Step Five: Sound EffectsIronically, there's not actually that much to say about SFX, because the letterer has a great deal of leeway here.
I'm not one for apologetic sound effects -- I like 'em big and bold, but if you're doing paying work you should probably check with your editor to see how they feel!
The first thing you need -- obviously -- is a good, all purpose SFX font. In each job, I try to have a default font that I use for all 'standard' FX, to maintain a certain amount of consistency. It's not uncommon to see FX-heavy pages where there half a dozen or more fonts. I think that would be bad design anywhere else, and I think it's bad design here.
Consequently, I have one font that I use by default for all normal FX in a particular job -- all your KABOOM, BDAM and AAARGHs -- a sharper or harder font for harsher sounds, and a softer one for, you guessed, softer FX. For example ...
I've spent a lot of money on fonts I thought would make a good 'standard' FX font, but ironically Blambot's free
Badaboom is as good as any.
I have discovered literally this morning that Tom Orzechowski draws rough SFX onto the artwork with the pencil tool to make sure he gets an attractive arrangement of letters that fits the space available, and then makes a font effect fit the rough. This is brilliant and I wish I'd thought of it! Going forward, I can't wait to try this.
To take one effect as an example, here are some (hopefully) useful tips on SFX creation.
There are two basic approaches to creating a sound effect.
Either way, you're going to need to type or paste your basic text.
You can then either use the typographic controls - point size, tracking and baseline shift - to work on the editable text to make the letters look more like a sound effect:
When you're happy with the result, go to the Type Menu and Create Outlines:
Alternatively, you can type your text and go straight to Create Outlines. Either way, the next thing you need to do is go to the Object Menu and select Ungroup:
If you haven't already formatted the text, you can now manipulate the individual letters as shapes using the Selection tool:
Either way, you will end up with a SFX that you like the look of. At this point, our old friend Pathfinder -> Add Shape makes another appearance:
If you apply a stroke and fill, you will probably find that the results are not pleasing, particularly if you want to apply a heavy stroke:
There is a very quick fix to this. Go to the Appearance palette:
And drag the Fill so that it appears above the stroke:
The result will be much more pleasing to the eye!
Note that if you
don't want the letters to appear as part of one shape, but as separate letters:
Then simply don't use the Pathfinder function, but Group the shapes instead.
SFX can quickly be spruced up with a Gradient Fill:
Don't forget that you can change the angle of the Fill:
You can spiff it up still further by adding an inline:
This is also fairly easy:
With your sound effect selected and the Selection tool (V) active, hit RETURN and this dialogue should appear:
Set the movements to zero, as shown above and hit 'Copy'.
Initially, you won't be able to see anything, because you've created an exact copy on top of the original.
Change the Fill to 'None' and the result will not be attractive:
However, if you change the Stroke colour to something that compliments the Fill, and reduce the stroke weight to something significantly lower than the original ...
... Then you should get the desired result:
Longer SFX can be quickly livened up by running the text along a path.
Draw a curved path the fits on the artwork with the Pen tool:
Select the Type on Path tool:
Click on the path and type or paste the SFX:
Liven it up a bit by closing up the spacing with the tracking, and changing the point size and/or baseline shift values of individual characters:
Once you're happy, you can change to Outlines and tart up however you wish:
Hollow SFX are relatively straightforward, but are very useful when space is tight, since they do not completely obscure the artwork beneath.
At their most basic, you can just create the SFX, turn to outlines, and give it a Stroke but no Fill:
However, this is not always very readable. Expand the Pathfinder group so that it is one path:
Then select 'Outline Stroke' from the Path menu:
This will turn the stroke -- at whatever value you have it set to -- into a filled shape:
You can then apply a Stroke to this new shape:
'Breakout' balloons, might well have gone in yesterday's post, but they're as much SFX as they are balloons, so they're here.
These are balloons that look like this:
You're going to start with a double outline balloon (see yesterday's post - if you've grouped the balloon, you need to ungroup it so that you can select the black & white inner balloon separately later on in this process) and put your text on top of it:
It's important that you have changed the text to Outlines, and that you have Ungrouped the text, and then recombined them using Pathfinder -> Add Shape. Note that the characters don't have to touch in order for Add Shape to turn them into one object.
The process below gets a couple of fiddly extra steps added to it if you don't do this.
Then go to the Path menu and select Offset Path:
By default, this dialogue displays the offset amount in mm, but you can enter values in points, which I find more helpful. You need to manually change 'Joins' to 'Round':
The result looks like a scary mess:
However, if you look carefully, you can see the outline of your original lettering inside this mess. Using the Selection tool, SHIFT-click on one of the letters and all the original lettering should deselect, leaving you only your new, expanded shape:
Unsurprisingly, our next step is Pathfinder -> Add Shape
Now, change the stroke and fill of the combined shape to match your balloon:
Select the inner balloon as well as the expanded text outline:
Pathfinder -> Add Shape again:
And you're done:
And that's about it for today!
Tomorrow, I'll deal with miscellaneous odds 'n' sods like trapping, stuff that should have been in earlier posts but which I forgot, plus the Five Lettering Mistakes That Will Betray You For A Clueless Noob.
Cheers!
Jim
