After Inking, Cleaning Up the Inks, and a side step into Screentoning, It’s time to get on to the lettering phase of Incident at the Game Store. If you’re up to having a signed physical book of Game Store for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

In this step of my multipart tutorial, I’ll be talking about how to set up text and word balloons for comics!

Again, I’m making the pages with print in mind, so I need the images in as high of a resolution as possible. I often do my heavier text editing in Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is a freeware alternative that is as good and better than Illustrator! For now, these next steps are in Illustrator. I make a new file with six art boards to the pixel size of the pages I plan to import.

Illustrator gives me more options to mess with my text than Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. I import or “Place” my images in Illustrator, so they’re all in one large file to look at!

I get myself started by dimming my art and typing down my general typing and lettering. If you have a script typed out in a word processer, you can copy and paste to your heart’s content! I’m not worrying about the exact font at the moment to start getting the words out.

I refer to my thumbnails for the bubble placement to the art and the original post image to the dialogue. Not only that, but I cleaned up the dialogue at the feedback of my mom, so it lacks teeth compared to the original post.

I’m not as confident with my ability to draw word balloons myself, so I generally do it separate from the artwork digitally. Most of what I know about making word balloons is from this tutorial by John Roshell.

I begin the real lettering by arranging the dialogue words in a centered diamond pattern. I take time to putting words on different lines until it looks more professional.

Next, I expand the balloon size and set it up to “anchor” to the top of the panel. I use the Rectangle tool to make a new shape and put it on top of the balloon shape. Then, in the Pathfinder Box’s Shape Modes (Shift+Ctrl+F9), select both of the shapes, select Unite. The paths of those shapes will merge into one new shape.

Time to create a balloon tail to point to Fatty. Using the pen tool, I can draw a rough tail shape and use the Direct Selection tool to work the shape to a pointed tail. The same steps to Unite the tail to the balloon to have a connected balloon.

Now make more rectangles and arrange to align to the borders of the panel. I get rid of the fill color for a short time, only seeing the lines. The rectangles must arrange over the round balloon. You can select Object>Arrange>Send to Front) or Ctrl+Shift+] to send objects above each other.

After that, select the rectangles and the word balloon. Next, select the Pathfinder’s Shape Modes, and select Minus Front. Cut out the balloon shape for the panel anchoring.

These steps work for most of the dialogue bubbles I did in this book. For one of them, I made a yelling balloon. Found this tutorial for making yelling dialogue balloons by Jim Campbell.

I go on Page 3 to do some work on this charging scream from the boyfriend character. I convert the text into an image and then re-arrange and resize the letters. The results are a nice, disjointed scream that emphasizes the dude’s rage well!

Now that my letters are in a good position, I can punch the screaming up with bold outlines! I used some tips from Comicscraft‘s book on making Emphasis Bubbles.

I make a new little speech bubble and move it to the middle white letter stroke color layer. Next, I manipulate the shape of the ellipse to make the stroke size 10 pt. Then, I adjust the bottom black letter stroke color layer to make it look seamless.

I use my previous balloon-making techniques to build up a new balloon shape.

I rearrange the bubble back in the proper place. Plus, I fiddle with a few more adjustments in my vector nodes, and I’ve completed a new screaming balloon for page 3!

Now I do a little to figure out what I can do for page 4 and the fat guy’s maniacal laughter. I try out a Blambot font called Torn Asunder. I created outlines out of the typed font, and edit each letter with the lasso tool to make it look pretty decent.

More progress on the laugh. I make it easier for myself to arrange the lettering in groups and manipulate them into sections.

Fore Page 5 Panel 1, I was laxer, and I stuck with using a Warp filter to the text.

Did some more work on some other panels. For the gross sound effect, I used Torn Asunder from Blambot again!

I didn’t plan enough for sound effects, but it will help to have them. I’m using the Damn Noisy Kids font from Blambot.

I’m very close to the wrap-up phase of lettering. I first started to use the Newsflash font from Blambot for my title and endings, but I still didn’t feel it was right.

But then, I looked up GameStop’s logo and learned something hilarious and pitiful. GameStop uses the Impact font, a terrible free font that’s in most computers and terrible image memes.

Now to start wrapping things up. First, I unlock full of my usable layers, making sure Overprint stroke is checked on all my balloons. Next, I Select all the letter stuff in the panel.

I go to Object>Rasterize and Set it to the Highest Print Res that I have.

That’ll make it easier to export the text back to Clip Studio or Photoshop as a transparent layer. I can overlay this on top of all my pages.

I did some last-minute stuff to add a new reaction bubble for Panel 1 of Page 2.

Now it’s time to export my stuff from Illustrator. The original digital file is at 600 dpi because it’s easier to shrink than to expand them. So I save to 72 dpi to keep space low.

So I export it as a transparent PNG so it will fit in the pages with the screentones that I’m still working on back in Clip Studio Paint.

After importing the rest of my lettering, I use my Layer Masks to clean up the text to fall behind the monster on the page.

I fiddle about with my Lasso, Magic Wand, and Hard Brush to work with my mask. The lettering is now behind the monster, as I need it to be.

So I do this for the other pages in the comic, fiddling with other lettering areas.

I’m not liking how straight one panel looks, so I curve it down a bit.

One sound effect kinda blends into the line art, so I did a bit of toning work to get it to pop out more.

I’m pretty much finished with the lettering now, I’m 90% finished with this story! This step was a large learning experience for me! I knew that lettering is an underappreciated art that’s very easy to mess up. I wanted to do my best with this comic, and that includes getting more familiar with lettering. There’s much to still learn, but now I can press forward with Game Store’s tutorial!

Screentoning was originally going to be in the digital touch ups step, but it was getting a bit long, so I broke screentoning into a separate section!

When I drew Incident at the Game Store, I didn’t plan to color the pages because I wanted to make a larger anthology. I’m keeping this step because I already put in the work for it. So it might be helpful for anyone who wants to take the option.

If you’re up to having a signed physical book of Game Store for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

It’s time to use Clip Studio to do something experimental. I’ll be adding screentones to give some of my art a gray tone with only black and white dots. I’m working on a tutorial on screentoning from Whyt Manga. Also check out his comic, Apple Black!

In Manga Studio 5 EX or Clip Studio Paint, there is a Material Tab. It would be in the default UI but if it is not, go to Window>Material>Material[Dot]. You’ll find a variety of textures and screentones from this tab, and you can make custom ones, but I’m making a basic dot pattern. 

I select one of the pre-made tones and edit them by clicking “Settings of Toning…” This will give you the Simple Tone Settings window. Next, set the number of lines for 70, which in this instance, determines the amount of dots in the pattern. Then set the Density(B) to 30, white, then determine how big and fat those dots are. After that, I set the Angle at 23 degrees, this is the rotated orientation of the texture. I made it at an angle that’s not an even number, giving it a tiny bit of flaw to the texture.

So now we can drag this texture to my comic and now the entire screen has screentoned! It’ll make a separate screentone layer with a mask of the texture, so this saves a ton of work than other programs.

Fill the layer masks with a transparent color to mask it out, a staple of digital image editing programs. I then edit my masks with a normal unaliased round brush.

You can also select with my lasso and magic wand tools to mask and unmask as needed. I usually start a panel by selecting an entire panel and filling the general screentone.

I also do some other screentone things, like adding a darker screen tone for the black girlfriend.

II continue these processes for the rest of the pages. I’m nailing down the rough spots I need.

I did more experimentation with screentoning. Trying to stack screentone layers on top of each other and masking with a soft brush to for a gradient look.

Again, I created this step before I decided to color the comic properly. The original idea was to keep the book black and white, so there are many steps before I colored.

Now that this all is done, it’s time to put some words to these pictures!

Onward from Part 4 of my Inking Section

After inking my comic, Incident at the Game Store, I make some touch ups to the pages to prepare for coloring! I split this section from my inking part, so it won’t stretch so long.

If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

To start, I scan my pages in any scanner that can scan a Portable Document Format (PDF) at 600 dpi and I use Photoshop to import the PDF pages.

I scan it in Color, Greyscale and Black and White Modes for coverage. But I generally use the color scans, so I have more control over the gray before I work them down to black and white.

When you open the PDF in Photoshop, the image files separate. I prefer to pull them into one document, with each page in different layers. This will make it faster to resize and adjust for the print margins!

I use Multiply Layer mode to help me align my artwork, so it’s consistent to crop and align for lettering. 

All the layers are on the Multiply Layer style mode: meaning the lighter colors of the layer are clear while the darker ones are solid.

Next, I crop the page for coloring, adjusting to the comic paper’s trim line for later printing. Don’t fret too much about making it perfect, as it’s difficult to get them all aligned like that in the first place.

Here’s a page that’s now cropped.

From here, use Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation to clear the blue pencil sketches. Use the Cyan and Blue dropdown settings to only affect the blue pencil work. Push down the Saturation Bar, then push up the Brightness Bar. This will keep as much gray tone as possible to not destroy my blacks too much.

I then work with my Image>Adjustments> Levels to bring up the contrast of blacks and whites. Doing as little as I can to not destroy too much of the thinner lines.

More Level editing as I try to make my blacks deeper.

This is the panel of art so far. Now it’s time for more intricate edits.

This next process is simpler. Use the round brush and tools for a pressure sensitive, size changing brush tool with a white color to clean up stray lines and specks.

The scan caught my paper edits, so I need to clean them up. I use the Lasso tool to move parts of the background lettering to realign the sign letters.

I work on the mall kiosk line art to realign it to something normal.

Continue with my Brush tool to clean up mistakes I didn’t catch with in the ink drawings.

Here is the entire page so far! The same process is used for working with the rest of my scanned ink art. Time to prep this page for future coloring!

First, I adjust the art to be completely black and white with no gray by using Image>Adjustments>Threshold.

Adjustment to make sure thinner lines don’t disappear too much.

Select >Color Range, then select the white color anywhere.

This will select every pixel in the image with that white color.

I make a New Layer (Shift+Ctrl+N) and Fill (Shift+F5) in a Black color, making a layer with only the black line art. In general, I do this process with all the pages.  You can also get away with putting your line art Layer Blend Mode to Multiply. But you’d miss out on the flexibility of editing your lines, including the ability to color them without affecting your normal colors.

Here are all page comparisons, from initial scan to final touches!

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The differences are minuscule, but this is the process I found to set up my comic pages to color. On Part 5, I will go through the process of adding gray tones with Clip Studio’s Screentoning Features.