Lettering with ComicMaker Web App

Lettering is done on a computer using a font created by Hansen based on his own style of lettering. He uses a web application he wrote, which combines graphics and text. The application creates an XML file, which can be used to generate either an HTML page for display on the web, or a TIF file for use in print. Hansen: "Lettering on a computer is a great timesaver. It's alot easier on the hands." - www.marchansenstuff.com

We interviewed Marc about ComicMaker and here's what he said:

"That ComicMaker app was more of an experiement than anything. The lettering technology (basically a truetype font and php) will soon be out of date once web browsers adapt the parts of the Web 3.0 standard, which can reproduce custom fonts (Safari 3x I believe already has it). There're also limits on how much you can modify the text (rotations, etc). I was able to prove however that creating pages as an XML "recipe" did work and might find some use on down the road. Also, how we define a web comic needs to be finalized; is it a downloadable file or is it online viewable only? And don't get me started on raster vs. resolution independent.

Right now I'm not creating any web comics, but print only books. I'm using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in my workflow. I import a tif of the scanned page art into Illustrator where I do the lettering using my custom font (although some sfx are still lettered traditionally). In Illustrator, I can kern, scale and skew the text to fit the balloons better or do whatever other effect I want to do. When the lettering is done, I save as an Illustrator native file (ai) and then import that into InDesign to compose the book for prepress.

My balloons are part of the art and not created in Illustrator so that they keep the "look" of my art style. As I draw, I'll sketch in what text will go in the ballon to get the right size, and then ink the balloon as I ink the rest of the page.

The big difference for me is that my operation is "soup to nuts", so my process flow is a lot less formal as compared to a comic book company that hires and manages multiple freelancers or inhousers to preform each "stage" of production."

Total time - N/A
Author -Marc Hansen

Direct Link - http://www.marchansenstuff.com/fansite/process.htm

Discuss this tutorial in the lettering forum.

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