How does he do it? (text bubble questions)

[Jared Todd]

I.. don't understand...
1) How I didn't notice this sooner, and
2) How Brian gets the text bubbles to cling a comfortable area around the text, and type completely centered...

There are a few other things I have no idea about, like he can type someone yelling and the text pushes around the bubble as a border, and how he gets the text bubble pointer so perfect.. And how does one go about blending the border of a text bubble into the picture slightly like he does?

On another point, I can't get the same quality of font he uses, even though I have ACME, and I've used every size font imaginable, but it's always skinnier than his font. On a mock picture, I used size 72 font, and then sized it down on Paint, and it still wasn't bold enough... I'm confused, I thought he uses ACME Explosive. The font looks exactly the same, except it's just less bold.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e40/jaremiah_todd/size18maybe.png

I think we all deserve to know the answers to these questions. v.v

[xravi]

Brian has mad photo shop skills. By mad I mean godly

[Lord Kibble]

I actually believe that Brian's answered this somewhere before, though I'm not sure if it was in a newspost or a forum post. It's on the tip of my brain, though all I can remember is the word "stroke" which is obviously the tool he uses to trace the bubble outline.

[DarkLadyNyara]

This is Brian. His photoshopping methods are beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals.

[BB]

It used to be in the on-site FAQ, but having just looked it seems to have been taken out.

I recall him saying something about a stroke effect, tough. And making them a seperate image, maybe.

[Meister]

Layer > Layer Style > Stroke. This option will give the currently active layer an outline.

[Kurosen]

Photoshop does all the hard work.

I type the text centered. The hard part is choosing words and rearranging them so that the lines form a somewhat-even shape -- starting narrow, widening, then going back to narrow -- while maintaining the same "punch" and comedy timing as the original script.

Then I make a while oval shape under the text and align them to look fairly centered to each other manually. My pointers as just a small rotated square. I merge the text and two shape layers, apply a 4-pixel black stroke, and that's it.

[Jared Todd]

See, I knew you'd answer me, Brian, I don't know why I even tried talking in the third person about you, who is obviously second person.

I had a feeling that you had to word things so they center better in the circle. The only other way that's even a possible explanation is the "justification" alignment, and I noticed you don't do that. Thinking about it now, I should've just known, and not asked...

Just a rotated square?! Holy crap..!! That's so cool. I never would've guessed. That's the coolest thing ever. and now I know if I want to make a comic, I can't steal your text bubble pointer. Damn!

and... I suppose everyone here knows about the whole "stroke" thing... guess I'm going to have to find what tool that is on Paint.NET..
¬ ¬..

All right! Thanks everyone, for commenting about the stroke thing. And thanks for telling me everything, Brian.. o o.

Since the page on comic tips is deleted, shouldn't there be a thread or page somewhere on nuklearpower about 'em....?

[Meister]

Personally I've always made speech bubbles like this:

1. Type text
2. Create a layer below the text layer
3. In that layer, select an area around the text in the shape your bubble is to have
4. Add a pointer to the selection using the lasso or polygonal lasso
5. Fill in white or other color
6. Apply effects like stroke, shading etc.

I never tried it with a rotated square, but I imagine it's a tiny bit quicker. Plus, of course, you can stretch the pointers a bit if necessary. In the end it's just different people, different techniques.

[Bisected8]

I use fireworks but I use the following method (not that I've actually made any sort of comic);


Type the text, then center it.
draw an appropriately shaped ellipse with a white fill and black border (2, 50% edge) then move it behind the text.
Use the reshape area tool to produce the arrow

[Azraelle]

For the pointer, I use the freehand path tool, sketch a quick curved pointer, then go in an adjust the handles and delete any extraneous nodes it might have created. The rest is exactly the same, though I use an older version of Photoshop that doesn't have Stroke as a layer effect. Mine's in the Edit menu!