{"id":15647,"date":"2015-12-14T14:05:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T14:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/blog\/?p=15647"},"modified":"2023-03-06T12:13:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T12:13:43","slug":"biowars-art-academy-learning-about-lettering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/blog\/biowars-art-academy-learning-about-lettering\/","title":{"rendered":"Biowars Art Academy: Learning About Lettering"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you get when you cross a comic book artist and a comic book writer? A comic book letterer, of course. And though the skill might not appear as earth shattering as these other professions, this love child is not only a bona fide line of work, it also plays a vital role in determining whether the story makes any sense at all.<\/p>\n

So, rather than walk you through what is a fairly straightforward process of \u201cdrawing pretty words\u201d, Biowars<\/a> is going to give you a little background on comic book lettering itself. After all, history can be pretty interesting when it\u2019s about one of your favorite subjects. With that, let\u2019s start things off at the very beginning.<\/p>\n

\"comic<\/p>\n

Where Comic Book Lettering Began<\/h2>\n

The first comic book<\/a> was printed in the United States in 1842. Yes, you read that right \u2013 1842. It was a hardcover edition titled The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck<\/em>, which told the story about a man named Mr. Vieux Bois who falls in love with an overweight young woman.<\/p>\n

At the time, this and other comics used what is now known as \u201ctext comics\u201d, where the image was placed above the comic\u2019s storyline<\/a> in a style many Sunday comics use to this day. But then came along the Golden Age of Comic Books in the late-1930s, and everything changed quickly thereafter.<\/p>\n

During the Golden Age, comic books were created in an assembly-line process, dividing tasks among comic book writers, artists and letterers<\/a> to deliver the end product. Broken down systematically: first, the writer created the story, then a pencil artist roughly laid out each of the comic book\u2019s scenes. Afterwards, a letterer inserted the story and a comic book character<\/a>\u2019s dialogue into the frames, who then passed it on to an inker that finalized the drawing and lettering. Finally, the line ended when everything was given to a colorist who got out their \u201ccrazy crayons\u201d to add the decided-upon palette.<\/p>\n

Uncomplicated in their approach, these early comic books primarily featured word-balloons and thought-bubbles, along with square or rectangular storyline excerpts. Yet, as simple as it appeared to be, artists and studios wanted little to do with comic book lettering in-house, and often sought out freelancers to get the job done; freelancers who made a fairly good living, by the way.<\/p>\n

And thus a career was born, with many of the best freelancers in the industry later getting scooped up and employed full-time by comic book industry\u2019s major players at the time, some of whom still dominate the field.<\/p>\n

\"comic<\/p>\n

The Lettering Evolution<\/h2>\n

Fast forward to the 1980s when personal computers came on the scene, and what began as a hand-drawn art began sprouting into the field of computer generation. Enter writer and artist John Byrne, who used computer-generated lettering based on the handmade comic book fonts of other artists. Nevertheless, it wasn\u2019t until the first commercially available font \u201cWhizbang\u201d came on the scene around 1990 that the comic book industry really saw the greatest impact.<\/p>\n

Within a few years, computer lettering in comic books was pretty much a standard process, particularly with the introduction of Comicraft, who was and still is a leading source of fonts and lettering for the industry. Interestingly, however, while fonts had largely moved to being computer-generated, comic book art had not. This meant these thought-bubbles and word-balloons had to be printed, cut out and pasted to the original artwork.<\/p>\n

Is this still going on today? Yeah, not so much. While there are still a few independent studios and publishers who create all of their comic books by hand, nearly everyone in the comic book industry has moved on to desktop publishing. And why not? By combining digital art files in lieu of printing, cutting and pasting, you\u2019re not only cutting down the time it takes to assemble the final comic book, you\u2019re also eliminating the exposure of your colleagues to glue fumes \u2013 even if it does make for a fun Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you get when you cross a comic book artist and a comic book writer? A comic book letterer, of course. And though the skill might not appear as earth shattering as these other professions, this love child is not only a bona fide line of work, it also plays a vital role in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178,522,61,152,88,368],"tags":[386],"yoast_head":"\nBiowars Art Academy: Learning About Lettering | Blog | BIOWARS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While the art of comic book lettering is interesting, its history is even more significant.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/blog\/biowars-art-academy-learning-about-lettering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biowars 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