home

When were speech balloons added? Different approaches Ferran Delgado 26 October 2016 Byrne wrote down on the paper his own script so he'd save time drawing in the space covered by the balloons. He even drew them, since he was inking the book before it was lettered. Patrick Ford: I think pretty much all cartoonists work that way. Or at least they used to. With some people working digitally now I suppose there are guys who used different methods. Ferran Delgado: Not so sure. I think that often the writers marked the placement of balloons when the pages were penciled. In fact, Byrne himself only used this creative process for a few months. The problem was that captions often didn't fit quite well when lettered, and some were more tight than others. Patrick Ford: Kurtzman: Patrick Ford: I see what you are saying. I thought that was something Byrne wrote ( "...his script..." ). To be honest I know almost nothing about Byrne. I thought he wrote and drew. Ferran Delgado: Yes, at this stage he wrote, penciled and inked, so he tried this process but it didn't worked quite well, and let it go. Ferran Delgado: The problem was the irregular placement of the text if balloons were drawn before. Focus on balloons 3 and 4. Patrick Ford: When working from another person's script there are a variety of approaches. In many instances you have the artist working from thumbnails/layouts which contain the script. Jim Shooter did that. Kirby himself worked that was in the '40s and '50s when he wrote for other artists. At E.C. Al Feldstein would supply the artists with art board which already contained all the balloons and captions. A lot of artists just make sure to leave enough space for the captions and balloons based on the text. That's what Kirby did on the KAMANDI issues written by Gerry Conway. Kirby just left blank space. Ferran Delgado: The problem is that if the penciler leaves too blank space and lettering doesn't fill it, then the inker has to draw the inbetween zones. Patrick Ford: Even with the text in pencil Mike Royer had to do that with Kirby's '70s work. Either because Mike decided to move a balloon, or just because Kirby's penciled text was a bit larger than the final lettering. Ferran Delgado: Sometimes the placement marked by the writer is not the best option and sometimes the letterer change the position. When there's no drawing there, it's a problem like you say. Patrick Ford: I've always assumed Winsor McCay drew the captions and balloon forms when he was drawing the page and then later added the text. That integrated the balloons and captions as a design element but resulted in the awkward placement of text in the captions and balloons which Ferran noted. Patrick Ford: It's like the shape of the balloons was determined first and then he had to squeeze his text into the balloon shape. Patrick Ford: I meant to ask Ferran. When you letter do you pencil the lettering in first or just go right to lettering with ink? Ferran Delgado: Well, nowadays I work different from that age. The pages are fully drawn and colored when I start to work, which is a shame for the artist, but very useful when the comics are published in other countries, even in the ones which read at the opposite, like japanese. Ferran Delgado: When I try to mimic the pen look. I first use a font for the SFX or title, I print it, I trace it with pen adding effects, and then I scan it and add it to the completely drawn page with Photoshop. Ferran Delgado: But in the case of Byrne or Kirby, who did a inhuman volume of work, they had to save time when possible, and to write the script directly on the paper to calculate the space of the balloons was a useful trick. Patrick Ford: I suppose old timers like Ben Oda just went right ahead with the ink pen. Patrick Ford: As I recall Kirby told Will Eisner that at the Eisner shop the cartoonists were told to put down the captions and balloons first.

home