Fonts.

Been enjoying my slightly less work intense week, this week. Spent the last couple of days just playing around with Fonts on the computer. I never really felt that great about my own lettering and it’s only now that it starting to come together a lot more. I also had a break through this week in figuring out how to add new Fonts in Phototshop. A few years ago I download some funky Fonts I wanted to play around with in Photoshop. Fonts based on the type from movies like Evil Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Shaun Of The Dead as well as other. So at some point in 2005 I downloaded a whole folder full but when I got them on my Mac I couldn’t get them to work through Photoshop. I tried for ages and then just gave up. It only now towards the end of 2009 as I come to start lettering my latest work that I remembered this unused file on my laptop. (I should mention at this point my latest story is a horror story. I keep forgetting to mention that whenever I do a post.) So to cut a long story short I just played around for ages and ages trying to get them working and it paid off. Most of the Fonts worked. The only down side now is I’ve uploaded so many into Photoshop the list now ends at ‘P’. My next big challenge on the computer now is to found out what happened to the rest of the alphabet and my new Fonts.

Apart from now being able to have a good crack at doing a decent title page with some new funky fonts it also means I can now move away from the dreaded Comic Sans. I don’t think Comic Sans is as bad as some would have you believe. It kind of like Skoda cars in the 80’s. Sure, when it blown up it looks like shit and doesn’t really work for anything outside of Comics. When I see it on a leaflet or ad blown up and maybe in colour or something you really see how ugly it is. But when it only 3mm tall in a word balloon it not that bad. I’ve tried loads of different Fonts over the years but they were all sadly from a select group I’ve got to work through my copy of Photoshop. Many of them were a hell of a lot more fancy looking then Comic Sans but maybe didn’t read as well on the page. You could write pages on what makes a good comic book Font. To me, the type shouldn’t be fighting the image for attention. Your eye should go to the image then the text. I’m not talking about big flashy action sound effects here, as I tend not to use them much and that’s a whole different debate. Just the basic word balloon. When your reading a web comic or sometimes an actual comic and more thoughts gone into the Font then the artwork itself, it kind of pisses me off. I still think the best lettering for comics is hand lettering but sadly I have to fall back on computer fonts as I was born with the handwriting of a retarded chimp.

Another downside to computer fonts is the price. I don’t really know a lot of other comic book artist but does anyone actually buy fonts? Since I’ve got new fonts working in Photoshop I’ve been checking out some different Font websites and damn they’re pricey. The whole rules about when you and can’t use Fonts is a little lost on me.

I’ve only started lettering my artwork today so it a little to early to post anything from it. I’m hoping to finish them off over the weekend, so maybe next week I can. Until then I’ll post this latest shot. I’ve got to remember to use silhouettes more in my comics. They look good and are a lot quicker to draw.