Thursday 11 September 2014

Noisy comics!

I've always enjoyed lettering the sound effects on my strips, and this week's Team Toxic adventure has no less than three instances where the sound FX dominate the panels. I know some fans don't like comic sound effects because they think they're childish, but I've always considered them a vital part of humour comics, helping the reader to 'hear' the impact in their heads.

To me, designing the sound effects has always felt like a natural extension of the drawings. Computer fonts are brilliant of course, (particularly those by Comicraft) and I've used those too a few times, but I prefer to create a specific sound effect that suits the moment. I'm sure there are professional letterers (or 'balloonists' as DC Thomson call them) who could do a slicker job, but I prefer to do it myself where possible. I don't receive an extra fee for it but, as I said, I consider it part of the drawing. (Dialogue lettering is different of course. I'm paid extra for that when I do it, although these days it's mostly done by the in-house designers.)

Anyway, these are three panels from the latest Team Toxic two-pager, The Land of Living Farts, in the current issue of Toxic available right now! 
http://www.toxicmag.co.uk/ 

2 comments:

John Pitt said...

Who's against sound effects? They are as much a part of the strips as movement lines. It will be a sad day forcomics if they are stopped!

Lew Stringer said...

Some fans do dislike sound effects, thought balloons, and anything else that makes comics unique unfortunately. Don't worry; I can't see sound effects disappearing anytime soon (even though some more mature comics don't carry them). However, most American comics no longer feature an exclamation point after the FX now. I think it dilutes it a bit but perhaps readers prefer it that way.