Lettering crowd noise

[somvi]

Say you have a scene, lots of people standing around, waiting in line or in a crowd on the street.
Typical noise from people talking amongst themselves.

How would you letter this?

[mariusthered]

I have done crowd scenes before but unless the noise coming from the crown is a part of the story in some way I wouldn't put too much effort into bubbles and stuff. maybe the odd comment in a bubble here and there if you have room.

[Chopythes]

Hm. I think I would've just place words here and there in different font sizes to make sure it's "sounds" like a crowded place.
Like, think "messy".

I think this is what I'd do at least, or something similar to this.
You could also add some gestures and expressions, to make the feeling of a loud crowd more louder.

(Or you could just look for webcomics that you know have crowds in it and look at how they've done it? :D)

[zoonland]

It depends. They are saying something interesting to the story or just chatting? If you want to recreate the idea of a crowd that is just chatting you can organize the baloon one on top of each other while they're in line. This recreates quite well the typical confusion of a crowded line in waiting, in my opinion.

[somvi]

Initially I was thinking the same, makes sense for unimportant crowds in the background.

After looking at it again, I have an opening shot with the main chara cutting through a crowd and basically tells everybody to shut up. Similar to a detective arriving on a murder scene. I feel it needs a bit of noise in there as the crowd isn't in panic but there's a lot of commotion.

Thanks for your suggestions, maybe balloons with no tails.

[somvi]

Thanks for the little demo! Words with no balloons could work but the orphaned punctuation may not fit the art style we've got.
(I'm only handling lettering for this particular project so I have to work with the artist and writer in mind)

[somvi]

There's nothing in the script for actual crowd dialogue (I'm not the writer on this project) there's a dead body in the street. Bunch of gawkers forming a little crowd. Maybe some gibberish or scribbles could work? Thanks for your suggestion!

[Runiix]

In a scene where there is a dead body, I'd image people whispering and stuff, like, people with hands covering their mouths and leaning towards friends and stuff. I think that your idea of gibberish or something like "whisper whisper" would work fine - whatever floats your boat!

[joannekwan]

I usually hand write ambient chatter.

[phen]

Perhaps you could infer crowd noise with just a few light, empty bubbles coming from them. I did a couple of quick experiments in the fanciest programme I have (heh, not really, it's just MS Paint) to illustrate what I have in mind. One of with the balloons as completely empty and the other with some scratch lines and little action marks on the contours.

EDIT: Wow, those were huge, heh. Let me make them smaller! >w<

[SpavVy]

I've seen comic artists use the word murmur as a sound effect for scenes that have a crowd of people.

[Doubtcent]

I once saw "raaaaaaa" as a sound... for a very large crowd.