Hey, Comic Creators
That's right, we're talking about word balloons again.
This week, we're going to look at the secret H rule and whether you should follow them or ignore them (spoiler: it's a bit of both).
Firstly, the H rule. I covered this pretty extensively in this week's video, but I'll reiterate it here. A lot of comic creators place their words too close to the balloon edge, making their dialogue more difficult to read. So in order to combat that, get a letter H (or, really, any letter) and place it in the corners of the word balloons. If the H fits, you're good. If not, consider increasing the spaces around your dialogue.
As far as other rules relating to word balloons go, such as the maximum number of words (35), the shape of the words within the balloon (diamond), word balloon tails crossing, pointing to the talkers mouth and the other 248 rules you need to learn, here's my advice.
Ignore all of them.
A controversial take? Maybe. But there's a reason for it.
As a creative, you should first consider how your characters act to inform the placement of your balloons and then fix up any errors later on. Marshall Vandruff, arguably the best perspective teacher around, says this about perspective. I'm para-phrasing but you'll get the idea.
He basically said that, when it comes to perspective, don't worry about it until you get your ideas down. Don't let it get in the way of your creativity and fix the errors once you've established what you want to say.
Well, word balloons are the same.
Consider the way in which your characters are speaking. If they're talking really fast or love the sound of their own voice, then making a big word balloon might help sell that. If a character is more methodical and deliberate in what they're saying, it makes sense to have them split up their dialogue in separate word balloons.
This is also an effective way of building up tension in the way a character speaks. Watch movies and think about how and why actors pause, or emphasise certain parts of their dialogue and use that as inspiration.
Now I'm going to immediately contradict myself. I said "ignore all of them" but what I really should have said was "ignore all of them apart from one". The one that you should not ignore 99% of the time is crossing the word balloon tail. And that's simply because it can confuse the reader.
Which is the ultimate goal here, right? To not do that.
And to make this as easy as possible to not just understand but to actually apply to your own work, then this is how you should approach word balloons.
Step 1: Create your scene and dialogue using a storyboard. Consider how your characters are speaking/acting and place the word balloons in order to sell that.
Step 2: Clean up any inconsistencies or confusing areas of your panels.
Step 3: Profit.
Use someone else to critique your work if you're unsure of anything. If they can follow it easily, you're onto a winner. If not, you need to make things clearer and easier to understand.
If you do this by hand, it'll take a while. But it'll be worth it. And I'll go one step further by saying that investing in software for artists can be a huge time and stress saver for writers. I'll be covering that more in next week's episode but if you can't wait, I'm talking about Clip Studio Paint.
Good luck everyone and I'll see you next week.
-John
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Use the planner for the following:
✍️ Writing your outline
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📅 A work schedular
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✅ Recommended tasks
💡 I've also included tooltips throughout to guide you
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