Lettering: A Guide to Adobe Illustrator

[Emperor]

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:



I kept an eye out for this and notice the gradient seems to go in the direction of action (light to dark), so with someone being shot from the readers point of view it was above the person being shot and the gradient went from top to bottom. Have you got an example where a radial film might work?

That inner stroke is nice touch too - possibly not something to overuse but if you need to turn it up to 11 for something special you've got that bad boy in your back pocket

[Jim_Campbell]

I kept an eye out for this and notice the gradient seems to go in the direction of action (light to dark), so with someone being shot from the readers point of view it was above the person being shot and the gradient went from top to bottom. Have you got an example where a radial film might work?

Explosions, or head on shots of people firing guns? Once you've applied the gradient fill, you can use the Gradient tool to change the centre point and distance over which the spectrum extends. Click on or off the object to define the start point of the gradient, hold and drag with the gradient tool to define the direction and distance of the gradient.



Cheers

Jim

[Dog Deever]

Sorry tae bother you again, Jim- I've been struggling with the following balloons...



I can't find this menu to give me sharp points on the edges, rather than curvy ones:



also, the square balloons for 2000ad robots...
I can't find this tab for converting the anchor points to flatten the corners...



I just know they're going to turn out to be staring me in the face...
Appreciations in advance for help!
 

[Bolt-01]

Dog- I may be wrong, but this might be a versio n issue. What version of Illustrator are you using?

In other news- I've been offered work by another comics comp- does that make me a pro? [drunk as fuck]

[Emperor]

In other news- I've been offered work by another comics comp- does that make me a pro? [drunk as fuck]

Yes I believe it does - nice one, I've long thought you were enough to go pro and it is good to hear all those years of free lettering are finally getting you some reward (and wider recognition). Rich churning out all sorts of goodness and you turning pro? Soon you'll all be too famous to talk to us little people, just spare us a thought from time to time when you are sitting around in your penthouses drinking shooters of pregnant nun's urine (ahh the high life).

[Bolt-01]

Heh- I wish....

[HdE]

Hey, I got a couple of questions...

I've just started using illustrator to letter comics. I seem to have the general idea of what has to be done, but a few things really irk me.

I've noticed that the black line of my speech bubbles isn't always consistent with the black line in my artwork when I apply them. If I try to do a paint-bucket fill on the speech bubble, then I lose the smoothness of the bubble and get a load of really horrible jagged pixels.

I'm wondering - is there a way of changing the colour of my bubble line art without losing the smooth effect?

I'll just bet this is something really simple that I've missed in my ignorance.

[Jim_Campbell]

Hey, I got a couple of questions...

I've just started using illustrator to letter comics. I seem to have the general idea of what has to be done, but a few things really irk me.

Eh? None of those things sound like Illustrator's standard behaviour! The stroke and fill options should serve all the necessary purposes. I have to say that -- in fifteen years of using Illustrator -- I've never used the Paint Bucket tool for anything.

The whole point of Illustrator is that it's vector rather than bitmap based, so nothing should ever be jaggy. Can you help me out? If you follow through the steps I've described upthread, where does it all start to go a bit Pete?

Cheers

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

In other news- I've been offered work by another comics comp- does that make me a pro? [drunk as fuck]

Fantastic news. Nice one, Bolt!

Cheers!

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

]

I can't find this menu to give me sharp points on the edges, rather than curvy ones:



also, the square balloons for 2000ad robots...
I can't find this tab for converting the anchor points to flatten the corners...

Good God, man! Don't apologize for asking a perfectly sensible question!

The second example above is actually the same thing as the first -- I just cropped it down! These should be located in the toolbar at the top of the screen ... at least they are in CS3 on the Mac.

However, you can also change the Pen tool itself to the 'Convert Anchor Point' tool:



Select a single point with the Direct Selection tool (A - white arrow), then change tool to the Convert Anchor Point (SHIFT-C), then you can change the behavour of the anchor point.

Cheers!

Jim

[Dog Deever]

Congrats Dave!
Though why you'd want to be known as an old pro is anyone's guess!

I'm using CS2.
I do have that toolbar, I thought that was where it should be judging by some of the other elements on there- but I can't see those tabs on it. I'll check again in the morning and if I've no joy I'll check oot the pen function.

Cheers

[Jim_Campbell]

Soon you'll all be too famous to talk to us little people,

Or, 'doing a Spurrier' as I like to call it ...

Cheers!

Jim

[HdE]

Eh? None of those things sound like Illustrator's standard behaviour! The stroke and fill options should serve all the necessary purposes. I have to say that -- in fifteen years of using Illustrator -- I've never used the Paint Bucket tool for anything.

The whole point of Illustrator is that it's vector rather than bitmap based, so nothing should ever be jaggy. Can you help me out? If you follow through the steps I've described upthread, where does it all start to go a bit Pete?

Thanks for that Jim - and might I say what a famtastic and helpful thread you've got going here!

I need to sit down and have a really good fiddle with Illustrator soon, as I'm pretty new to using it.

I think the problems I'm having come down to not having worked out my working process properly. I keep flitting about from Photoshop into Illustrator, and sometimes I'm dragging things into Photoshop from SketchUp... it sometimes gets very confusing.

If I recall correctly, the problem withthe paint bucket tool and the jagged edges is actually occurring in Photoshop, and not illustrator. I've read up on the basics of tidying up the line art and trapping, which goes some way to helping me understand where I'm going wrong. (too complex to go into, but trust me, it helped!)
 

[Jim_Campbell]

I think the problems I'm having come down to not having worked out my working process properly.
 

Ah. Finish your artwork. Absolutely, 100% finished. Place it on an Illustrator document, as described at the start of this thread, lock it and proceed as described.

If the lettered artwork is then going to end up anywhere else (ie, in a page layout package) export it as PDF or a 300DPI TIFF when you've finished.

Cheers!

Jim

[HdE]

Aha!

Appreciate that jim - the details about exporting are most likely where I've been coming unstuck. The artwork that I work on in Illustrator is indeed 100% finished, but the weird stuff starts happening when I try to do anything clever, like prepare the lettering to use in Photoshop.

Really, I realise such a step isn't necessary, but I prefer to do as much as possible in Photoshop. Dat be because I am do be der stupit-hed numpty.

I'll be returning to this thread tomorrow to have a dmaned good scour of it. Many many thanks for the reply, and indeed the time, care and effort that's gone into this thread!