Customer Reviews

Comic Book Lettering: The Comicraft Way

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Don't get me wrong by the rating - this is a good book. A point that the author's make pretty well is that if you are interested in lettering comics professionally, you'll need to manage the tight deadlines common to the industry. You'll have a very hard time meeting deadlines lettering by hand, and so the subject of the book turns to migrating over to an electronic lettering strategy.

A caution for readers: To follow the methods outlined in the book, you should expect to shell out a fair amount of additional cash. Of course you'll need a computer, but you'll also need a vector graphics program like Illustrator, a scanner, and a font-making program like fontographer or fontlab. (Alternatively, you can visit the author's web site and download their fonts for about $50 a pop.) All told, you can easily spend a small fortune before you can even decide if this interests you. If you want to learn more about the craft of *hand-lettering* comics, this book won't help you that much. If you're looking up this book, though, chances are you have most of the software and hardware described above.

Cautions out of the way, I used the strategies described in this book to effectively produce my very first handwriting-based font in one weekend, and I'm very pleased with the results. Once you have the fonts you want, the book serves to inspire with a good deal of really great font samples, and demonstrations on how to use them to good effect in your typical power-fantasy genre comic book.

If you're interested in other genres (like serious graphic novels such as "Ghost World"), the basic info will still be helpful, though some of the examples may not interest you. (You may not find much use for creating an interesting layout of the word "FTOOOM," for example...)

If like me you're putting together your own small-press comic book from start to finish, or perhaps you want to work as a professional comic book letterer, this is a book you NEED.

All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator and this book and you'll never be stuck again on a lettering problem. And even if you were, Starkings and Roshell will help you personally through their website's 'ASK Mr. FONTASTIC' service.

Comic Book Lettering: The Comicraft Way covers literally everything, including creating different types of balloons, balloon placement, lettering style, choosing fonts, creating sound effects, signage and how to place it in perspective, and how to create your own fonts, to name but a few.

It's put together in an incredibly well-designed comic-book style format, and the amazing design skills of the Comicraft guys means they've been able to pack an unbelievable amount of tips, tricks, techniques, and examples into what you would expect to have been a much larger book to accomodate the quantity and quality of advice contained in this treasure trove.

Richard Starkings and John Roshell are more than ably assisted by such comic book luminaries as Jeph Loeb, Kurt Busiek, Brian Bolland, Ian Churchill, Tim Sale, Ladronn, and Mike Wieringo, and at under ten dollars this is the how-to bargain of the millenium.

I can't recommend it highly enough. Buy it!

Comicraft, the producers of this book, handle a great deal of lettering jobs for Marvel, DC, and other publishers. This book is a great introduction to the methods necessary to creating good digital lettering for comics.

Before Comicraft, most lettering was done by hand, which isn't as cost-effective for major publishers. Sadly, most publishers are now looking for digital lettering as opposed to manual lettering. However, this doesn't mean that lettering has to look bad; on the contrary, Comicraft has shown through projects like Astro City and Batman: Hush that digital techniques open up a wide array of new possibilities.

This book is a necessity to anyone serious about using digital lettering in their comics. And it's dirt cheap!

This book is a clear, concise and fun guide to digital lettering. It covers the basics including style and technique for delivering a lettered comic on the computer. Besides the basics of lettering, this book provides lots of illustrations of lettering usage, and diversions into lettering "zen" or the philosphy of lettering. Definitely a book to keep close at hand for the begining letterer.

Look through some of the comics that you consider to have the best lettering and fonts, and you may find that a number of them have Richard Starkings or Comicraft in the credits. In this excellent guide, Starkings shares his digital lettering secrets with you - everything from constructing a standard word balloon to text manipulation in creating sound effects to varigating your word balloons based on what's being said. This is an exceptionally useful guide - although the techniques described herein will take some practice to get right. Additionally, to use this guide, you will have to have Adobe Illustrator (this is the standard upon which this book is based). If you've ever had any designs on creating your own comics and want to start lettering on the computer, this is the only book for you.

Ive had this book less than a week, and it's teachings have impacted my art process already. The impact is felt in so many different ways. In my first week, this is what this book has done for me:

1. I am inspired again for the use of Illustrator to complement my work in Photoshop. Including designing word balloons, titles, special affects and ANYTHING to do with text.

2. The tips and tricks on how to work with certain features in Illustrator will allow you to do ANYTHING you can think of to accent your pages with razor sharp computer designs.

3. The step by step instructions allow you to make word balloons, change text, flip colors and line weights...what can you think of? The instructions on how to do it are likely in this book.

This book will inspire and instruct and give you enough to set you on the way to do your own lettering to make your comic pages look professional and have the impact they deserve. Highly recommended book. I would only say that the buyer will need Photoshop, and Illustrator to execute the processes taught in this book.

Although the book is a fun and lively introduction of the art and style of comic book lettering, It is scattered and confusing, sometimes sacrificing its readability to its style. The irony of a book on lettering,which requires order, to have this chaotic a book on the subject is odd considering the expertise of the author on the subject. But the book is fun and does give decent instruction on the subject of comic book lettering. Very little is mentioned in the realm of digital lettering,(odd again considering that IS how comicraft exists.) Not a great introduction to the world of lettering...currently DC's book on lettering by Todd Klein is the best resource for digital lettering I have seen. and the best on hand lettering continues to be "how to draw and sell comic strips" by Alan Mackenzie. I would recommend this book to one who has already read these as it it a fine compliment to those

I bought this book in the hopes of an analysis of form similar to Scott McCloud's works. This book was very dissappointing in that it offers some extremely basic information on lettering, was a very short book for its price and also it is SO busy trying to "wow" you with comic art, screentone, etc. that it often overpowers you. Other books, by comparison, are done in a comic format but manage to be far better designed than this one.

I respect the lettering talents and the work of Comicraft, but the delivery kills the message!

This book is well written, funny [at times..] and VERY informative!! This will put you on the right path to lettering comics.
I use this book as well as the recommened fonts to create my own comics!!! Worth EVERY Penny!!

This is a wonderful book. 64 pages of little learn how tricks. They use an old version of Illustrator, but they speak mostly in English still adding a few basic short commands; so its easy to adapt with new software.

The tricks are fairly basic, and so the tutorials are 4-6 comic book panels long. Yes, this tutorial book also doubles as a nifty non-linear comic. No great plot involved other than some background info, some opinions, and then a bulk a tutorials and examples.

To own, its a wonderful tool. But check out the Comic Craft Website first!