Why stuff takes a while

[studioqt]

In theory, "Oh My Goddess" #6 comes out this Thursday. It had all sorts of stuff going on, hand-lettered copy, special fonts (that did not have whole families, which made italics and boldItalics fun) and wall to wall sound effects.

So here is the before:

Comments

[studioqt]

Thanks Lois.

I try to figure that troublesome panels like this are offset by easier ones throughout the book. It's just that there weren't a whole lot of "easy" pages in this volume.

[strontium90]

Damn, you're good. But what on earth is "freebleblasque?"

[studioqt]

Thanks, man.

"FREEBLEblatSQUEE" is the sound of magic horn being played by a goddess that hasn't read the instruction manual.

[strontium90]

Don Martin would be proud :)

[usagiguy]

Thank you for posting the step-by-step look at the process.

I was the letterer for Kamui, one of Viz's first translated manga. This was back in the late '80's/early'90's. Viz was just a packager back then, and Eclipse was their publisher. This was before computers were common in comics, so I hand lettered and re-drew some of the art (we worked on stats). We had to "erase" the lettering on the stats with a binary solution called "Silver Genie", before lettering. I particularly hated sound effects.

Wayne Truman, who lettered a lot more stuff for them, went digital as soon as he was able.

[studioqt]

I remember Kamui. I didn't know you lettered it.

Interesting about Viz packaging and Eclipse publishing. I fell into lettering manga via Tom Orz in the early 90's.

I also remember working on stats. I used Pro White to white out the balloons and then draw stuff back in with rapidograph. It'd really blow when the Pro White wasn't completely dry. I'd end up digging a channel through my blob of White and it'd clog the pen. It was a bummer when the pages weren't completely cleaned of chemicals and the glu-stick I'd use wouldn't adhere.

Laying down tone was fun too. I'd get little pieces all over me and it'd show up at the weirdest places. Like in the kitchen.

I hated doing sfx too, but at the time I shrugged and figure that the books wouldn't be the same without them. Nowadays the kids wanna see the kana/kanji and don't mind little subtitles. I have to say, it makes localizing some titles much easier. I hate subtitles as a reader, but as a letterer, it's fine by me!

font style

[anonymous]

That's cool. Easy to see a lot of work goes into it. What about the Font for the sound fx, is that hand-drawn? Are you free to change the style? Is there a relationship in the letterforms, that is, the japanese characters are created with straight edges, while the English letters have wavy edges and jagged ends.

-kent myers

Re: font style

[studioqt]

Hey Kent!

The sfx on the first panel are hand-drawn. With the signage, I had to use Illustrator's warp mesh tool for the wavy banners and slapped it down in Photoshop. For time reasons most of the signs were mapped out in Illustrator.

The style I can do any way I want (as long as the editor doesn't mind). I try to keep it as close to the Japanese as possible, but sometimes the style isn't as emotive as with American comics. In that case I'll change it keeping in mind the weight of the overall sfx so that the new one will take as much visual space as the original. In this particular case, I made them different to separate out the different sounds and imply a whole range of bad flute playing.

Sorry I didn't answer sooner. It's been kinda crazy here.