Font comparison

[sigune]

Okay. So, the most commonly-heard 'complaint', if you can call it that, about my digital lettering experiment is that the font is an ordinary one. I have to confess that I like it myself because it reminds me of Jeff Smith's lettering in Bone, one of my favourite fonts in my entire comics library :). I also like it because it is not even close to Comic Sans ;).

Anyway - on my Blogspot a friend suggested that I try Ale & Wenches, a very pretty, medieval-like font. I'm posting the page with Ale & Wenches next to the previous version. My own inclination would be to use this font for captions and stick to Red State, Blue State for the speech bubbles. Oh, and any dragons can of course speak in Dragon Bones ;).

Please let me know what you think!

♥

Comments

[branquignole.livejournal.com]

I am totally with you on using the new font for captions and the like- I can totally imagine it working really well that way. But it doesn't really look like a talking font, if you get my meaning. When reading comics, I think it's important that the font looks somewhat like talk, which is really hard to explain, but I think that a font with clear lines that also looks a bit like hand-writing, looks most as if it would come out of a mouth, you know. Am I being coherent at all? :D

Anyway, I'd stick to the old font, but the new one would be extremely nice for giving the comic a kind of medieval touch in the captions and such. :)

EDIT: Oh, I just realised that what I called the "old" font was in truth a digital lettering experiment as well (not really up-to-date, sorry!). Well, I've always loved your lettering before, but I guess if you want a more professional and clean look, then the second version is great, and closest to what you did before. My advice is pretty much, "go with it", always bearing in mind that readers are important, as well as their opinion and the legibility, but you have to be happy with the font and the feel of the comic as well!

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! I have to confess that I have no idea what 'a font that looks like talk' is supposed to look like, but todayiamadaisy clearly does :). I never think about fonts that way myself - but I do think that it's best to avoid fancy fonts in speech bubbles unless they serve a particular purpose, like giving information about a voice or a language or something.

I have pretty much settled for Red State, Blue State. I tried a few others before presenting the first digitally-lettered page, but I thought they were not as easy to read as this one.

Digital lettering is kind of convenient. You can centre it automatically, go back to correct mistakes, and everything is always neatly aligned :). I like hand-lettering, but digital is the more practical option (and more obviously practical than colouring digitally - lettering in Photoshop is a breeze, even for me!).

[branquignole.livejournal.com]

You're right! She kind of voices the thoughts I'm not really able to put in a nutshell. Anyway, a crisp clear font looks more like a talking font than something fancy. (Fancy things should be used sparingly in my eyes anyway.) That's not to say that you can't use something fancy for a purpose; I'm all for seeing you try things!

A huge yay for digital lettering. It sounds like it will spare you a lot of work, and I hope that means that you will be able to concentrate on the drawing of the comic even more. :)