Lettering with Illustrator: A Guide to Download!

[chilipenguin]

Jim, any chance you could answer a quick question for me?

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art? I am working on pages that are uncoloured so obviously don't know which colours will be best for each instance.

[Jim_Campbell]

Jim, any chance you could answer a quick question for me?

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art? I am working on pages that are uncoloured so obviously don't know which colours will be best for each instance.

I've done whole books with nothing but black outlines and white fills for the FX. If you don't know what colours are going to be on the final artwork, I'd honestly suggest sticking with that -- otherwise your colour choices might clash horribly, or be so close to the rest of the panel that the SFX disappear completely.

On pages that are already coloured, I vary the colours depending on the kind of the sound effect. Fiery KABOOMs are red, yellow, orange, watery SPLOOSHs are blue-green, and so on. I like to use a radial gradient and start the gradient at the centre of the impact/explosion/gunshot.

Cheers!

Jim

[chilipenguin]

Cheers Jim. Yeah, I kinda figured on the elemental colours (fire, water etc) but just wasn't sure about uncoloured art. It's not gonna make much difference really (it's one of the sample scripts that was done by one of the members here, so won't be coloured at any point), just for future reference.

[Jim_Campbell]

When lettering FX, should each of the different styles (standard, sharp and soft sounds) retain the same fill or gradient colours or should they be changed to suit the art?

Here's my new thing… I'm leaving my FX with a white fill, and I'm using the eyedropper to pick up the darkest non-black colour from the artwork in the panel, and I'm using that for the stroke colour. It seems to make the SFX sit more naturally with the art.



Cheers!

Jim