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bear1
Jan '20

OK, long story short, I need a font for my next project.
My current project is hand lettered. But I can't ask my letterer to also letter this project so I'd like to do it digitally.
I weeded through my CSP font library and found a few fonts which are quite pretty to me. However, I'm not sure if they are suitable and like to have some input on them.
Here they are (sorry for slap dash editing, tho ^^"):

qcomic fonts.jpg800x862 211 KB

Personally I would prefer a handwriten-like style. Like the brown or green one. But I'm not sure if it's appealing for readers or too weird to read.

Which one (just name the color) would you prefer? (and maybe tell me why you'd prefer them.)
If you find all of them shit and have a better suggestion, feel free to tell me.
This is just the selection I found most appealing to me so far. But....yeah, first time since forever I'm looking for a comic font ^^"

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    Jan '20

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    Jan '20
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rajillustration
Jan '20

hm, we would need to see what the art looks like too to see which font goes with the art style itself.

JRHoch
Jan '20

Though there is some debate, many people prefer all capitals. It allows you to get the biggest font per the space. However, if you want to use lower case letters, don't use a font with tall ascenders and low descenders.

The orange square is the only one with all caps, but the lettering is a bit too stylized to read a lot of text throughout a comic. Brown or green might work.

PaulieBlade
Jan '20

Purple looks the best to me, just purely from the point of view of aesthetics. If you want something slightly more conventional, though, then green is neat as well.

Rhonder
Jan '20

purple, green, brown, and gray appeal the most to me. everything else except orange feels too formal looking for a comic, and something about orange feels a little... off? to me.

If I had to narrow it down further purple or green I think, depending on the style and what looks good. Green's probably easier to read in the long run since it's thicker (one of my biggest regrets with my comic is the super thin font, will probably go back and edit it to something different eventually prior to print).

vothnthorvaldson
Jan '20

I don't really know what font people expect in comics, but I can give you the perspective of someone with a bad eyesight: the green is the easiest to read. (And it's looking nice imo).
Some people would find the red or blue easier to read, though. It depends on what's the eyesight issue.

silverraven0
Jan '20

Eh, i would just use the basic cc fonts like wildwords. But it is basically up to your preferennce however. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

BlueDragon
Jan '20

If all caps were to be used, I'd vote for the green box :smiley:

If you letter your own, and were looking to to make your own font, I used this free generator to make my comic's font :3
It's not hard, and you can add other symbols and stuff to create all the letters, commas, etc...

(but it does still take a bit of work and printing off the template and practicing the font.)

darthmongoose
Jan '20

I agree with @rajillustration , it's good to always check what your font looks like together with your art.

For example, I always in the past used all caps and a font called "Creative Block", a very bold, chunky font that went well with my black and white work, particularly when it was short comics without much dialogue. I was actually such a fan of that font, and felt it was so suited to my work, I'd always feel vaguely annoyed when I saw other people using it because "That's my font!" :sweat_smile:

For Errant, I knew there'd be a lot more talking, and that CB would just feel obnoxious and shouty, and I wanted a little bit more of a down to earth and detailed style (and also my style is just generally more careful and detailed than it was in my twenties). So I tried a bunch of fonts, got a second opinion from my fiance (a ui/ux designer) and even tried making my own handwritten font called "Kate Sans":

katesans.png1736x574 28.6 KB

...Which I do like a lot, but it feels too cute and delicate for Errant, which is quite a "shounen manga" feeling comic in a lot of ways, with a lot of emotional intensity and quite chunky art. This font goes way better with the cuter art I do for sketchnotes and things.
(EDIT: If anyone wants to use Kate Sans themselves, drop a message and I'll give you the link).

So ended up using Blambot Casual with tweaked line spacing. It just fit the best.

Iris-Grimoire
Jan '20

Blambot's free-for-independent-production selection has the best looking fonts tbh, but Clip Studio Paint already has Anime Ace 2.0 built in, so at least to start out that's nice. You really need to have it fit your genre though.

As a side note, people started replacing the brown fox test phrase with "sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow" which is badass.

bear1
Jan '20
rajillustration

This is my current comic:

The style is pretty much the same in the new project. Only inking is not as bold and it’s colored. But, yeah, it’s a mangaish cartoony style :slight_smile:

bear1
Jan '20

@JRHoch
Yes, I was thinking of having an all capital font but didn’t find one I like except the orange one. But....yeah, it looks a bit squeezed. : /
Also, if I remember right, some people don’t like all capital because it looks like shouting. So I’m willing to go with a font that also uses small letters :slight_smile:
Thank you for input

@PaulieBlade
They are the same font, but one has the bold setting on :slight_smile:
I like those two too since they are like an inbetween of computer and handwriting style. I’m just not sure if the bold one looks too cluttered on a smartphone and the normal one too light :confounded:
Thank you for your input :slight_smile:

@Rhonder
Yeah, I feel the same about formal fonts in comics. Sometimes they are appropriate. But often they look....weird ^^”
And I know what you mean about thin fonts. When ‘spirit if the staircase’ started on GoComics, they had a rather thin and difficult to read font that caused a lot of backlash (despite the comic itself being really good). I’d like to avoid that :sweat:
Thanks for you input :slight_smile:

@vothnthorvaldson
First I was like ‘oh yeah, that’s a really good reply’....then I read the later part and now I’m insecure again :sweat_smile:
But seriously, thank you for the comment. I will definitely keep that in mind with the mentioned fonts :slight_smile:

@rahzarod
Thanks. I’ll check them out :slight_smile:

@silverraven0
But I want to be special :cry:
Actually, I’m a bit picky and rather look for something that defines my work (oh gosh, that sounds so cliche xD). But if I cannot get anything I find suitable I might go back to the basics :slight_smile:

@BlueDragon
Thanks for the link. I didn’t think of that for this project because I felt that’s a lot of wirk (and my handwriting is kinda meh....).
But I will keep it in mind....especially when the set up for it is less complicated than I thought it is ^^

@darthmongoose
Yeah, guess I should’ve put more effort into my selection and apply the fonts to a test panel :sweat_smile:
But thank you for your input and reasoning behind it.
In my case the comic will not be too dialogue heavy since it’s planed more as a gag-comedy. However, assuming it is well received, I do have a more serious storythread weaving in once in a while (which probably has bigger blocks of dialogue). So I kinda look for something suitable for both, cutsey short lines and serious long dialogues ^^
Your font is really pretty, btw. I will check out the one you mentioned in the end too.
Thanks for you input ^^

@Iris-Grimoire
I have to check out that Anime one. I guess I overlooked it :confused:
Thanks for mentioning it :slight_smile: