and bold options, to special things like extra-bold, condensed, ultra-condensed, black, extra-black, thin, extended- then those things PLUS bold or PLUS italics, so in a font package you might be getting 10 or more font variations.
That sort of thing is important in Graphic design for trying to match a style that a client wants or just looking for the exact style you need for something, but most of us won't go quite that far in a comic.

Posted at 5:11AM, Nov. 22, 2015

So in pro versions you get the whole extended family as opposed to the nuclear family. Some type fonts have dozens of variations like the Arial and Garamund families. Neither of which I'd use for a comic except for walls of text.

I kind of dislike super italic bold variations as main text. There are some comics that use it and it just seems forced as if everyone is screaming and talking a mile a minute. Sometimes I wish comic creators would target their use of fonts on how people talk as opposed to a 19th century actor's declamation oratory.

But of course all text everywhere in all graphic art must have a drop shadow. ;-)

Posted at 4:11PM, Nov. 22, 2015

ozoneocean wrote:
A lot of my fonts I got through work.
Scarf is right, they do have more variation. Mainly I'll use that for other graphic design stuff than comics.
Blambot does have pro versions of his fonts with extra characters.
Extra options in pro fonts include anything from just the normal italic and bold options, to special things like extra-bold, condensed, ultra-condensed, black, extra-black, thin, extended- then those things PLUS bold or PLUS italics, so in a font package you might be getting 10 or more font variations.
That sort of thing is important in Graphic design for trying to match a style that a client wants or just looking for the exact style you need for something, but most of us won't go quite that far in a comic.

It goes beyond the font weight options though. One feature of pro comic fonts you'll tend not to find in free fonts is two versions of each letter. The free ones will usually just offer crossbar and non crossbar I - sometimes not even that. Custom ligatures too: when you type out "oo" for instance, you'll automaticaly get the two different versions of o. Once you start using these things it's really hard to live without them!

As for bold italic, I use it constantly. It's a comic lettering tradition to use it for emphasis in dialogue, while straightforward bold is practically never used. I don't know why that is, but the traditional way looks good to me so I use it.