fonts
An important part of a comic is the lettering. Your choice of font will set the tone for the whole story, in some ways.
Most people are happy to just grab a “comic book” font and do it like it’s always been done in the superhero comics: all caps, in a font that probably looks like it was drawn in a brush. Not me. I don’t come from that world; my stories don’t feel right with that tone of voice. I like upper and lower case, for starters.
Rita used Myriad Pro for the vast majority of the dialogue. It’s got bold and italics and multiple weights, and it’s a nice crisp serif font that fit the tone of the comic.
But Absinthe? Absinthe was done in a different era of my craft. Absinthe was done back when I was still nailing things down on paper before taking them into Illustrator. And Absinthe was lettered in the real world, with dialogue that sometimes became a part of the overall design of the page.
I want the new pages to stylistically match the first chapter. But I really don’t want to hassle with getting a paper-based workflow going again. So…
I’m gonna make my own font. I’ll still have to do some things by hand, or by doing a bit of paper lettering and bringing it into the computer. But I figure that tracing a bunch of these letters will give me a good start on a unique font that can have italics and bold. I’ll have to figure out how to have multiple versions of each character that change randomly; I hope that’s doable.
Right now I’m thinking of trying to make it with the lite version of Glyphs, which is a mere $50. If it does what I need then I’ll be delighted to not have to spend the $5-600 that serious font software costs.
(I may end up making the font available as a Patreon perk, as well. Dunno.)
edit. Here are some useful-looking links I found on making different character images cycle. http://ilovetypography.com/2011/04/01/engaging-contextuality/ https://forums.adobe.com/message/1785905#1785905 - I like the idea of having a set number of variants for every letter that cycles with every character, rather than a lengthy hand-tuned set of variants. Seems like there isn’t an actual random number generator available; writing rules for selecting from multiple glyphs is what you have to do. also http://opentypecookbook.com/common-techniques.html
Originally published at Egypt Urnash. You can comment here or there.