tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537846465685173182024-03-15T06:22:18.475+00:00Jim Campbell's Comic Book Lettering BlogComics, Lettering and Other Stuff from the damaged brain of Jim CampbellJim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-72363184706620349332021-05-07T13:53:00.001+01:002021-05-07T15:15:36.200+01:00Dave Evans: RIP<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The news is making its way out on various social media platforms that Dave Evans, aka Bolt-01, died unexpectedly earlier this week.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Dave was like a landmark in the UK comics scene, as co-editor and publisher of FutureQuake Press, home of the FutureQuake anthology, the 2000AD-themed fanzine Zarjaz, and the Strontium Dog-themed fanzine Dogbreath. He was a perennial presence at conventions, his table laid out with comic book wonders, sought out by fans and pros alike.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I've often described Dave and FutureQuake press as the backbone of the UK small press, because it's true. Dave and his co-editor, Richmond Clements, set the bar high for their contributors and many UK creators' careers have their origins in the pages of FQP publications, in no small part due to the diligent, thoughtful editorial skills Dave and Rich brought to their titles.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">(Dave was also a prolific letterer, handling many of the lettering duties on FQP's books, and for other publishers, with great care and skill.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And that's what Dave did, for many, many years. But that's not who he was.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Dave was a lovely man. A warm, genuine human being about whom I have genuinely never heard a bad word spoken. Everyone knew Dave. Everyone loved Dave. And he was my friend.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I didn't know Dave as well I'd have liked, largely due to my own patchy attendance at UK conventions, but I'd run into him every couple of years, and I'd contribute to FQP's books whenever he asked me. I was emailing him barely two weeks ago, exchanging lettering tips and talking about how much we were both looking forward to the convention circuit eventually resuming and planning to hit the bar at the first available opportunity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And now he's gone. My brain refuses to process the fact that I won't be loudly greeted by him (often from halfway across the hall), that I won't make my way through the more-or-less permanent crowd at his stand and be met by that great, friendly grin of his. That I won't sit in a pub and talk extraordinary amounts of Nerd Shit™ with him over a pint (or several).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All of British comics is poorer for his loss.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But, for all that, I'm unable to imagine how much greater the loss is for his many close friends, and for his family, his love for whom was evident whenever you met him. My heartfelt condolences go out to every one of them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Farewell, Dave. I'll miss you, you loveable old bastard.</span></p>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-8141593599257416792021-04-21T15:12:00.005+01:002021-05-16T09:39:33.165+01:00Workflow Hints #3<h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">One tiresome thing (of many) about Adobe Illustrator is the inability to automate layer-specific actions. This means that you can't include any action in a batch process that involves targetting the contents of a specific layer, which has the practical consequence of meaning that you can't delete the <b>Artwork</b> layer in your document if you're exporting lettering-only EPS files.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Or I thought that was what it meant. <span style="font-family: inherit;">I can't believe it's taken me twelve years and 60,000 pages to figure out the workaround for this.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">We all keep the art layer locked in our working documents, right? Then record this action:</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Select All</span></i> </li></ul></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Create Outlines</span></i></li></ul></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Select -> All on Active Artboard</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Cut</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">[Layer Palette] Unlock All Layers</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Select All</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Delete</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Paste In Front</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Save As [EPS/AI/PDF/Whatever] to [whichever folder you dump your exports to]</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Close</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Don't Save</span></i></li></ul></div></blockquote><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><b>-STOP RECORDING-</b></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And you're done. That's it.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It's worth noting that if you want your layers preserving in the exported EPS, just turn on the "Paste Remembers Layers" option from the Layer palette, and everything will get pasted back onto their original layers, in their original positions and stacking order.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNqOWaKy7lrtfw9I247L3BrAC8A9S-qjwK-jsVTBJZsSPp9KKmcs3J3ccGA7gwSsdWGwJHjppCr1XrNqtN2SLObSKHjZtQ4pjXbcHNlQvIzCmKBDeR8mLOA9qbIEgIrIFFjTMDqd4ITM/s553/Screenshot+2021-04-26+at+15.37.11.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="499" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNqOWaKy7lrtfw9I247L3BrAC8A9S-qjwK-jsVTBJZsSPp9KKmcs3J3ccGA7gwSsdWGwJHjppCr1XrNqtN2SLObSKHjZtQ4pjXbcHNlQvIzCmKBDeR8mLOA9qbIEgIrIFFjTMDqd4ITM/s320/Screenshot+2021-04-26+at+15.37.11.png" /></a></div><br /><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This option is global — once you turn it on, it stays on for all future documents until you turn it off again. If you <i>don't</i> use this option in your regular workflow (although I have it turned on at all times) then simply activate it before you start your EPS batch process, and turn it off again when you're finished!</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There are a couple of hiccups, here:</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">1) If you include some kind of title bar in your lettering for proofing purposes, like this:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfoGosLJ43jaH8r6BCZfadxvFHLIr6nfFIeYQJG8gXLsPjvTv87TypM6yO618PbSjBH1gU-PEm877dMnjspZXRdXYV2bHIYeH_9XMuW6-xfd6NTo0QQcILKEZzb-k3q742Syf1zto_7U/s1105/Screenshot+2021-04-21+at+14.58.31.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="1105" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfoGosLJ43jaH8r6BCZfadxvFHLIr6nfFIeYQJG8gXLsPjvTv87TypM6yO618PbSjBH1gU-PEm877dMnjspZXRdXYV2bHIYeH_9XMuW6-xfd6NTo0QQcILKEZzb-k3q742Syf1zto_7U/w400-h116/Screenshot+2021-04-21+at+14.58.31.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then this action will pick that title bar up and paste it back in with the lettering, even if you want it deleting in the final EPSs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There are two workarounds for this. Either,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">a) Put the title bar in the locked artwork layer. This means you'll have to send the placed artwork to the back of the layer (so that the title bar floats over the art) before locking the artwork layer, or…</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">b) If you're proofing from InDesign, consider moving the title bar to the master page of your ID proofing document. That way, you can take advantage of ID's auto page-numbering as well as keeping your Illustrator documents 'clean' for export purposes.</div></div></blockquote><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">2) <span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: normal;">If you submit a full set of files, even for blank lettering pages, there's no way to clear the clipboard between documents in Illustrator (there's no equivalent <i>'purge'</i> command like there is in Photoshop) so if you have a page with NO lettering on the active artboard, AI will paste in the lettering from the previous page. I haven't figured out a workaround for that one yet, beyond maybe adding a tiny square or other object somewhere in the bleed to any page that doesn't have lettering.</span></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(Or, obviously, just don't submit files for pages with no lettering!)</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div>Despite those two caveats, this is a real time-saver. Not only do you now <i>not</i> have to open up your exported EPSs and manually delete the artwork on <i>every page,</i> because you're now saving out EPSs without artwork, the export batch process runs in a fraction of the time it used to for a full book.</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">So, there you go. I thought that one was too good not to share!<br /><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-90559696575172627832020-05-06T09:47:00.000+01:002020-05-11T19:11:30.171+01:00Workflow Hints #2<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just another quick timesaver.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Has some kind soul sent you a bunch of artwork files that are on-spec but have annoyingly huge file sizes because they've saved the TIFFs without LZW compression?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Artists and colourists! Seriously, stop doing this. LZW compression is <i>lossless</i>, meaning that there is <i>zero</i> effect on quality. What it <i>does</i> dramatically effect is the file size:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiER_Rol-61Gmyn7uULesZDEidf_59_UJ5qwTY49vqYxFc7nOq20T_LaDvPNHXXnuuRufPsfjQbfwMGXnKQd0GlLLxqikncZ5eKr3Hq4XgWTUZ77Xb3q8mkSjqqdAtZ6WRTw2LZlcgpl08/s1600/TIFF_LZW_Size.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiER_Rol-61Gmyn7uULesZDEidf_59_UJ5qwTY49vqYxFc7nOq20T_LaDvPNHXXnuuRufPsfjQbfwMGXnKQd0GlLLxqikncZ5eKr3Hq4XgWTUZ77Xb3q8mkSjqqdAtZ6WRTw2LZlcgpl08/s1600/TIFF_LZW_Size.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You'll save both disk space and upload/download time for everyone in your entire creative process if you just check that little LZW compression radio button!)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Obviously, you could just set up an Action and batch process the files, but Photoshop saves you the trouble by providing a ready-built option.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you look under File -> Scripts you'll find an option called "Image Processor" which, if you set it up like this…</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7DLNoDKwyGlJY7BrREcaxPH3g8cpopq1hLzmyK8c9K93t1yTzJ3y7pi3o6p9GKH6CUclwyoiBO4ZM9hDKgnUmsFJkWkogkBb-YdC-dc_0icJD6d3VBtoHBjvwV5sp-NAEP8U8GQ-yOo/s1600/Image_Processor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="750" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7DLNoDKwyGlJY7BrREcaxPH3g8cpopq1hLzmyK8c9K93t1yTzJ3y7pi3o6p9GKH6CUclwyoiBO4ZM9hDKgnUmsFJkWkogkBb-YdC-dc_0icJD6d3VBtoHBjvwV5sp-NAEP8U8GQ-yOo/s320/Image_Processor.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">…will handle it for you. It also seems to be much, much faster than running a batch process using Actions.</span><br />
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Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-75569431477347739132020-02-10T19:23:00.001+00:002020-02-11T09:30:25.716+00:00Zound Effects And More!<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>(aka Lettering the Zaucer of Zilk)</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxf5NQ-rCrngCnYd1-6Ee_M7cyi7SGnR9LJKP4bpbquogGmz1OJeJ_CeUrnpQtvTRjV9dXzFiwwS2qFG27rshbKIahZLUM7bIScsCpKHkGRhepT1OEdrbmp5BnJdgNevSWKoXwnsSMMBo/s1600/Zaucer_Header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="783" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxf5NQ-rCrngCnYd1-6Ee_M7cyi7SGnR9LJKP4bpbquogGmz1OJeJ_CeUrnpQtvTRjV9dXzFiwwS2qFG27rshbKIahZLUM7bIScsCpKHkGRhepT1OEdrbmp5BnJdgNevSWKoXwnsSMMBo/s400/Zaucer_Header.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Very shortly after 2019's excellent Thought Bubble convention, I received The Call from none other than Tharg the Mighty who, as I'm sure you know, is the alien editor of 2000AD, the Galaxy's Greatest Comic. More accurately, he tasked his human assistant, Matt Smith (longest-serving holder of this thankless role) to invite me to join the lettering team on 2000AD.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Under normal circumstances, this would have been a cause for much rejoicing — I've been a reader and fan of 2000AD since 1979 and have had the pleasure of doing some non-2000AD work for publishers, Rebellion. However, this came as a result of the sad news that one of the regular team, Ellie de Ville was seriously ill. Tragically, Ellie died a few weeks later. Although I never met her, her work has been a constant through 2000AD and many other UK comics of yesteryear for decades and her untimely passing was a sad loss and, I'm sure, a terrible blow to her family and many friends. You can read a short selection of tributes <a href="https://downthetubes.net/?p=113285" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That made my addition to the lettering roster the first change in 2000AD's line-up of letterers since the death of Tom Frame, back in 2006, which is certainly a testament to both the loyalty felt towards the comic, and extended back to its contributors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All of which made picking up that baton a strange and sad thing. Over in the Judge Dredd Megazine, I was asked to take over lettering a fan-favourite strip, the entirely brilliant 'Lawless' by Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade. Given that these episodes are likely to end up in a collected edition at some point, alongside pages that Ellie lettered, I could do no more than find a lettering style that would jar as little as possible for the transition.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NEPMhBPgaLsWZRXx9Hlzt2dt7aBXYPQEoEekmhuqfylKxM_fDHr6XScgztkK5zkMIS8OsUG31bwhvNdlBZlG01busUXWs96yHvTSQjTA3F4AEqWArDt5cG9vV-EjauGTFb38lbixyBA/s1600/Lawless_Boom_Town_01_04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="800" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NEPMhBPgaLsWZRXx9Hlzt2dt7aBXYPQEoEekmhuqfylKxM_fDHr6XScgztkK5zkMIS8OsUG31bwhvNdlBZlG01busUXWs96yHvTSQjTA3F4AEqWArDt5cG9vV-EjauGTFb38lbixyBA/s320/Lawless_Boom_Town_01_04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawless © 2000AD/Rebellion Script by Dan Abnett/Art Phil Winslade</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are already two collected editions of the series, which I would urge you to check out: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lawless-Welcome-Badrock-Dan-Abnett/dp/1781085439/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lawless+abnett&qid=1581334246&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Volume One </a>and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lawless-2-Dan-Abnett/dp/178108629X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=lawless+abnett&qid=1581334246&sr=8-2" target="_blank">Volume Two</a>. If you like a science fiction Western (and who doesn't?) this is going to be right up your street.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, I was also asked to letter two strips for 2000AD's bumper end-of-year edition for 2019. One was a (sort of festive!) one-off Durham Red story by Alec Worley and Ben Wilsher.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfSWaydpLDRa9pw_Kj38zR8yVUKP9tJnjxqTusMgaoO4U2rj8PdK0aUzw6cJ37wYZQY8WuawnP8FSdc5SAB4148TEmrohtk6wVowYKnOelJTkKJKDNClEnZ8Rj-JBSpZYuQdK0oNfgdX4/s1600/Durham_Red_Christmas_2019_01_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="800" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfSWaydpLDRa9pw_Kj38zR8yVUKP9tJnjxqTusMgaoO4U2rj8PdK0aUzw6cJ37wYZQY8WuawnP8FSdc5SAB4148TEmrohtk6wVowYKnOelJTkKJKDNClEnZ8Rj-JBSpZYuQdK0oNfgdX4/s320/Durham_Red_Christmas_2019_01_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Durham Red © 2000AD/Rebellion Script Alec Worley/Art Ben Wilsher</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The other was a new series, a sequel to 2012's Zaucer of Zilk by Al Ewing and Brendan McCarthy, continuing with Peter (Resident Alien) Hogan taking over co-writing duties and Len O'Grady sharing colouring.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Brendan is possibly best known outside UK comics for the career he took up in the late 80s and early 90s as a designer and storyboarder for film and TV, and perhaps most famously as co-writer of Mad Max: Fury Road.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">UK comic fans of a certain age will be familiar with his work going back to the early days of 2000AD where his bold, graphic style and phenomenal use of colour warped many a fragile little mind.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6T6sTjahYAzNd4sWfh8uG4kWCWREYe-ihZUPe0N9-FTjaWUGdER3yukS_Kl4N_6An07URWwNuA1zX3VvsKIBdUHsMNlZiKAsFzx_7TXzn0p2Kv3TqVnPaGYtvXk6wxqC8ewnqZKA6xB0/s1600/McCarthy_Dredd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6T6sTjahYAzNd4sWfh8uG4kWCWREYe-ihZUPe0N9-FTjaWUGdER3yukS_Kl4N_6An07URWwNuA1zX3VvsKIBdUHsMNlZiKAsFzx_7TXzn0p2Kv3TqVnPaGYtvXk6wxqC8ewnqZKA6xB0/s320/McCarthy_Dredd.jpg" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Judge Dredd © 2000AD/Rebellion Script John Wagner & Alan Grant/Art Brendan McCarthy & Riot /Lettering Tom Frame</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-OprqfI22V2al73_xUnIFCtrTCp_4VCG_Ksrv0UpFPYSib9OPVAhyphenhyphenjks18J-3jgmXq_0imBsDiKGMiFXDgDflYQCGtSD4orWqna9y7X7Pz0HoB2KWZRKYSE4KxP_KX8yYrGFND_IOkvQ/s1600/McCarthy_ABC_Warriors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="979" data-original-width="1600" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-OprqfI22V2al73_xUnIFCtrTCp_4VCG_Ksrv0UpFPYSib9OPVAhyphenhyphenjks18J-3jgmXq_0imBsDiKGMiFXDgDflYQCGtSD4orWqna9y7X7Pz0HoB2KWZRKYSE4KxP_KX8yYrGFND_IOkvQ/s320/McCarthy_ABC_Warriors.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlU5l34TBDDqu0rzxAZVwOWryjX9Xdi5OWpLUVvyM9g4Wpz5hPRaovSNksw6KbI01odVjWFFiaEr8MffTAS1DNKnz6ztJsXdChchnyfxDtReGFROmwpab_N5dZa3_uZ19piK1CMfCslE/s1600/McCarthy-steelhorn_300_best.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUlU5l34TBDDqu0rzxAZVwOWryjX9Xdi5OWpLUVvyM9g4Wpz5hPRaovSNksw6KbI01odVjWFFiaEr8MffTAS1DNKnz6ztJsXdChchnyfxDtReGFROmwpab_N5dZa3_uZ19piK1CMfCslE/s320/McCarthy-steelhorn_300_best.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ABC Warriors © 2000AD/Rebellion Script Pat Mills/Art Brendan McCarthy/Lettering Pete Knight</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even though 2000AD has never had a 'house style' and is always home to an amazing range of artists' styles, it was fairly obvious from the outset that the new series of Zaucer wasn't going to look like anything else in the prog, and with a series that I can only really describe as the bastard offspring of Dr Strange and Yellow Submarine, wasn't going to read like anything else either… so I decided that maybe the lettering ought to catch a little of that whimsy, too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I quickly settled on Comicraft's CCMoritat for the dialogue — it has lots of character, is still legible and, if you run it with the horizontal scale up a touch, it reminds me a lot of the wonderful Steve Parkhouse's hand-lettering…</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtaieik-XNMkST2M6aBZzBvlfASVPvj7_RTpzCN1QEGia4T7uhmtssdvfeFKK3pCaXRK1qZPdestRraFPybtBLI5Uexw67hZ9MHTYuPrTFBLD7RYZYC-MJhW2UIbvaHisuuxnlA0SCY4/s1600/Zaucer_S_Parkhouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="230" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtaieik-XNMkST2M6aBZzBvlfASVPvj7_RTpzCN1QEGia4T7uhmtssdvfeFKK3pCaXRK1qZPdestRraFPybtBLI5Uexw67hZ9MHTYuPrTFBLD7RYZYC-MJhW2UIbvaHisuuxnlA0SCY4/s320/Zaucer_S_Parkhouse.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgotnCwInH8sB9VYdiJ4kXudAuME_2J6tglfLcpngR6qAHRhUwBxUMJ3NL1m7k23muaG71fx-w01QZON_HLP4HhOK3l13aiWQGJ5Xn_mZL4qZ2mlk_QMPlrX2EhyQ6jJpy9AuA_1oe5ihc/s1600/Zaucer_S_Parkhouse_Bojeffries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="706" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgotnCwInH8sB9VYdiJ4kXudAuME_2J6tglfLcpngR6qAHRhUwBxUMJ3NL1m7k23muaG71fx-w01QZON_HLP4HhOK3l13aiWQGJ5Xn_mZL4qZ2mlk_QMPlrX2EhyQ6jJpy9AuA_1oe5ihc/s400/Zaucer_S_Parkhouse_Bojeffries.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bojeffries Sage © Alan Moore & Steve Parkhouse Script Alan Moore/Art & Lettering Steve Parkhouse</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Using balloon shapes drawn 'by hand' (albeit digitally) that referenced the many years of classic hand-lettering for 2000AD, I came up with a lettering style that I hoped hit the mark…</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAq-5UtG8jm2-dlJzJVoqXEm6u3yepgtyHdc9OjGTwtqB6irk7-8UWqUclly_nHDVj4rw8CpHcxmAz_Bj2fe0Ys0HEdE3Wi3jNhFZ7QFkor-66hqBRToBBR4i-G4xtBcbpONhBRHvLuxw/s1600/Zaucer_Dialogue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="505" height="339" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAq-5UtG8jm2-dlJzJVoqXEm6u3yepgtyHdc9OjGTwtqB6irk7-8UWqUclly_nHDVj4rw8CpHcxmAz_Bj2fe0Ys0HEdE3Wi3jNhFZ7QFkor-66hqBRToBBR4i-G4xtBcbpONhBRHvLuxw/s400/Zaucer_Dialogue.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zaucer of Zilk II © 2000AD/Rebellion Script Peter Hogan & Brendan McCarthy/Art Brendan McCarthy/Colours Brendan McCarthy & Len O'Grady</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Matt Smith showed my sample page to the Mighty One, and, to my relief, he liked it. In fact, he even commented that the style reminded him of Steve Parkhouse's hand-lettering… so that was job done!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And I'm having a great time working on the series. Peter has kindly brought back the desperately unfashionable thought balloon, which is a device I've missed terribly and rarely get to letter outside Garfield books:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-ACLGZ5f1lxs1xmKmRLlvCtgkGIT4admGPPBnw8oZOqK7uSeWg5Karzb21Uv8RvksjjH4vcZCDuSygmDrq6ujkKP0uOYlVAd1-8mCFzUhArN-dkZ08lojbbQqotU2CnuV45uncC6IcUY/s1600/Zaucer_Thought_Balloon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-ACLGZ5f1lxs1xmKmRLlvCtgkGIT4admGPPBnw8oZOqK7uSeWg5Karzb21Uv8RvksjjH4vcZCDuSygmDrq6ujkKP0uOYlVAd1-8mCFzUhArN-dkZ08lojbbQqotU2CnuV45uncC6IcUY/s1600/Zaucer_Thought_Balloon.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've enjoyed trying to integrate the lettering into the art where I can, rather than just letting all the lettering float on top of the art… even if it's just a little overlap, as with the first panel below, where the Tailor's hat and a tiny bird overlap the caption.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr8SWiE57SzCDYSF1CKp_UI07kdwHkShyphenhyphenZ0qSh3fDHuUhyphenhypheneg6jF4xRD1DP6O9EFkZuIha0Bg2lQEJkmsQ_X55n6B28ByAD34MT1fcOfcEL66mjcksoTmC0MpNovQra11ArGgVfqK1GVn8/s1600/Zaucer_Clipping_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="912" data-original-width="457" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr8SWiE57SzCDYSF1CKp_UI07kdwHkShyphenhyphenZ0qSh3fDHuUhyphenhypheneg6jF4xRD1DP6O9EFkZuIha0Bg2lQEJkmsQ_X55n6B28ByAD34MT1fcOfcEL66mjcksoTmC0MpNovQra11ArGgVfqK1GVn8/s640/Zaucer_Clipping_02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMMDhSXkO_iyIbNpdAokQ03lvuw_UgpJxhX0MjPasytxCBbFpa5_JGWfxxTEOiVoyjmOrctuAEp98RCWUxohes38BPT1bYmgQwBVYv4blH9r9CM-Bbux-JS1Z5TLbL48szN9X1Y6rcgmE/s1600/Zaucer_Clipping_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="647" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMMDhSXkO_iyIbNpdAokQ03lvuw_UgpJxhX0MjPasytxCBbFpa5_JGWfxxTEOiVoyjmOrctuAEp98RCWUxohes38BPT1bYmgQwBVYv4blH9r9CM-Bbux-JS1Z5TLbL48szN9X1Y6rcgmE/s400/Zaucer_Clipping_03.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I also know that Brendan has said in the past that he's not much enamoured of digital lettering, which was another reason I wanted to bring a little extra character to the strip's lettering. Plus, y'know, Brendan's a mad genius.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sadly, almost no publisher will sign off on hand-lettering dialogue these days — it's slow (and more expensive than digital because a letterer needs to charge extra to reflect the additional time spent on the pages) and makes doing both corrections and repurposing lettering for translated editions much more difficult.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, there are relatively few sound effects in Zaucer, so I thought I might be able to spend a bit of extra time on those, and draw them by hand — creating them in Photoshop on new layers over the artwork for reference using a Cintiq, and then bringing them into Illustrator and converting them to vectors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(I'll confess that Photoshop isn't my first choice for drawing anything, but the workflow is easy — simply collapse any layers with elements you want to bring into Illustrator, draw a selection marquee over the sound effect and you can just drag and drop from Photoshop onto your Illustrator page. Once there, Illustrator's Image Trace will vectorise the effect in moments.)</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaDulyVE2D78Qzq25FBbaMg5VngJF7j3oGHlTpyl2qjz1YQHribym9ELtaySXRij-pmvS0HAOb77Ilyh9pZvSyoYGYNLxyfoWsm3wXa0N3tapg6EP1-jyKplWKeEUS6GR6A-aalf3sBE/s1600/Zaucer_CLAKs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="539" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinaDulyVE2D78Qzq25FBbaMg5VngJF7j3oGHlTpyl2qjz1YQHribym9ELtaySXRij-pmvS0HAOb77Ilyh9pZvSyoYGYNLxyfoWsm3wXa0N3tapg6EP1-jyKplWKeEUS6GR6A-aalf3sBE/s640/Zaucer_CLAKs.jpg" width="417" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With a little bit of care, it's even possible to try and combine them into the art. I've seen plenty of Brendan's hand-drawn sound effects, and I wouldn't try to pretend that mine look half as good, but I was quite pleased with the way this one, in particular, combined with Brendan and Len's lovely work.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgp9_ZjbvM07F-M4pxlByv6NahKPMOyzrbPYeH0t7g2rmnUT8D30gwFBv8qV5hDVfb16a6eoJhliFt2SCG3c1sk26NQ5l3aWyHttfqXteEKnJF1dytKhHS2Rib1FtY3_9ilPYosMZEKY0/s1600/Zaucer_KRAKs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="567" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgp9_ZjbvM07F-M4pxlByv6NahKPMOyzrbPYeH0t7g2rmnUT8D30gwFBv8qV5hDVfb16a6eoJhliFt2SCG3c1sk26NQ5l3aWyHttfqXteEKnJF1dytKhHS2Rib1FtY3_9ilPYosMZEKY0/s640/Zaucer_KRAKs.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And that's it. A quick look behind the curtain(down)…I hope you're having as much fun reading the strip as I'm having working on it.</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-13102053413014789002020-01-30T15:16:00.000+00:002020-05-18T07:22:03.994+01:00Affinity Designer: Alternatives to Adobe Illustrator for Lettering<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpSpTA0bSyFFQ0wplLgeeekn2LBIyww2nRGJfhY91PDhxVhHY56dpw2l-gZDY8VY7fkCD5-Dx-JqcI3e70qRpaONlsPfoVFjCBRPlwkN-RazSzc9whdYtpemJqKX-BHCYG3gnVgx0HZk/s1600/Affinity+Designer+Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="900" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpSpTA0bSyFFQ0wplLgeeekn2LBIyww2nRGJfhY91PDhxVhHY56dpw2l-gZDY8VY7fkCD5-Dx-JqcI3e70qRpaONlsPfoVFjCBRPlwkN-RazSzc9whdYtpemJqKX-BHCYG3gnVgx0HZk/s320/Affinity+Designer+Logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anyone who follows me on social media will know that I fairly regularly point people to Serif's Affinity suite (Designer, Photo, Publisher) as a viable alternative to the design/print portion of Adobe's Creative Cloud offering (Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign respectively). The software is <i>very</i> reasonably priced, is a one-time purchase for a perpetual license rather than Adobe's subscription model, and is available for Mac, Windows and iOS (although only Designer and Photo at present).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've been intermittently doing test pages lettering with Designer, usually whenever the application gets an update, but I'll confess that I haven't attempted to actually do <i>a job</i> using it, until now. For the record, I'm running the current Mac versions (1.7.3) of all the Affinity applications on Mojave (10.14) but I've seen no reports of issues running them on Catalina (10.15).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Designer certainly covers a letterer's requirements in all the big ways — you can set up colour-managed CMYK documents with bleeds, control important trapping settings like knockout/overprint, and export files successfully in all the commonly-used file formats (TIFF, EPS, PDF for print and JPEG or (God forbid) GIF for web comics). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(As an aside, I've checked how these file exports fit into an Adobe-only print workflow of the kind a publisher is likely to be using. EPS files place in InDesign exactly as expected, and a lettering-only PDF file with transparency effects places over a separate artwork file in InDesign with all the transparencies rendered correctly.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One thing you <i>can't</i> do is export a file that is fully editable in Illustrator — in theory, a PDF exported from Designer should be fully editable in Illustrator, but in practise, it isn't. The developers at Serif have had this flagged and report that this is down to how Illustrator is interpreting the PDF data, which is 100% standard-compliant. Short version: this is something Adobe would have to fix on the Illustrator side, and they have no reason to do so and I have no realistic expectation that they will.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So, if you have clients who want lettering delivering as live .ai files, Designer isn't going to work for you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The typographic controls are also good. OpenType features are fully supported and all the fine-grain controls over tracking, kerning, leading, horizontal scale and the like are present and familiar.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The shape and pen tools will all also be very familiar to Illustrator users, so the creation of captions and speech balloons is pretty much as you'd expect and the ability to merge balloons and tails non-destructively (so you can edit tails separately to the main balloon within the merged shape) is very welcome.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Text can be outlined, manipulated, merged, stroked and filled, so sound effects are also taken care of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>But…</i> it's important to remember that this is a product that hasn't yet reached v2 and doesn't have the massive resources of a company the size of Adobe behind it, so there are some notable omissions that might catch you out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is no direct shear/skew tool. You can achieve this by numeric input into the Transform panel (which is how I usually do it in Illustrator anyway) but you can't deploy a tool to do this by eye on your document.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is also no free distort or perspective distortion option, nor any warp/distortion tools at all. I use these, Roughen along with specific distortion effects like Wave/Flag, <i>all the time</i> in Illustrator, so this is a fairly big negative.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are workarounds — most of these options exist in Affinity Photo (and the Affinity Suite allows you to switch between applications to utilise specific features without actually leaving your current application) but this requires the text to be rasterised. If you don't mind mixing your vector and raster elements, then this is a perfectly workable solution.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you're supplying finished files with lettering and art combined, then using Photo for these effects is a reasonable option, but if you're delivering EPS/PDF files of lettering only, then it's likely to border on a deal-breaker.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I should add that the existence of these features in Photo suggests that they should be implementable in Designer (the applications share a large amount of common code) and all of these features are on the developers' 'Road Map' for features to be added. My suspicion is that we may not see them until Designer hits v2.0, which will be the next upgrade that will be paid-for and which (to the best of my knowledge) does not have a release date.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are other Illustrator features that have no equivalent in Designer that I would characterise as "<i>would be nice to have but not a deal-breaker"</i> but which other letterers may use more and whose absence they would feel more keenly. There's no equivalent of Illustrator's Image Trace, for example. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also missing are a Knife tool (for slicing up shapes after they're drawn) and a Blend tool (where you can map one shape onto another and the software draws a user-specified number of intermediate steps transforming, say, a triangle into a square).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's also no way to apply a calligraphic brush stroke to a shape (like a balloon). I like this effect a lot and use it frequently, but I can live without it. You <i>can</i> apply a slight stroke weight variation, however, which is a decent approximation of the same effect. Again, other people's mileage may vary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All of these are on the developers' road map, but there's no formal timescale for when any of them will actually appear.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So, in summary, yes, you probably can replicate an </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Illustrator-based</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> lettering workflow using Designer, with some fairly significant caveats. Some of those caveats listed above may well be deal-breakers for many letterers, but everyone's workflow is so different and so personalised that it's impossible to say <i>which</i> ones might be problematic for a specific letterer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nonetheless, Designer is very, very near to being a direct replacement for Illustrator and I continue to watch its development closely. The iOS version is particularly exciting since it brings the very real possibility of being able letter comics on an iPad Pro, taking advantage of the best-in-class digital drawing capabilities of the Apple Pencil.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Further posts on this as and when updates to the software bring us closer to that goal of a feature-complete Illustrator replacement.</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-24459565529773836922019-12-30T09:44:00.000+00:002019-12-30T10:26:21.966+00:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Facts matter: an apology</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Facts. They're important. Recently, talking on social media about a previous matter relating to Bleeding Cool and Rich Johnston specifically, I got something wrong and I owe Rich an apology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To be clear: I don't like Bleeding Cool. I don't like what they do or the way they do it, but that isn't the issue here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A few years back, I got a surprising amount of stick for criticising the wave of outrage directed at Jeremy Clarkson over his "striking public sector workers should be executed in front of their families" comment. People were aghast that I was "defending Jeremy Clarkson". Except that <i>wasn't</i> what I was doing. Clarkson's remark was the punchline to a perfectly good joke about the BBC's "balanced coverage" policy — my point, the <i>principle</i> I was defending, was that it is fundamentally wrong to strip words of their context and use them to claim someone said something that they patently didn't say. My <i>point</i> was that if we allowed such behaviour to go unchallenged then <i>none of us is safe. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If we allow someone to be misrepresented simply because we don't like them, or because the false statement or sentiment attributed to them aligns with our own feelings about them, then it stops being a principle and who will stand up for us when we're on the receiving end?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which brings us to my apology. For the purposes of clarity, what I said (more or less) was that Bleeding Cool gave a platform to white supremacist Vox Day and that, when faced with a backlash, Rich Johnston was removed from his position and that this was obviously a transparent attempt at damage limitation because he was back in post a couple of days later as if nothing had happened.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To his credit, Rich sent me a perfectly civil email simply saying "That isn't true". So I googled the whole sorry affair.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And it <i>isn't</i> true. It was initially reported by some online sources that Rich had been removed, due (I think) to confusion between his role/job title at BC and that of Mark Seifert, author of the Vox Day interview.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don't know now whether I missed the subsequent clarifications on this point, or whether my own inherent biases have cause me to remember the matter very selectively. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It doesn't matter. I was wrong. People can (and have) argued at length about how much happens on BC without Rich's knowledge, and I think it's uncontroversial to say that the whole interview with Day was, at the very least, disastrously misjudged, but none of that matters, because <i>facts</i> matter and I made a specific accusation against a specific person based on incorrect information.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Truth and facts are under attack from all sides. There are people and organisations out there in the new and old media actively trying to undermine the very notion of objective 'fact' and they need to be resisted with every fibre of our being.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And that's the thing. Facts either matter, or they don't, and I believe that they do. We can't defend the notion of 'objective truth' if we only choose to defend it in instances that align with our own philosophical, moral or political positions. We have to be better than that. <i>I</i> have to be better than that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rich: I got this wrong. I'm sorry, and I wanted to set the record straight.</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-70898888807244802062019-10-26T11:21:00.002+01:002020-06-11T18:19:13.708+01:00Desert Island Fonts<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><br />
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About a million years ago, artist <a href="https://www.pauljholden.com/" target="_blank">PJ Holden</a> (who's actually a very handy letterer himself) tweeted on the subject of lettering:</div>
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<i>"Ok-you have six fonts you have to live with forever: what are they?"</i></div>
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And then rather presciently added… <i>"(This is a good starting point for a blog post...)"</i></div>
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I dutifully started typing up a blog post on the subject and then, unsurprisingly, forgot all about it. When I decided to revive this blog, however, I remembered that half-written post and tracked it down.</div>
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So. If I was only allowed six fonts to try and make my way as a letterer…?</div>
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You can probably get away with just one all-purpose dialogue font to do the heavy lifting… one that's 'neutral' in tone (something 'bouncy' feels specific to stories that are lighter in tone, something heavier or spikier is likely more suitable for darker or more serious projects, so you'd need to steer a course between the two).</div>
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I'd almost certainly plump for Blambot's <b>Heavy Mettle BB,</b> mainly because you get an all upper and a mixed-case version, plus an Extra Bold weight. I've used it on a wide variety of projects (from <i>Giant Days</i> for BOOM to <i>SIX</i> for 451) and it's never looked out of place. The letterforms themselves also put me in mind of John Workman's always-amazing lettering, which is never a bad thing.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju748grXggjanZJ_ZsXTBiIJumBHdoInVPTW34p0rGHFqcTRW6L42Nwmixb3EsRNdrpITac6m0Yni83EWHaOLN5iTCMrZ09b7FcTMJDtFig0YyfXyN3G2N5hZD0c_zVyXkmde0rJeYOeA/s1600/HMettle_Example_Giant_Days.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="662" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju748grXggjanZJ_ZsXTBiIJumBHdoInVPTW34p0rGHFqcTRW6L42Nwmixb3EsRNdrpITac6m0Yni83EWHaOLN5iTCMrZ09b7FcTMJDtFig0YyfXyN3G2N5hZD0c_zVyXkmde0rJeYOeA/s400/HMettle_Example_Giant_Days.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Giant Days #47:</b> Words by John Allison, art by Max Sarin, colours by Whitney Colgar</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVT2qVrgTWfEZZLGySdTgz6fatrDpauiQosx4VuBinxYUc-m4GZwgOodA_cNt89oqjFEytH2M_1AIQU4a1DOtZsrtYLPV7SxxtOd9l_teOjHxbZ8y0KDdzhLKGHn8vjrux6F9T_vjQfc/s1600/HMettle_Example_SIX.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="712" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVT2qVrgTWfEZZLGySdTgz6fatrDpauiQosx4VuBinxYUc-m4GZwgOodA_cNt89oqjFEytH2M_1AIQU4a1DOtZsrtYLPV7SxxtOd9l_teOjHxbZ8y0KDdzhLKGHn8vjrux6F9T_vjQfc/s400/HMettle_Example_SIX.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>SIX #1:</b> Words by Andi Ewington, art by Mack Chater, colours by Dee Cunniffe</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWVC94olQdQFpRsKzKc2TSpeQlR_i2bVPbifRQd4nUI9ZMtIs-urngtjFY3oDY7U7Cx-h1vqHho8Xke4vSZpdyVgVsjrBhQY23tPzYaVwu7Zz1ho7IOFjwEGkHBmiHi-bz64UWei2LDo0/s1600/HMettle_Example_Weavers.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="723" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWVC94olQdQFpRsKzKc2TSpeQlR_i2bVPbifRQd4nUI9ZMtIs-urngtjFY3oDY7U7Cx-h1vqHho8Xke4vSZpdyVgVsjrBhQY23tPzYaVwu7Zz1ho7IOFjwEGkHBmiHi-bz64UWei2LDo0/s400/HMettle_Example_Weavers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Weavers #1:</b> Words by Si Spurrier, art by Dylan Burnett, colours by Triona Farrell</i></td></tr>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
You'll need at least one ‘handwriting’ font for the inevitable diary/ journal/ letters. Handwriting fonts are the bane of my life — I must have spent hundreds of pounds on dozens of fonts and the inescapable truth is that fonts that actually look like handwriting are never legible for large blocks of text, and ones that are legible never look much like handwriting. Given the choice between these two options, I always opt for legibility and assume that the reader will be able to infer that the text is meant to be 'hand-written' from context.</div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
My default choice is almost always Comicraft's <b>CCDearDiary.</b> (Honourable mention for Blambot's <b>Chewed Pen BB,</b> which has the benefit of being free for amateur/small press/indie letterers.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUeEHca3DjiH2bEKkQ0MojElaSmzIaox29mM5hRtpljN3m7A-4hyphenhyphenOo6LbktPqQv38fj0SOHvUOOlsNIFdoMcPY7ClvJnFIyCBa_CJx5cd_LSdRaxbmib0BsyLUmPH7PRrVoFtUPLum6U/s1600/Desert+Journal+Font.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUeEHca3DjiH2bEKkQ0MojElaSmzIaox29mM5hRtpljN3m7A-4hyphenhyphenOo6LbktPqQv38fj0SOHvUOOlsNIFdoMcPY7ClvJnFIyCBa_CJx5cd_LSdRaxbmib0BsyLUmPH7PRrVoFtUPLum6U/s320/Desert+Journal+Font.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
You need one ‘clean’ sound effect font to do the bulk of the SFX lettering. I'm not a fan of using dozens of different fonts for SFX on any given project, so this would be no major hardship for me.</div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I'd probably settle for Blambot's <b>Fight To The Finish BB.</b> It's not my absolute favourite, but comes with multiple weights/styles and is neither too jaunty for 'serious' books nor too weighty for lighter ones.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmuIduxU9lPQNdSA8SxyoB0UFzs1lmHBLFlxrwdzu-utzWcqw0_H0XsheGwhMb9DW0CFCvcTBqiZx7M1jxKETVOofHE6a-SCCgMEsyCfiykuc7vIQ4jlifxZArhmhK7D2qaPynxDtOxc/s1600/Desert+SFX+Font.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="506" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmuIduxU9lPQNdSA8SxyoB0UFzs1lmHBLFlxrwdzu-utzWcqw0_H0XsheGwhMb9DW0CFCvcTBqiZx7M1jxKETVOofHE6a-SCCgMEsyCfiykuc7vIQ4jlifxZArhmhK7D2qaPynxDtOxc/s400/Desert+SFX+Font.jpg" width="348" /></a></div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Add in one rough/brush SFX font for variety. I'd go with Blambot's <b>Beelzebrush BB</b> — it comes in regular and black weights, with alternate font versions for both weights, so you can get six non-repeating ‘O’s in that BOOOOOOM by using the uppercase ‘O’, the lowercase ‘o’ and then zero, and then repeating with the alternate version of the font.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEr218V8hbduCsyi2L7lmliiOdXi45GArIRMBt4BGsjhyphenhyphenns9svELwg21bMetMdGwbW3ZCj9F8V5B5mQlBKE4ALntrV76LZk21kKDgCQJ1FLLZRNQQmPw1mM9IkLawHQiqHBQevxN_TRLE/s1600/Desert+Brush+SFX.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="762" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEr218V8hbduCsyi2L7lmliiOdXi45GArIRMBt4BGsjhyphenhyphenns9svELwg21bMetMdGwbW3ZCj9F8V5B5mQlBKE4ALntrV76LZk21kKDgCQJ1FLLZRNQQmPw1mM9IkLawHQiqHBQevxN_TRLE/s400/Desert+Brush+SFX.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Two left…? A couple of general purpose design/titling/signage fonts, maybe? Comicraft's <b>CCHipflask </b>and <b>CCEnemyLines.</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5j0Fe8kVvv5uOsBSTb1yGcNbbM4s9fhZSwyGZqd4_J2vNHPJqMtOD7GVoylAptkSrvqiqkc-3_ZXZk8Ou9dYW1HNkRACkD8F9J6NLoEYJsiepJF8K9o56-h9ADSgTMFDqsT0_2lu_TmA/s1600/Desert+Design+Font.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="846" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5j0Fe8kVvv5uOsBSTb1yGcNbbM4s9fhZSwyGZqd4_J2vNHPJqMtOD7GVoylAptkSrvqiqkc-3_ZXZk8Ou9dYW1HNkRACkD8F9J6NLoEYJsiepJF8K9o56-h9ADSgTMFDqsT0_2lu_TmA/s400/Desert+Design+Font.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
The obvious omission here is any kind of special/creature dialogue fonts. I'm not averse to using those, but (like a lot of letterers lately) I'm trying to push back on their over-use. In all honesty, you can probably distinguish that robot/vampire/whatever dialogue with some creative balloon and colour choices, so I haven't chosen any.</div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
And just to tidy that all up:</div>
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<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Heavy Mettle BB:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/yDTjfQyp5w">http://www.blambot.com/font_heavymettle.shtml</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
CCDearDiary:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/warGuqrCpg">https://www.comicbookfonts.com/Dear-Diary-p/cl314i.htm</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Chewed Pen BB<br />
<a href="https://blambot.com/collections/all-fonts/products/chewed-pen" target="_blank">https://blambot.com/collections/all-fonts/products/chewed-pen</a><br />
Fight To The Finish BB:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/hWC2ceb81B">http://www.blambot.com/font_fttf.shtml </a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Beelzebrush BB:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/UnQctvHzSP">http://www.blambot.com/font_beelzebrush.shtml</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
CCHipflask:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/7I0qRBKCzp">https://www.comicbookfonts.com/Hip-Flask-p/dl244.htm</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
CCEnemyLines:</div>
<div style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed;"><a href="https://t.co/AMP0GV1Rfb">https://www.comicbookfonts.com/Enemy-Lines-p/dl247.htm</a></span></div>
Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-52621331325182442522019-10-21T09:56:00.000+01:002019-10-21T09:56:44.680+01:00Quick Workflow Hints #1<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
I really need to stop neglecting this blog. I apologise – I've been lured away by the siren call of other social media and my brain has been mildly broken by three years of unending Brexit madness. Let's try and get some content back on here on at least a semi-regular basis!</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
So… in that spirit, I'll try to get the ball rolling with some shorter posts about simple things that might help your workflow. This will likely often be Mac-specific, so further apologies to users of other platforms, but Macs are what I know…!</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: center;">
<b><u>Quick Workflow Hint #1</u></b></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Here's a handy Mac Finder hint… you all know about <b>CMD-ALT-I</b>…? Forgive me if you already do, but it's <i>incredibly</i> useful if you don't.</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Where CMD-I in the Finder gives you an info window on your selected item, CMD-ALT-I does two things. On multiple selections, it shows you all the commonly shared info on those files (so if they're <i>not</i> all, say, grayscale, it <i>won't</i> tell you the colour space) and the combined disk space they take up. If you want to change the default application to open all the <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">JPEGs (or whatever) in a single folder but leave the general setting for the default unchanged, you can do it here.</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="caret-color: rgb(29, 33, 41); color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
On a single file selection, it gives you a persistent floating 'inspector' window, so you can use the down-arrow key to work down a list of (say) TIFFs and the info window will update for each new file as it's highlighted, so you can check that all the TIFFs are the same size (it will only give you pixel dimensions, but you can immediately see if some of the files are a different size), that they're all CMYK, even that they all have the same colour profile.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Not earth-shattering, I know, but this regularly saves me a couple of minutes and those minutes all add up over repetitious tasks.</div>
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Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-26501828291506645862017-11-07T13:24:00.000+00:002017-11-07T20:15:24.701+00:00Value Your Time: No One Else Will<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I recently mentioned on Twitter that I was having a good work day, averaging eight pages of lettering per hour, which prompted a surprised reaction from some people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So… I thought it was worth breaking this down. I'm amazed how many freelancers seem to struggle with the idea of valuing their time appropriately and managing it with their "business head" on. Make no mistake: as a freelancer, you're doing something creative, but you <i>are a businessperson</i> and you can end up either starving or working an insane number of hours if you don't get into the habit of business-like thinking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So… that eight pages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I aim to letter a page every ten minutes on average. That's not to say that I stop working on a page after ten minutes, or cut corners to hit an arbitrary time limit, but if a page takes much more than ten minutes, I try to stay conscious of the fact that I'm now behind schedule and make an extra effort not to dally over easier pages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The key thing is: those ten minutes are the actual time spent lettering the page. There's a whole lot of other stuff that goes into getting a book across the finish line. Let's assume a standard 22-page book, so we're talking about three hours and forty minutes to letter the book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">First of all, I treat preparing a book for lettering as a separate task. It's a fairly dull, unchallenging process, so at the end of each working day, when I'm likely feeling a bit worn out, I'll prep the next day's book so I can hit the ground running in the morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The script needs reformatting (a process detailed <a href="http://clintflickerlettering.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/lettering-in-adobe-illustrator-one.html">here</a>) which is usually fairly quick, but dependent on exactly how the writer has formatted it originally, can be quite time-consuming.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijeGe7Eu-0tI52-Xo3P8npNMUOPfdbAUOjpZ5RuYKVxoETVvAI2Vj-LIOh9UILTpfjg7Cw9eMMQiipI_vwFASK3xB9FLyi6X6F8VYZyTI_WI3swqbVuTYPpwQ5BavdrygcMzNHvEkcL30/s1600/BAD_SCRIPT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="845" height="99" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijeGe7Eu-0tI52-Xo3P8npNMUOPfdbAUOjpZ5RuYKVxoETVvAI2Vj-LIOh9UILTpfjg7Cw9eMMQiipI_vwFASK3xB9FLyi6X6F8VYZyTI_WI3swqbVuTYPpwQ5BavdrygcMzNHvEkcL30/s400/BAD_SCRIPT.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then I create blank Illustrator pages for the whole issue and insert those blanks into an InDesign document that I'll use later for generating PDF proofs. Once all that's done, I place the art on each Illustrator page and copy and paste the text from the script onto the lettering documents, ensuring that text formatting matches (pasting text into Illustrator doesn't keep bolds and italics, so you need to manually re-apply those).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That whole process usually takes about an hour, which translates into adding near enough an extra three minutes per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then the lettering, which takes an average of ten minutes per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After that, I need to generate a PDF proof, upload it to somewhere like Dropbox and email off a link to the proof to the editor or the creators. That takes about ten minutes — or maybe another half a minute per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At some point, the corrections will come back. Occasionally, 'notes' will actually be cover for a stealth re-write, but this isn't the place for that rant. Even a 'normal' round of corrections will probably take an hour… call it another three minutes per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Repeat the proofing process for another thirty seconds per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Assuming there are no further rounds of corrections, that means that each page has effectively taken <i>seventeen</i> minutes. That's an extra seven minutes of non-billable time that you need to make sure is covered by your page rate — whilst it <i>looks</i> like you're doing six pages an hour, you're <i>actually</i> doing less than four.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once you've had approval, you'll need to upload the final files. Whilst you can automate the export process to a degree, when batch exporting, say, EPS files, it's still necessary to re-open those files and manually delete the artwork layer. The whole process probably takes another twenty minutes, or another minute per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At some point, you'll need to generate an invoice and get that sent off. Even if you don't have to expend time chasing payment, that's probably another ten minutes of work there, or near enough another thirty seconds per page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So… that's eighteen and a half minutes per page, assuming only one round of corrections, and assuming that you don't have to chase payment on your invoice. One extra round of corrections will easily push that total over twenty minutes per page, meaning that you're doing <i>less than three</i> pages an hour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All of which neatly illustrates how all that 'invisible', non-billable stuff quickly adds up and eats into your page rate. You need to count all of it and keep track of it, or your page rate can quickly fall to the equivalent of an hourly rate lower than you'd make flipping burgers or stacking supermarket shelves.</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-33870790392619807682016-12-31T14:55:00.001+00:002017-01-01T09:59:39.537+00:00Looking Forward, Looking Back…<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, good riddance, 2016. What a thoroughly dismal year you turned out to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brexit. Trump. Seemingly <i>everybody</i> dying. Not just distant celebrities (and, for the record, it's okay to be upset about those people dying… if their work was important to you, they became part of <i>your</i> life) but people like Stephen Prestwood, a prolific UK small press artist with whom I've worked for years, like Stewart 'WR Logan' Perkins, a much-loved member of UK comic fandom who I met often enough to consider a friend. Like Steve Dilllon, who I never got to know personally, but who was a constant fixture in my comic-reading life for three decades and was a good friend to some people I know quite well. Somehow, it all felt closer to home this year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the plus column, I worked on a great many fantastic books with too many fantastic creators and editors to list here. I still can't believe that I closed out 2016 with 8,646 pages lettered.*</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also very much in the plus column, was meeting up with a posse of fellow letterers at NYCC in October. I hope Sal Cipriano won't mind me stealing his accomplished selfie from Facebook to share here, which shows (left to right): Phil Balsman, me, Deron Bennett, Nic J. Shaw, Taylor Esposito, Nate Piekos, Thomas Mauer, Paige Pumphrey, and Sal himself.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5nxHemXa6HwyZ58lc5lSEoBIqntjcq7phbgWk0ks7O7YIZnKno3l_tdrZ5rQWL907x2NnvWJ3ayWJOk8Z6lNIZhfnumiP0TIQ0bhIS5hhXxZs8ZJ6GZoh3ugCpbMNOUbL_ABZgM1zh7M/s1600/14485026_10154604161551018_8621077028342370996_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5nxHemXa6HwyZ58lc5lSEoBIqntjcq7phbgWk0ks7O7YIZnKno3l_tdrZ5rQWL907x2NnvWJ3ayWJOk8Z6lNIZhfnumiP0TIQ0bhIS5hhXxZs8ZJ6GZoh3ugCpbMNOUbL_ABZgM1zh7M/s320/14485026_10154604161551018_8621077028342370996_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Photo shamelessly stolen from Sal Cipriano. What is the collective noun for letterers anyway.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although I wasn't expecting to win Comics Alliance's award for Outstanding Letterer of 2016, by virtue of simply not being the best letterer on the list, they did have some kind words to say about my work, which provided a real lift to the spirits at the end of the year. You can <a href="http://comicsalliance.com/outstanding-letterer-2016/">read them here.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And looking forward? I'm going to rescue my drawing table from the great pile of junk I've stacked up on it, and I'm going to start drawing again. At least an hour a day drawing, and another hour writing. I've missed doing both those things, and I'm determined to do more in 2017. If that means my working day ends up being two hours longer, so be it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, screw you, 2016. Onwards and upwards into 2017.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*That's not try-outs, covers or non-story pages. That's actual comic book pages.** An average of almost 24 a day, every day, for the whole of 2016. Wow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">**Just in case anyone is now trying to work how much money I made in 2016, I should mention that a fair chunk of those pages were for small press projects, which I still try to work on whenever my schedule will allow!</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-21500908549394818932016-03-20T11:26:00.002+00:002016-03-20T11:27:01.850+00:00Comic Lettering Minutiae: Punctuation…<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Number 1:</u></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2turQKCUB56CEE9UGbDvLUMoexzs5V38H-Kg9CB5eNo8TDz81h1WoEgWwKPNkIKz_AZN9RzWcrlrONC5or3RxV-uyzaZXU46nY-2AY0b8aRP-kxdY7KnqbMYFyHBNc2r6zZciXu9PMH8/s1600/Query_Excalamation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2turQKCUB56CEE9UGbDvLUMoexzs5V38H-Kg9CB5eNo8TDz81h1WoEgWwKPNkIKz_AZN9RzWcrlrONC5or3RxV-uyzaZXU46nY-2AY0b8aRP-kxdY7KnqbMYFyHBNc2r6zZciXu9PMH8/s320/Query_Excalamation.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's <b><i>?!</i></b> not <b><i>!?</i></b> — you're adding emphasis to a question. If it's not a question, then the sentence shouldn't have a question mark in it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Number 2:</u></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZXzMYECcPG2O5DiQdHyQYcPCzooaKq2qzXYw6ifbB7mRmiwNyrEN_lvHHB4HvyOk7Isu2XFZ02kHqh0GAzOMJjamHm4g3yCymg6jEavqd4Bw9nR-YgvOSE4UwolAD8vN9gpEeS45xQQ4/s1600/KATHOOM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZXzMYECcPG2O5DiQdHyQYcPCzooaKq2qzXYw6ifbB7mRmiwNyrEN_lvHHB4HvyOk7Isu2XFZ02kHqh0GAzOMJjamHm4g3yCymg6jEavqd4Bw9nR-YgvOSE4UwolAD8vN9gpEeS45xQQ4/s400/KATHOOM.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sound effects don't generally have exclamation marks (or any other kind of punctuation) at the end. Whilst I'll use them very occasionally for comedic effect, as firm rule, I don't think they're appropriate, for two reasons…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Firstly, aesthetically, the usually-rectangular upright of the character combined with the more-or-less circular point has a habit of throwing nasty tangents on a regular basis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Secondly, logically, the purpose of an exclamation mark in prose is to add emphasis to a phrase or word that cannot easily be denoted otherwise. In a novel, the body text has historically all tended to be the same font at the same point size with only italics, or possibly all caps, available for additional emphasis. The exclamation mark exists to add emphasis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With a sound effect, if the text is in a poster font, bright red and set to 144pt, it's probably got enough emphasis!</span></div>
Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-47667972291467389112016-02-01T11:53:00.000+00:002016-02-02T12:40:51.200+00:00Adventures in Space and Time<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of the key, unique elements of the comic medium is its ability to use space to create time — check out this <a href="http://balak01.deviantart.com/art/about-DIGITAL-COMICS-111966969" target="_blank">brilliant flip-book-style illustration of the concept</a> by Balak 01 over on deviantArt.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I came across a really neat illustration of this, and its relevance to lettering while looking for a sequence from Swamp Thing #51 as part of a completely different conversation.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here's the scene, written by Alan Moore, art by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala, colours by Tatjana Wood and lettering by John Costanza. (Click any of these images to embiggen.)</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHB1iUXMCODrvVcwPlbdJhK_UlsVkLy-9lJpGS3EJ0QFTtanml44mhSVt4hnADhOX4Bk6UPcF170gCSxtiulVJbdE1dVoOiCN7T_QG4NceHj6USA5_AazEN73Sdb2_kLel0pIGLdwt04/s1600/ST_Baffle_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHB1iUXMCODrvVcwPlbdJhK_UlsVkLy-9lJpGS3EJ0QFTtanml44mhSVt4hnADhOX4Bk6UPcF170gCSxtiulVJbdE1dVoOiCN7T_QG4NceHj6USA5_AazEN73Sdb2_kLel0pIGLdwt04/s320/ST_Baffle_01.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swamp Thing & John Constantine © DC Comics</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was struck, however, by the placement of the last balloon in panel 3. I should mention that back in 1986, it was far more common for letterers to be given placement guides by the editor, so we have no way of knowing whether the decision to have the balloon straddle the border was made by Costanza, or editor Karen Berger, but at first glance, it's curious:</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdpbHWghv6GSUDqgKL3Un38ZInq1rDjhwA_wrUsVvprxoq5Qz5mSIYS4WU773DpcaR2SgDrqMeRrtlKp4RKT1qqLUAkuo3zGLFXG2UmV2bsRQZJ15fE6aMfZmyxRz0yCb3WLsmuCT0ak/s1600/ST_Baffle_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdpbHWghv6GSUDqgKL3Un38ZInq1rDjhwA_wrUsVvprxoq5Qz5mSIYS4WU773DpcaR2SgDrqMeRrtlKp4RKT1qqLUAkuo3zGLFXG2UmV2bsRQZJ15fE6aMfZmyxRz0yCb3WLsmuCT0ak/s320/ST_Baffle_02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There's clearly acres of dead space within the panel to accommodate the balloon, and yet it breaks the panel borders and straddles the gutter. These are things a letterer usually avoids except when really tight for space or tackling a difficult page layout where the reading order isn't immediately obvious and it's necessary to give some extra assistance guiding the reader's eye.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">None of which applies here.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What the floating balloon <i>does</i> do, however, is pull the reader's eye into the top right corner of the large bottom panel. If you were reading the page normally, without the straddling balloon, your eye would automatically begin the final panel in the traditional manner, starting top left.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Meaning that the first thing your eye would hit in the panel is the punchline.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Instead, the balloon pulls your eye to the empty space where John Constantine <i>should</i> be standing, but isn't. And then your eye has to travel across the empty space to the top left corner, physically delaying the reader getting to the punchline, using <i>space</i> to create a <i>pause</i> and effectively dictating the comic timing of the joke.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAF4_VQdRvxR6eJ2BqR1eBPIS1DYVOeAEQKhqo5mnLQw271uyR-gTTnJECelqlmeivvcdzL1Et4xbGsjHf6NgnRIZAXEy5ffko4RemmedEnZWoiO7mJ4brvXSU3NM4dfuWhRmAVq7Dv0/s1600/ST_Baffle_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAF4_VQdRvxR6eJ2BqR1eBPIS1DYVOeAEQKhqo5mnLQw271uyR-gTTnJECelqlmeivvcdzL1Et4xbGsjHf6NgnRIZAXEy5ffko4RemmedEnZWoiO7mJ4brvXSU3NM4dfuWhRmAVq7Dv0/s320/ST_Baffle_03.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's one tiny<span style="font-size: small;"> decision made by either the editor or the letterer, but it neatly demonstrates how small lettering choices can have significant effects on the storytelling rhythm and flow of a book.</span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-201280339787530592016-01-03T17:10:00.001+00:002016-01-03T17:10:04.420+00:00Onwards Into The Future!<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A belated Happy New Year to one and all…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I did <i>slightly</i> better about putting some content on this blog in 2015, despite lettering 6,454 pages in total for the year and I'm hoping to do better in 2016.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the meantime, I hope everyone who reads this and patiently waits for the rare occasions I actually put something <i>worth</i> reading on here had a brilliant New Year, and I wish you all a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2016.</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-936135997564850082015-12-17T10:00:00.000+00:002015-12-17T10:00:12.485+00:00Quick Illustrator Tip#3<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Text Boxes</span><div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've had cause recently to work on Illustrator pages that have originally been lettered by other people and was surprised to learn that they weren't using text boxes, but were rather simply clicking on the document and typing on a path.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nothing wrong with that, but when I queried this, they seemed genuinely unaware that Illustrator can create text boxes, which have certain advantages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Creating a text box is ridiculously easy:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitCxSnzlmxQihExVObng-ASETcXschdIpcCdUxe41hL66QKU50axk5xwKsTsYb9cfwPtDRIM1XlF-1dgbFpThGqFv6gjnmU2k8JGIO7F59BMrxFGpGcJYd0F03D4Q2FRTc_6ae1XlvVAE/s1600/Text_Box_AI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitCxSnzlmxQihExVObng-ASETcXschdIpcCdUxe41hL66QKU50axk5xwKsTsYb9cfwPtDRIM1XlF-1dgbFpThGqFv6gjnmU2k8JGIO7F59BMrxFGpGcJYd0F03D4Q2FRTc_6ae1XlvVAE/s320/Text_Box_AI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you're copying and pasting text from a script, using a text box has one key advantage — you can create a text box that corresponds to the rough area available on the art for its speech balloon. When you paste in the text, the lines will break naturally and it will often become instantly clear how best to stack the text. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In some cases, the text will form itself into a satisfactory stacking arrangement with no further work on your part.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc3NyDNhXkk-3QXQfcWIf-qf96MAlXwMKjc1ZYDMzJvwZgFV2L_MMoGYQ7_DyRQFOwGRT1FBASPOAFWVK5XQLs-0L9aKuCFTqlcQRLU-s4cf4lCEzN9KZIClBa46gaeHMrTw96VIJcLi0/s1600/B%2526TGTH02_Example.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc3NyDNhXkk-3QXQfcWIf-qf96MAlXwMKjc1ZYDMzJvwZgFV2L_MMoGYQ7_DyRQFOwGRT1FBASPOAFWVK5XQLs-0L9aKuCFTqlcQRLU-s4cf4lCEzN9KZIClBa46gaeHMrTw96VIJcLi0/s320/B%2526TGTH02_Example.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of the text in the above example has had any of the lines turned manually (ie: had returns inserted by me to force the lines to break). It doesn't always (or even often) work that way, but sometimes it does, and it's a time saving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It may not sound like much, but saving a few seconds per page quickly adds up to minutes over a whole book, and minutes saved here are extra ones you can spend making that sound effect look extra-special, or drawing a perfect mask for that speech balloon.</span></div>
Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-4137935198666317382015-10-15T11:13:00.000+01:002015-10-15T11:14:07.313+01:00Credit Where Credit's Due…<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XxafbwxZK1HaWNvwnQMAv0k9H6T7at_75RLDSTDi6Xj2PkCaZfF9F65ogfAIkmIE4aciCwE4NGIzwd0QrXPBaol-PylCpFaoHP3PTao-HKed04Zj5-iEMkOfeJQ05ymXDjjLFs99ejY/s1600/Letterer-Approved-Stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XxafbwxZK1HaWNvwnQMAv0k9H6T7at_75RLDSTDi6Xj2PkCaZfF9F65ogfAIkmIE4aciCwE4NGIzwd0QrXPBaol-PylCpFaoHP3PTao-HKed04Zj5-iEMkOfeJQ05ymXDjjLFs99ejY/s320/Letterer-Approved-Stamp.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(That font is Blambot's ProtestPaint BB, if you're interested…)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not really a militant on the subject of crediting letterers; I've never been one to agitate for a front cover credit, for example. Some creative teams or publishers have taken to giving the letterer a cover credit, which is fantastic but I have no illusions — no one is buying a book based on who's done the lettering.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ours is a contributory, supporting role in the creative process, but that <i>doesn't</i> mean it's inconsequential or unworthy of recognition.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So… what <i>does</i> get my back up is when a reviewer credits the writer, artist, colourist, sometimes even the editor, and doesn't include the letterer.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm certainly not asking for reviewers to undertake a detailed analysis of the lettering in every book, but the choices a letterer makes concerning dialogue fonts and balloon styles, the way they choose to handle sound effects, make every bit as much of a contribution to the overall look of any given book as the choices made by the colourist.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're not <i>supposed</i> to notice the craft of the letterer; it's <i>supposed</i> to be more-or-less invisible. Nonetheless, ours is the hand that ties the writer's words to the artist's images in a fashion that's clear and readable, ours is the stage of the creative process that makes comics, well, <i>comics</i>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't think asking reviewers to remember that is too much.</span></span><br />
<br />Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-19457571697071513372015-06-04T09:53:00.002+01:002015-06-04T09:53:43.110+01:00It gets my back up…!<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Or, more accurately, my back-up.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've been startled over the course of this year so far to see the number of fellow creative professionals who've reported disruption to their schedules, or the loss of their work, due to hardware failure or data loss. Now, admittedly, before my life in comics I spent several years as a production manager, meaning that a non-trivial fraction of every working day was spent worry about contingency plans, but if you do any work of value on your computer, from paid freelance to work to cataloguing family photos to saving your favourite recipies, then, forgive my bluntness, but this is the best advice anyone is going to give you today:</span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Back your shit up.</span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(I'm going to talk about Macs, because I own Macs, and I know Macs. If anyone wants to chip in Windows/Linux back-up solutions in the comments, please feel free.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you own a Mac, you already have a head start, because you have <a href="http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/built-in-apps-retina/?cid=CDM-EU-39423#timemachine">Time Machine</a>. It's built-in, it's designed to be a back-up solution for people that don't use back-up solutions and people <i>still</i> don't use it! External USB hard drives are cheap. Buy one that's at least the same size as your internal drive; plug it in; your Mac will <i>actually ask you</i> if you want to use it for Time Machine. Click "yes" and you're done. Your Mac will now invisibly back itself up every hour until the drive is full, and then it will ask you if you want to a) switch to a bigger drive, or b) start deleting the oldest back-ups.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Level One:</i> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Time Machine is Level One of my back-up strategy. The external Time Machine drive is twice the size of my Mac's internal drive, so it keeps back-ups of my entire drive going back a decent length of time. I use it less for protection against data loss than almost as a versioning tool, and insurance against accidentally deleting or overwriting files. Meant to go "Save As" to create a new version of your file, but hit "Save" instead? No problem. Do your "Save As" and then use Time Machine to retrieve the old version of the file you've just over-written. Deleted a file only to discover that you actually still needed it? No problem, assuming that it was on your system for over an hour, Time Machine still has it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you own a Mac, enable Time Machine. Do it. You have <i>no excuse.</i> Short of USB ports? No problem — Apple sells the <a href="http://store.apple.com/uk/accessories/all-accessories/airport-wireless">Time Capsule</a>, which doesn't even need to be attached to your machine. Your Mac will back itself up over wifi.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Time Machine is great (as an aside, you can also use it migrate the entire contents of your computer* to a new Mac painlessly) but it has one key problem: it doesn't create a bootable back-up.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Level Two: </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If your Mac's internal drive fails and your machine won't boot, you can't start it up from a Time Machine back-up. If you hold down ALT (Option) at start-up, your Mac will look for alternative drives from which to boot. If the normal boot drive has failed, it will automatically look for another drive for start-up, and your Time Machine back-up ain't it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Which is why I have a <i>second</i> external drive hooked up to my machine. This one is a portable drive the same size as the internal. There are lots of third-party back-up solutions, but I use <a href="https://www.bombich.com/">Carbon Copy Cloner</a>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Because you can schedule CCC back-ups, and you can schedule your Mac's start-up time, my machine auto-boots at 6:00am and at 6:15, CCC makes a bootable clone copy of the hard drive, which takes about 20 minutes. By the time I sit down at my computer in the morning, the entire drive has been backed up, meaning that, in the event of a complete drive failure, I can boot from the clone and, at worst, I will have lost whatever work I've done that current day, since the CCC back-up. If you have the luxury of a lunch break, or time when you're reliably going to be away from your machine, you could set CCC to do one or more back-ups during the day.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(This is not to say you can't work while CCC is running — you can, but the machine slows down noticeably, and the back-up takes longer, so there's a trade-off.)</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Level Three:</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Archiving. Particularly if you're doing a full-time job, internal drives fill up rapidly, so it's sensible to have a <i>third</i> drive for archiving off old jobs. Fairly recently, I realised that this drive wasn't getting backed up by Time Machine. Now, I <i>could</i> add the archive to the Time Machine preferences, but this is largely static data, so backing it up hourly seems like overkill. I used to keep a rolling system of backing up to DVD, but optical media isn't always as reliable as people like to think, and the process was time-consuming and required extra record-keeping to maintain an index of what projected were archived to which disks.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So I bought a 4TB RAID1 drive. It's actually <i>two</i> standard 4TB drives in a single box. In a RAID0 configuration (these sound complicated, but it's literally a tick box to configure in the software) both drives are used to write data and the drive appears as a single 8TB drive.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have no idea why anyone uses RAID0. You have no data redundancy in this configuration and if <i>either</i> drive fails, all your data is gone. In RAID1 configuration (the default it ships with), identical data is written to <i>both</i> drives simultaneously, so it appears as a single 4TB drive on your desktop.<br /><br />In the even of a drive failing, I can simply order a replacement, carry on working from the still-working drive, and replace the failed one when the new drive arrives. Yes, it's possible that both drives might fail simultaneously, but we're entering mathematically improbable levels akin to my house being totalled by a falling jet airliner. Possible, but not really worth losing sleep over.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(There are higher RAID configurations, but RAID2, 3, 4, etc, simply describe more complex configurations of larger numbers of drives.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Level Four:</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I haven't yet implemented Level Four, but I'm mindful that I'm still vulnerable to, say, burglary or a house fire, so I'm currently investigating off-site back-up options like <a href="http://www.code42.com/crashplan/">CrashPlan</a>. Services like Dropbox might look like an option for off-site back-up, but I don't think they guarantee the integrity of your data, and I'd like something a little more solid. I'll update this article when I've made some progress with this.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For most people, you don't need to go further than Level One, or Level Two, but take a moment to stop and think about what's on your computer.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now think about how you'd feel if it was all gone. Think about how much it would cost you to recreate lost work. Think about what can't be replaced at all: family photos, correspondence… yes, some of this might be recoverable if you kept it in some Cloud services, but you're entirely reliant on someone else to look after what's precious to you.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Data storage is cheap. Backing up is easy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Back your shit up.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*Except Adobe CS products, which can't be migrated. You have to de-authorise your current Mac, run a Time Machine back-up, plug the Time Machine drive into your new Mac, restore everything <i>except</i> your CS applications, then install your CS apps fresh from the original installers. Thanks a bunch, Adobe.</span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-50590649165298422472015-04-10T16:48:00.000+01:002015-04-10T16:50:30.508+01:00Illustrator: Quick Tip of the Week #2<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A lot of people seem to struggle with the difference between the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool (the black arrow and the white arrow respectively at the top of your toolbox).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In simple terms, the Selection tool (black arrow, hit 'V' on your keyboard to use) is for moving, rotating and scaling whole objects or groups of objects, while the Direct Selection (white arrow, hit 'A' on your keyboard to use) is for manipulating objects within a group, or individual points or segments of a line within an object.<br /><br />But you can also use the Direct Selection tool to extract elements from a group or a merged object without ungrouping or releasing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Assuming that you're using the ALT-Add Shape To Area version of the Pathfinder merge (which leaves the elements of the merged shape as individual objects, rather than creating one new shape) then you can pick up one element of a group with the Direct Selection tool, then cut and paste, which will remove the element from the group and leave the rest of the group intact, which is much quicker than ungrouping, selecting, moving or deleting an element, then re-selecting the remaining objects and re-grouping/merging.</span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-90890150195359268562015-03-30T12:43:00.000+01:002015-03-30T15:52:40.938+01:00Illustrator: Quick Tip of the Week<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Illustrator is a strange piece of software, full of not-very-obvious features and counter-intuitive processes. I've met people who've used the application for years and were unaware of tricks and techniques I thought everyone knew…! By the same token, I've talked to people who've only been using Illustrator for a relatively short time who knew things that had passed me by completely…</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So… I'm going to post an Illustrator tip every few days until I run out of things to say! Feel free to ask questions or offer tips of your own in the comments. I'm running CS6, so also feel free to correct me in the comments if any tip I come up with works differently (or doesn't work at all) in different versions.<br /><br /><b>ALT-DRAG</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ALT (option) DRAG any object, or group of objects to create a duplicate. The layer(s) of the original item(s) will be preserved in the new versions.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Why not just copy and paste?</i><br />Because ALT-DRAG doesn't use the clipboard. If, for the sake of argument, you already have the text you want to use copied to the clipboard and you want to duplicate a balloon and text box so you can just paste the text in, this is the method for you.<br /><br />Also, copy and paste just dumps a duplicate slightly offset from your original, which you then still have to drag to where you want it. ALT-DRAG eliminates the need for the copy/paste, incorporating the copying into the same action as positioning the new element.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><i>I keep forgetting to hold down the ALT key before I drag…!</i><br />You can add ALT to the drag operation at any time right up until you release the mouse button to end the dragging. By the same token, if you change your mind and release ALT at any point up until you release the mouse button, the operation will revert to a normal 'move' instead of a copy.</span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-60405786735457135182015-03-09T13:26:00.000+00:002015-03-09T13:27:53.604+00:00Death and Taxes… but mostly taxes.<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Folks, for some of you, this is <i><b>important!</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Non-US freelancers… do you work for any US publishers? If so, do they have an up-to-date W8-BEN form on file for you? This is the declaration that that you are not a US citizen/resident and are not liable for US income tax. If your client doesn't have one of these, the IRS can insist that US income tax is deducted from your payments at source.<br /><br />You don't have to deal with the IRS in the United States, but you do need to ensure that each of your US-based clients holds a copy of this form for you, assuming you deal with them as an individual (sole trader) and not as a limited company or other trading entity.<br /><br />You can download a W8-BEN here: <a href="http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf">http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf</a><br /><br />And there are instructions on completing the form here: <a href="http://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw8ben/ch02.html">http://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw8ben/ch02.html</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To be honest, the instructions are nearly as confusing as the form, but the form is actually pretty straightforward, as far as I can tell.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The only bit that looks a little tricky is <b>Part I, Sections 5-7,</b> which, after some fevered Googling, seems to go like this if you are a <i><b>UK taxpayer.</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">5: N/A</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">6: The UTR (Unique Taxpayer Reference) you use in all your dealings with HMRC</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">7: Leave blank — this is for your client to add additional info when they submit the form.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Please note that I am not a financial adviser, and if you access to one, or if you use the services of an accountant, I would urge you to talk this through with them.</span></span></i></b></div>
Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-77455668105579744162015-01-01T11:35:00.000+00:002015-01-01T11:35:01.763+00:00Happy 2015!<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*Sigh*</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Another year goes past without any content being added to this blog, for which I can only offer my now-traditional apologies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If anything, this poor, neglected blog has been a victim of my success, with somewhere north of 6,500 pages lettered in 2014, an average of 19 per day, every single day of the year. In all honesty, it was too much, so I've pulled back a little and will try to do slightly fewer books in 2015, but perhaps do them better.<br /><br />And maybe do a little drawing, and some writing. Some of it may even be in the form of posts to this blog!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the meantime, get yourself over to Comicraft's website for the traditional <a href="http://www.comicbookfonts.com/">New Year's Day Sale</a> — all fonts a bargain $20.15…!<br /><br />I'd also like to offer my thanks to everyone who's hired me to letter their book or design their logo in 2014. Over-commitment, blood pressure scares and adventures in emergency dentistry have meant this hasn't, perhaps, been my finest year but I hope that hasn't been too apparent in my work. Still, 2015 shuffles into view with moves afoot to address all those things, so it's onwards and upwards.<br /><br />See you in the funny books, folks!</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-6821483865054160552014-01-01T12:26:00.003+00:002014-01-01T12:26:44.541+00:00Happy New Year! Get The Fonts In!<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Just a quick drive-by posting to wish all and sundry in the blogosphere a happy and prosperous 2014. May the coming year be kinder to you all than the previous one.<br /><br />Also, a quick reminder that <i>today only</i> is the Comicraft New Year's Sale — all fonts just $20.14, so now's the time to head over to the site and grab a bargain (or three). Click <a href="http://www.comicbookfonts.com/">here</a> to visit the site.<br /><br />Exciting things are coming creatively for me in 2014, not all of them lettering-related and I hope to be able share some news about them as I spread my wings a little…<br /></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-9623637091132727592013-07-10T16:31:00.001+01:002013-07-10T16:45:51.140+01:00Head In The Clouds…? Saying 'No' to Adobe<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Soapbox time, I'm afraid…</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I can't help but contribute to the general furore over Adobe's Creative Cloud strategy. I know a lot has been said about this already, but I feel <i>incredibly</i> strongly about this.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For context, I have been a Photoshop user since v1.0 and have used every major version since then, excepting CS4, which I skipped. I've been an InDesign user since v2.0 (not CS2, but 2.0) and was a strong advocate in pushing two companies from a Quark/Postscript workflow to an InDesign/PDF one when Quark were fumbling the ball around XPress v4/5 and Adobe was picking it up with the original CS1 bundle.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Adobe has had an integral place in my workflow since about 1994. Their software, along with Apple's Macintosh platform, has played a major role in shaping my working life and the (primarily print-based) industries in which I've worked.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have no axe to grind with Adobe; in fact, they have amassed an enormous amount of my goodwill over almost two decades.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But no more. With Creative Cloud, Adobe has demonstrated such unbridled contempt for its customers, that I have no option other than to vote with my wallet.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In case you've been living in a cave for the last few months, here is a very quick summary of what Adobe has done:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Previously, as an Adobe customer you would buy one of a range of software bundles that most closely suited your working practises. If you only used Photoshop, you'd only buy Photoshop. If you specialised in Web design, you might buy a bundle that had Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver, or one with Premier, After Effects and Audition if you were working with video and audio. The first time you bought one of these bundles (all branded under the Creative Suite —CS— label) it would typically cost you anywhere between a few hundred pounds and a couple of thousand. Thereafter, you could take advantage of upgrade pricing whenever Adobe put out a new CS version or choose not to if the upgraded feature set didn't offer anything compelling.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Adobe has recently announced that, as of CS6, there will be no more CS versions, replaced instead by their new strategy, Creative Cloud.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here is how Creative Cloud works:<br /><br />One can either pay for a single programme of your choice, and pay £17.58 per month, or £46.88 per month and get access to <i>all</i> of Adobe's programmes. You download the software direct from Adobe's servers and it runs from your own hard drive, just like all the previous versions. The only difference is that, once a month, it dials home via your internet connection and checks with Adobe that you are paying the monthly fee. If you've stopped paying, the software stops working.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Let's run through my objections:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1) This has nothing to do with delivering benefit to customers. Adobe have been utterly bare-faced about this; monthly subs even out the peaks and troughs of their cash flow.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2) This has nothing to do with piracy. Creative Cloud has already been hacked by pirates so it can be run without paying the monthly fee. Every single person that was running Adobe software illegally will continue do so without paying a penny. The only people affected by this are Adobe's <i>legitimate customers.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3) The pricing is outrageous. US subscribers pay $50/month. UK customers pay £50/month — that's almost $75. Adobe has been challenged on their discrepancy of their European pricing before and have hidden behind vague excuses about shipping and regionalizaton costs. Now that the software is downloaded from central servers, these excuses are exposed as a lie.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4) The pricing is outrageous. If you used to purchase Adobe's most expensive bundle (Master Collection) <i>and</i> you upgraded it <i>every time</i> Adobe released a new version then you will save money on Creative Cloud. Every other customer gets screwed.<br /><br />The thing is, very few customers use Master Collection, because very few people who design for print also edit video; very few people in Web design need a fully-featured DTP package. Almost no one, in fact. The vast majority of Adobe's customers used one of the cheaper bundles.<br /><br />My last upgrade to my Design Standard bundle cost me less than £300. Under Creative Cloud, I will pay nearly <i>£600 every year.</i> Unless Adobe decides to increase the price, of course.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5) Adobe are holding us all to ransom. It's not unheard of for freelancers to encounter the occasional cashflow crisis — it's a line of work where the periods of most work very rarely coincide with the periods of abundant cash. Except, with Creative Cloud, if we don't make the monthly payments then software on which rely for our livelihood will <i>simply stop working.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I understand that for many people, the upfront costs of the Creative Suite were prohibitive and that the subscription model works better for them, regardless of the fact that the <i>overall</i> cost is far higher. Fine. Let them have their sub — I have no issue with that.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However, it doesn't work for me: it costs me more money and takes control of my finances away. I want to be able to <i>buy</i> my software in perpetuity at a time of my choosing. I'm perfectly happy for both options to exist but, at present, Adobe are only offering the subscription model. I will, therefore, run my copy of CS6 until such time as it will no longer work and, at that time, I will find alternative ways of delivering my work.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Creative Cloud is one long, almighty 'Screw you' from Adobe to their customer base. I have no hesitation in returning the sentiment.<br /><br />Someone called Sam Charrington posted the following on Adobe's Creative Cloud Facebook page, in response to a call from them for people's favourite jokes:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>A man goes into a pub and asks the landlord for a pint of bitter.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"Sorry," says the landlord, "we don't sell beer anymore, we rent it instead."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"But that's madness," says the man.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"It's called innovation," says the landlord.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"Oh well," says the man, "I'll rent a pint of bitter please."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"You can't just rent the bitter," says the landlord, "you have to rent the whisky, the rum, the lager, the gin, the vodka, the crisps and the pork scratchings - the whole lot."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"But I don't need all that, and I can't afford it," says the man.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"I don't care," says the landlord.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"But I've been coming here for years," says the man.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>"Talk to the hand..." says the landlord.</i></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Which, sadly, is a pretty accurate summary of the situation.</span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-34637399940764034262013-06-21T13:21:00.001+01:002013-06-21T13:21:56.754+01:00Dashing SFX: An Old School Look<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recently, I decided to resurrect a sound effect lettering style you don't see very much these days — the dashed outline.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Google, sadly, fails me on an image search for the sort of thing I'm talking about, so here's a quick example I doodled freehand while waiting for an FTP download to complete!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_lnJRQ3xZuIZsb8XyoFpheDMmOuDA_nownrpDWP5jeyqIc92583RzWCUT3Xegygbw3gTqoVDcYfAXmjIRN2_a9pUKv25vrPPGQejYq61W3xGQAZDj5o-NeRHrGVV8rOjlZ2Hl8i7dQSg/s1600/Dash_Sample.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_lnJRQ3xZuIZsb8XyoFpheDMmOuDA_nownrpDWP5jeyqIc92583RzWCUT3Xegygbw3gTqoVDcYfAXmjIRN2_a9pUKv25vrPPGQejYq61W3xGQAZDj5o-NeRHrGVV8rOjlZ2Hl8i7dQSg/s320/Dash_Sample.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you've read my Illustrator guide, you'll already know all about creating normal SFX, so we'll get through the basic process as quickly as possible…</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Create your text as normal:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCtBhvSzWy7LWnqSByxTpnibVA0fXWdI7XYOLa2cJz1vvehUQha_Ls4TnQu2A0AbSNPgqFhNofJj4LFmfXhaXD80euTMbV9EKmGBwEcv9rWC_TKjK1Qb0kbml-oILX21lbsalgAJumbDk/s1600/Initial_Text.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCtBhvSzWy7LWnqSByxTpnibVA0fXWdI7XYOLa2cJz1vvehUQha_Ls4TnQu2A0AbSNPgqFhNofJj4LFmfXhaXD80euTMbV9EKmGBwEcv9rWC_TKjK1Qb0kbml-oILX21lbsalgAJumbDk/s320/Initial_Text.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Convert to outlines, arrange to your satisfaction and merge:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrs91zGlMs7uDx5DWm81lqWYlBGEjgmm07mgxRlWjCOrrWiMmY8h1iSURZWpY-SwC0rxMNyw7z0P3Yt-hQHfvtD6oza7vLlSngyTJccTNYmWaUhuXfUCffi6npVWu6A523YGPAxpnp_WE/s1600/Merged_Text.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrs91zGlMs7uDx5DWm81lqWYlBGEjgmm07mgxRlWjCOrrWiMmY8h1iSURZWpY-SwC0rxMNyw7z0P3Yt-hQHfvtD6oza7vLlSngyTJccTNYmWaUhuXfUCffi6npVWu6A523YGPAxpnp_WE/s320/Merged_Text.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now, copy your SFX and use the Paste In Back function:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMnWCSqXpPOJ81TJFpsdfQaiQQV4O7Ztmxg9Z2VNtA_fdoutIL4EfEPMeVIqbfAfvyqXKaKLdzcAKUnYZXgTBx7HtH7_gFccXXJ9wicLLD-te26ShiErup7XvQLOnQI9gbrFYuSugOULE/s1600/Paste_Back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMnWCSqXpPOJ81TJFpsdfQaiQQV4O7Ztmxg9Z2VNtA_fdoutIL4EfEPMeVIqbfAfvyqXKaKLdzcAKUnYZXgTBx7HtH7_gFccXXJ9wicLLD-te26ShiErup7XvQLOnQI9gbrFYuSugOULE/s320/Paste_Back.jpg" width="161" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You now have an identical copy <i>behind</i> your original. It should still be selected but, if it's not, use the Selection tool to draw a marquee round the FX (which will select both versions) and then de-select the top one with SHIFT-Click.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With the back copy selected, you can increase the stroke weight so that the back copy's stroke becomes visible:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOG8uZhXe6vS9CdHvyAr7W6K8JnOEgl3v_pq8TlUVGumBPedP9f2bSHxQ3DnZCSrMbNowN227KG8xnEHL8R3zp3NrELqGgu8qQsBwRFJND56StZ_k63hZRlXSOu0uaA1p-mxWwh5zU4A/s1600/Increase_Stroke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOG8uZhXe6vS9CdHvyAr7W6K8JnOEgl3v_pq8TlUVGumBPedP9f2bSHxQ3DnZCSrMbNowN227KG8xnEHL8R3zp3NrELqGgu8qQsBwRFJND56StZ_k63hZRlXSOu0uaA1p-mxWwh5zU4A/s320/Increase_Stroke.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You can now break up the heavier stroke at the back using the <i>'Dashed Line'</i> option:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd0iHpUko2wThlnNaoHZ2CZC6cy5-v9wRVdfKW4U5z_1D7ydb-ND72s1FQyUVxHJN2a3QuDMjfh7hAssEiUhLtvlZPs7un-5xiPeAVw-3UX3RZNPGPOu3P5t6bT7B9QKmIVSWVo9TlI3A/s1600/Stroke_Path.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd0iHpUko2wThlnNaoHZ2CZC6cy5-v9wRVdfKW4U5z_1D7ydb-ND72s1FQyUVxHJN2a3QuDMjfh7hAssEiUhLtvlZPs7un-5xiPeAVw-3UX3RZNPGPOu3P5t6bT7B9QKmIVSWVo9TlI3A/s320/Stroke_Path.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Admittedly, this doesn't look terribly attractive to start with, so the next thing to do is get rid of those nasty hard corners on the dashes, by changing the <i>Cap</i> and <i>Corner</i> settings of the stroke:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWmhl5jncBT-_ZZctE77ZSYpL7mHnZQM5UcSK93Zl_eniEVHzbW2XzDj9sBOwv-1OOyL4EqMSU6l-0ONIK9KUZCcJRqGXh1jJ0Gm30rXis8imWItxiiop92ulddTX_-QdA20WeBCC7cyE/s1600/Change_Caps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWmhl5jncBT-_ZZctE77ZSYpL7mHnZQM5UcSK93Zl_eniEVHzbW2XzDj9sBOwv-1OOyL4EqMSU6l-0ONIK9KUZCcJRqGXh1jJ0Gm30rXis8imWItxiiop92ulddTX_-QdA20WeBCC7cyE/s320/Change_Caps.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Obviously, this is better, but still not great. You can use the <i>Dash</i> and <i>Gap</i> settings to get a much more pleasing result:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizML7XEk-xteimDUS0ttZbaReBS85ARVUxp8EMOgpjez2uLDLwazWhE10_MEn4IWlm9oENj9vvSyoWJmhtIB8zUDCzONIV-14FZ86lyKCFeASzjQ-nUMUpwH2ITBgFbXLbvfyLBnEn2dE/s1600/Change_Dash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizML7XEk-xteimDUS0ttZbaReBS85ARVUxp8EMOgpjez2uLDLwazWhE10_MEn4IWlm9oENj9vvSyoWJmhtIB8zUDCzONIV-14FZ86lyKCFeASzjQ-nUMUpwH2ITBgFbXLbvfyLBnEn2dE/s320/Change_Dash.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is <i>much</i> closer to the effect we're looking for but — to my eye at least — still looks a little too regular and mechanical. Fortunately, we can very the settings for Dash and Gap by more than just a single set of parameters:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWKIWiOgQQg37B-fyHIxLWJD5dsxP-VsRvbfWctk8jbCGnt16D125GoAbZjM46MTjrMkgMUSGjQugGvPX9q_5DC50LJvJwpg5PBBcPE8PdCikW_jnx-QPb4bZ71x8n6XGXwarq_BmNLDk/s1600/Change_Dash_More.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWKIWiOgQQg37B-fyHIxLWJD5dsxP-VsRvbfWctk8jbCGnt16D125GoAbZjM46MTjrMkgMUSGjQugGvPX9q_5DC50LJvJwpg5PBBcPE8PdCikW_jnx-QPb4bZ71x8n6XGXwarq_BmNLDk/s320/Change_Dash_More.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Which gives us a much better result. If you want an inline, as per the hand-drawn sample we started with, simply use the Offset Path function with a negative value:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiANzIkb1AmRHnblaBrpdbJGlnls5pLsY7RBpr9A09ylpZ27my6Y0eDRte8yMErMmI94dbrFzVWBxSyPnDaokv-jSTOb_vL9hoepIoP4XVsIrD-7w9oy7REwrSRFN3rfcYCVGDaOwdA7Qk/s1600/Inline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiANzIkb1AmRHnblaBrpdbJGlnls5pLsY7RBpr9A09ylpZ27my6Y0eDRte8yMErMmI94dbrFzVWBxSyPnDaokv-jSTOb_vL9hoepIoP4XVsIrD-7w9oy7REwrSRFN3rfcYCVGDaOwdA7Qk/s320/Inline.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">…And you should have a splendidly old-school sound effect!</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-10527197426685889302013-01-21T15:13:00.000+00:002013-01-21T15:13:05.726+00:00Tempus Fugit…<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another new year, and once again I find myself asking where all the time went…!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I haven't bothered with New Year's resolutions for a long time, but if I'm going to make one this year, it's going to be that I'll reverse the shameful neglect of this blog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I mean, yes, busy, yes, lots of work, yes, yes… there are lots of creative people far busier than I who maintain blogs more regular and productive than this one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So… 2013 will see some more <i>proper</i> content on this blog. If you're not seeing it, nag me in the comments and shame me into making time for some regular bloggery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cheers!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jim</span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-553784646568517318.post-18601605886654726422012-07-08T11:28:00.001+01:002012-07-09T08:08:58.890+01:00Soapbox: Proposed UK Copyright Reform of 'Orphaned Works'<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This isn't the promised update to my lettering guide -- which will be along in a few days -- but, instead, I'd like to talk about a proposed change to UK copyright law.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not a lawyer, and I'm certainly not an expert on copyright, so I would urge you to read the government's consultation document (406Kb PDF file <a href="http://www.ipo.gov.uk/response-2011-copyright.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>) and form your own opinion. The document, in so far as I understand it, raises a number of areas of concern:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Foremost, it proposes to turn the legal entitlement to copyright protection from an automatic right to one that will require you to opt in; the default assumption under this proposal is that you are happy to have your work, if declared an 'orphan' work, exploited and licensed by a third party body -- a collecting society. Note that the proposal does not require you to be a member of a collecting society (which could very well be a private company) in order for that society to deal with your work.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is clearly a massive logical flaw in this at its most fundamental level: if you make yourself (and, thus, your work) known to the collecting society, how can it be an orphaned work? By definition, the creator will have to be either unknown or uncontactable for the work to be declared an 'orphaned' one, but since when did the obscurity of work deny it legal protection?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The proposed reform claims to have safeguards built in, but these proceed from similarly flawed assumptions. It will, for example, be illegal to strip the metadata from a file, but once an image, or a design, or any other piece of creative work, goes 'viral' it will pass through so many hands that establishing at what point, or by whom, the metadata was removed would be virtually impossible.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's a hypothetical example: I put a piece of artwork up on my deviantArt site, which gets about 10 hits a day. It's a caricature of a celebrity I did for my own amusement, say. Someone working for a blog or site about celebrities right clicks that image, saves it down to their hard drive, and then re-uploads it to <i>their</i> blog, cropping it so that my signature is removed and failing to attribute it. I'm none the wiser -- there's no spike in traffic to my dA page, and I wouldn't see it on the blog, since it's not the sort of thing I read. The person who uploaded the image to the new location does a couple of dozen of these a day and doesn't keep a record of the sources.*</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That image is now receiving thousands of times more views as an unattributed, 'orphaned' image than it will ever receive in its original location, with its proper attribution.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enter the collecting society for cartoonists (remember that this could be a private company, and the proposal suggests that there could be more than one in each field; we're not talking about some cosy little creators' guild set-up, here) who declare it an orphaned work, license it to a clothing company for a fee and keep the money. My artwork is now on tens of thousands of t-shirts and, unless I actually <i>see</i> one, then I will be none the wiser.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And, let's say I <i>do</i> see one. There may be multiple collecting societies -- how do I find out which one has licensed my work? What if I am unhappy with the fee they have negotiated? Are they going to force the licensee to add my signature to all future printings of the t-shirt? What if I'm unhappy with the context in which my artwork is being used? Will the collecting society revoke the license? Compensate me for the inappropriate use of my work?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Remember also that this collecting society will be authorised to act on my behalf <i>without my consent</i>. It will be for me to expressly tell the society (keeping in mind that there may be multiple societies acting within the same field) that I do not wish them to do so.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>But,</i> and here's where we hit that problem with logic again, how will the collecting society know that the orphaned work is by me, and therefore not to be used in this manner? If they knew it was by me, it <i>wouldn't be orphaned in the first place.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The proposal says that, amongst the safeguards, there will be a register of orphaned works.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again, this demonstrates a complete lack of logical thought or understanding of the nature of what they're proposing: as a creator, are you supposed to make regular checks of this register to see if your work has been mistakenly entered onto it? I imagine that the register would quickly become quite lengthy. Plus, of course, the work <i>won't be attributed to you</i> and you'll have <i>no way of knowing how it's been described</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What this proposal appears to do is turn the entire internet into one massive stock library for larger companies, giving them an easy point of contact (the collecting societies) to negotiate licenses to use content they don't own. Better yet, the collecting societies get to do this without your knowledge and then <i>keep</i> the money.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why should there be an automatic assumption that any and all works are available for commercial exploitation unless explicitly stated otherwise? UK copyright law has, quite correctly, assigned all intellectual rights to a piece of work to its creator and they remain there unless the party wishing to exploit those rights can produce a document explicitly signing them over. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just because I create something and put it on display does not mean that I want to sell it, and if a third party can't elicit my express permission to do so, for <i>whatever</i> reason, then that third party should consider the work <i>not for sale</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This government is prepared to aggressively defend the intellectual property rights of 'big content', of the record labels and movie companies, enacting legislation forcing ISPs to keep detailed records of the data usage of their customers, introducing punishment by association**, but is happy to allow the rights of smaller creators to be drastically curtailed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This government has proven itself remarkably sensitive to public opinion on some issue (although not the NHS, sadly) so I would ask you to consider signing the online petition I've set up, and to share the link (and the reasons for signing) with as many people as possible.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/uk-government-dept-of-business-innovation-skills-abandon-proposed-changes-to-orphaned-works-copyright-law?utm_campaign=petition_created_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=guides#" target="_blank">You can sign the petition here…</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank you for reading. Normal service will be resumed shortly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(For a more in-depth look at this proposal, please read <a href="http://blog.authorsrights.org.uk/2011/06/08/hargreaves-review-extended-collective-licensing-and-orphan-works/" target="_blank">this blog entry,</a> brought to my attention by John Freeman.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>*This part is not hypothetical, it's happened to me and, once, I did it to someone else in error. Fortunately, they contacted me directly and I was able to correct the mistake and attribute the work properly.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>**By threatening disconnection of an entire household's internet access based solely on the actions of one member of that household.</i></span>Jim Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02852861530716171096noreply@blogger.com3